I
woke up on Friday morning, December 14th, to the sounds of my wife
gasping as she found out that an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut had
been shot up. For the next several hours we sat, mouths open, watching the
news.
We cried.
We were angry.
We vented.
We thought of that being our children.
We thought of the parents.
We saw for the first time in our lifetime a President cry on
national TV.
We prayed.
We told our children, and then hugged them tight.
The
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is not the first school shooting, nor
will it be the last. It is not the first national tragedy, nor will it be the
last. There are mass murders of children, young folk, and innocent bystanders
everyday in US low-income neighborhoods and
in others countries. The only difference is they don’t get as much publicity as
this recent tragedy. But that is not a reason to minimalize the Newtown
tragedy. Twenty young lives were lost. Eight adult lives were lost (school
staff, the gunman, and his mother). This is ample enough reason to be upset and
saddened.
The victims and their families
It’s
hard to think of dead children. Well, at least it is for me. I have three
children. My two youngest are 7 and 5. That’s around the same ages of the kids
who died at Sandy Hook Elementary. Thinking of never seeing my kids again makes
my heart hurt. I can feel the pain deep in my chest. My children are my
offspring. They are mini-mes. So I can only imagine what those parents must be
going through. Or to lose my wife, who went to work only never to return. My
state of shock and sense of loss would be paralyzing. Next to Jesus, my wife is
my life. She is my rib. So I can only imagine what the spouses must be
enduring. The pain.
Loss
is the greatest knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest blow. Loss has a way of
K-O’ing us. Why? Because when God created us, He hardwired us for relationships
and purpose (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:15, 18). Therefore, losing something we dearly
love and dearly value never to have it again is the hardest thing for human
beings to cope with. It’s the reason why depression and anxiety are so common
and deadly. We have a hard time dealing with loss or the thought of loss. All
of us then can empathize with these families, and we should. So weep with them
and grieve with them. But let not their loss be in vain. Cherish the treasures
that matter most: faith, family, and friends. And let not the heroism of the
teachers and staff to put others before themselves be in vain. Fight selflessly
for what matters most. Let us keep that in mind.
Reflection of a villain
I
was humbled. This tragedy is a reminder for us…a reminder for me. As much as we
may not want to admit it, this tragedy is nothing more than another confirmation
of how mankind’s depravity has no limits. John Piper wrote about this as well,
“…the murders of Newtown are a warning to me — and you. Not a
warning to see our schools as defenseless, but to see our souls as depraved. To
see our need for a Savior. To humble ourselves in repentance for the
God-diminishing bitterness of our hearts. To turn to Christ in desperate need,
and to treasure his forgiveness, his transforming, and his friendship.”
If
any of us believe that we are somehow different than Adam Lanza (the shooter),
we have lost sight of our own depravity. If we remove Jesus from our life, we
are no different. All we have to do is read passages like Ephesians 2:1-3,
Titus 3:3, Colossians 3:5-9, and Galatians 5:19-21.
I
can say personally I was Adam Lanza before Jesus rescued me. I murdered
innocent lives with abortion, rape, drug dealing, and street violence…oh and I
can’t forget the lives I’ve took with my selfishness, arrogance, deception,
rage, and manipulation. I took innocence. I corrupted young minds. I terrorized
families. I abused women and children. Adam Lanza is nothing more than a mirror
of my old self. And that shook me, because my egregious sins have never been
publicized like his. The lives I destroyed have never been nationally prayed
for or comforted or mourned. I caused Newtown like tragedies for 16 years, and
that’s just before Jesus. That’s not
counting tragedies I’ve caused bearing
the name of Christ. This is why I was humbled.
What
about you? How many tragedies are accredited to your sin and selfishness? Have
you forgotten your reflection as a villain before Christ and at times since being
in Christ?
What can we do?
The
Apostle Peter told us that “the end of all things is at hand; therefore be
serious and watchful in your prayers” (1Pet. 4:7, NKJV). We have to pray
saints! Pray for those affected by the Sandy Hook school shooting. They need
it. But also pray for everyone affected by sin and its effects. The voiceless.
The unattended. The disadvantaged. And so on. My wife has a saying, “There is
no such thing as a victimless sin.” How true! Sin rampages all of us in some way
or another. And as we continue to get closer to “the end of all things”, sin
will rampage all the more. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. Beseech
the God of all Creation and watch Him work.
Peter
doesn’t end his point with a call to only
be intentional in prayer. He ends it with a call to be intentional in love.
“And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” (1Pet. 4:8, NKJV)
Our
greatest witness to a depraved and dying world is exhibiting God’s fervent, life-giving,
sacrificial, undeserving love (Luke 6:27-36). We are to love the victims and the perpetrators.
We are to love the abused and the abusers. We are to love sinners and saints.
Why? Because we all were once victims, perps, abused, abusers, and sinners
guilty before God, and it was His fervent, life-giving, sacrificial,
undeserving love that drew us to Himself. Thus, it will be His love through us
that will draw another to Himself. It will be His love through us that will
help heal and mend the hurt and the broken. It will be His love through us that
will help soften the hard-hearted, help settle the angry, help accept and
embrace the misunderstood, help possibly rescue another Adam Lanza, or Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold (shooters of Columbine), or Seung-Hui Cho (the
Virginia Tech shooter). His love rescued me, and I was a killer before these
killers.
We’ve
all been tossed around, world flipped upside down from the rampages of sin and
selfishness---whether
that be of our own doing or someone else’s. And those of us who are born-again,
who’ve been rescued from sin’s penalty and freed from sin’s enslavement, we
therefore have also experienced the comfort of God. Hence, the reason why Paul writes
in 2Corinthians 1:3-4 (NLT),
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God
is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in
all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will
be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
As
Christians, we’ve been on both sides of tragedies, the pain and the comfort! So
we can come alongside those who are victimized and visited with tragedies and
flood them with the same comfort
we received from God. We can shower them with the fruit of the Spirit---which
should sum up our loving manner of interaction, demeanor, and posture when
around them. We can, at the right time and in a gentle and gracious manner,
share with them the all-satisfying and eternal joy of the Good News of Jesus
Christ!
Finally,
even though we are not wrong to
desire justice to be served when an injustice is present, we cannot forget to
remember that our sin and injustices require justice as well. So as God forgave
us of ours, so are we to forgive others of theirs. It’s not easy, but it
is beneficial to all involved and a reflection of our Savior (and not the old
villain in us). We have to forgive Adam Lanza, and any other Adam Lanza’s in
our life too.
I
hope my reflection and response will be of some help in some way during this
time.
“The Lord is a safe place for the oppressed—a safe
place in difficult times. Those who know your name trust
you because you have not abandoned any who seek you, Lord.” (Ps. 9:9-10, CEB)
“18 …God
has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting
people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of
reconciliation.20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is
making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to
God!”” (2Cor. 5:18-20, NLT)
12/19/12
