Controversy swirls around last week’s tragic shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As is to be expected, the information being revealed about the shootings is sketchy and often contradictory. Arriving at the truth about these events is usually a tortured process. The final story is seldom what it appears at first to be.
Two things are clear to me, though. The first is that certain factions appear to have been poised and ready to strike a blow at the Second Amendment at the first opportunity. As Rahm Emmanuel said — and Hillary Clinton confirmed — one should never let a good crisis go to waste!
The second is that, contrary to what the four students we are seeing across the mainstream media may think, guns alone are not the problem. It is simplistic to think that and will be disastrous to continue to believe it.
Our problems run much, much deeper than guns. America is in a moral freefall. We are at a cultural crossroads and if we choose the simplistic path, we will be doomed to collapse. Sooner, perhaps, rather than later.
In 1962, there were few laws governing the ownership and use of guns. In 1962, there were no school shootings.
In fact, in the entire 20th century, there were 227 school shootings. In the first 18 years of the 21st century, there have been 207! And that alarming number despite the fact that we have an ever-increasing number of ever-increasingly restrictive gun laws.
Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but it seems to me that if school shootings have gone through the roof AFTER we started tightening our gun laws and even creating “gun-free zones” (schools and entire cities), then there is either no relation between the two or the restrictive laws are contributing to the increase in violence.
Why is it that in the “old days,” young men carried rifles to school in the gun racks of their pickups, and some schools even taught shooting classes and competed against each other in shooting competitions, yet we would go entire years with no school shooting incidents?
Simply because guns don’t cause violence. Humans do. And until we realize that we humans are the culprits, we are going to see more incidents as tragic as Parkland, or more so.
The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days, people would be “without self-control, brutal, haters of good….” (2 Timothy 3:3 NASB)
Is that not a perfect description of what we saw last week in Parkland? Or Las Vegas? Or Sutherland Springs? Or San Bernardino? Or Orlando? Or South Carolina? Or Aurora? Or Newtown? Or Columbine? Or… and the list goes on. Unimaginable brutality.
Experts who are much smarter and better informed than I have warned for years that we are raising a generation of “avid videogame players who turned their sick fantasy into our tragic reality.” And, “From a military and law enforcement perspective, violent videogames are ‘murder simulators’ that train kids to kill.” (Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, US Army, Ret.)
Obviously, videogames alone have not bred this climate of violent brutality. Movies, television, the music industry, academia, social media, the breakdown of the family, and more have all contributed to the moral depravity that has engendered such self-centeredness, lack of self-control, and brutality.
But I believe the most critical contributor to this onslaught of violence, brutalness, and terror that now grips our schools and our lives is the fact that America has turned its back on God. When our nation made the decision to begin systematically erasing God and His influence from our national psyche, beginning with our schools, we started down a road that has grown ever darker and more treacherous with each passing day.
It’s like a man who stops eating nutritious foods and taking vitamins, then wonders why he is getting weaker and experiencing greater health problems. What did we think would happen when we decided to cut ourselves off from the very lifestream that has brought America so much blessing, so much abundance, and so much freedom and safety?
In 1962, the US Supreme Court decided that it was no longer constitutionally acceptable to have institutional prayer in our public schools. Of course, that didn’t necessarily stop everyone from praying at school. Ronald Reagan observed at the time that “as long as there are final exams, there will be prayers in school.” But when we proclaimed as a matter of national policy that God and our acknowledgment of Him and His positive influence in our lives was no longer important or acceptable, we did something dangerous. We closed the door to God and opened the door to Satan.
It’s not that America chose Satan over God, we didn’t. But we told God that we didn’t need Him, that we could handle our lives and our futures by ourselves. We didn’t need His influence in our lives, but, most importantly, in the lives of our children. We — through our teachers and professors — were quite capable of raising good kids without Him.
Now, just two generations later, America is on the brink of becoming a third-world nation filled with violence, tribal conflict, poverty, and exploding danger. And I believe it’s largely because we have raised 57 years of children who think God and His principles are not at all important. And why do they think that? Because we taught them exactly that when we kicked God and His influence out of public education — the very place He is most needed!
The prophet Hosea could have easily been describing modern America when he wrote: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind; it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.” (Hosea 8:7 KJV)
We have walked away from God and chosen to trust our own intelligence and abilities. The anemic seed we have sown is now yielding crops we never anticipated or desired: anger, despair, selfishness, hatred, lasciviousness, violence, sheer brutality, and so much more. Doesn’t that sound eerily like the description Paul gave for these times? “…men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God… always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:2-4, 7 NASB)
This week, Michael, my son in the Lord, sent me a photograph of a t-shirt. It was emblazoned with a powerful truth. It read: “Dear God, why do you allow so much violence in our schools? Signed, a concerned student.”
Below that was written the reply: “Dear concerned student, I’m not allowed in schools. Signed, God.”
Folks, I’m not saying that one disastrous Supreme Court decision in 1962 caused all of the mayhem that has followed, but it is indicative of the path America chose. It shows that, as a nation, we determined that God was unimportant to us. And when you walk away from God, you must walk toward something, or someone, else. As Bob Dylan once sang, “You gotta serve somebody….”
Also on this week’s program, I will discuss the recent Department of Justice indictment of several Russian nationals and organizations for alleged interference in the 2016 general elections. I will also give you an update on the crisis Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing in Israel.
Finally, I will share with you my thoughts on God’s “chosen people,” the Jews. Many people don’t realize that God chose the Hebrews for some very specific “missions” in this world. Some they fulfilled brilliantly — and all of us who followed have been blessed immeasurably. In others, they failed miserably — and bore the consequences.
But God’s promise remains true to this day: those who bless them will be blessed and those who curse them will be cursed.
On a personal note, I am, at once, saddened and joyful at the passing of our brother, Billy Graham. I believe he was the greatest influence for the Kingdom of God of our time. Truly, only eternity will reveal the impact he had on our world. His influence will always be felt, but his presence will be missed.
I smile when I read what Billy once said. Echoing D.L Moody, one of his heroes, Billy said, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”
What encouragement for those of us who remain here. We, too, will soon change addresses. What a great day that will be.
So long, Billy. See you soon.
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