Making Sense Of The Aurora Shooting
How can anyone make sense of what happened in Aurora? They can’t! By now we have heard the many news reports of the horrible act of evil that took place in that movie theater. It did not take long for the political pundits to start placing blame. They placed the blame upon the Tea Party (which they apologized for later in the day). They blamed gun laws or the lack of gun laws. They blamed various political parties for their particular stances upon gun control. They could have blamed doctors, but there have not been any reports that this man was under a doctor’s care. In fact, he was practically a doctor himself. Some tried to blame the movie with its violence, but the movie was barely twenty minutes into the film, and was still setting up the plot. The evil person who did this had been planning the mayhem for weeks. Nobody saw it coming. There were no warnings. There were no red flags.
While many people are horrified by this senseless act, and the victims will be dealing with this for a long time, and some will never see their loved ones again. The only reason this has such publicity is because of the massive amount of casualties there were. The numbers of twelve dead and 58 injured are really small compared to the violence in our streets and towns across this country every day. Many of the reports I read showed that there are about 12 to 16,000 murders in the US each year. That breaks down to 43.8 murders in this country every day.
Another thing that I noticed, and even saw it in myself is that when I heard about the news, my reaction was: “another one?”. Seems we hear about shootings all the time. In fact, we must be getting use to it. The school shootings that occur, the disgruntled employees shooting up their work places, the mall shootings, has become a regular occurrence, and it is as if we expect something to take place, and if it does, it does not surprise us. There was even an instance where someone was stabbing people, and a man with a gun stopped them. But that was not really well publicized, was it?
Violence of this nature takes place on a daily basis in some countries of this world. We hear of bombings and shootings all the time from countries in the Middle East. Those people are accustomed to such, but we have not come to grips with such acts of evil, yet!
While there have been plenty of interviews of the politicians, and psychiatrists, and other so called experts, let me offer my analysis that sensible people will hopefully understand.
It will be hard to rebut what I am about to say, because most people know it to be right, but they are not willing to acknowledge it, nor are they willing to change the culture we live in.
That is right, the thing I am talking about is the culture of devaluing human life. We as a nation have been doing this for years. We as a nation abort millions of human lives each year. Our children are out on the streets killing each other all the time. The new health care law has provisions to end lives that are no longer useful to our society.
Murder and death surround us in life, and when we go to the movies. Has anybody counted how many people are killed in the Batman movie that was showing? People in our society are not taught to value human life, or even to respect others.
This culture we live in is destroying lives. So how do we fix it? Well, the answer is simple, but few will choose to follow that path. The Bible teaches that we are to honor and love God first and foremost in our lives. The second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, the Bible says that the entirety of God’s laws rest upon these two laws. The truth of the matter is that each person will be judged by how they treated other people while they were alive. God wants us to treat others with kindness. Our society is heading the wrong direction, and if it does not reverse course, God will deal with us accordingly.
There are many people who are trying to live lives based upon the commands of God. These people are good people, and would never ever consider taking a life out of hatred or meanness. Perhaps they might in protection of self or loved ones. But for the most part, these good people try to treat others in kind ways.
The people, who reject God in their lives, have no problem devaluing human life. They do not recognize the value of the soul as God values the souls of all men. God made provision for all men to be saved, yet most men (and women) will reject God’s provision, and do things the way they want to do them.
This insanity is not going to stop until we take our society and culture back to the Bible, and follow the precepts and instructions from God’s word. The more people reject God, the worse these incidents will become.
The road to correct this begins in our homes where parents teach their young children the value of life, and faithfulness to God. When people can learn that taking a life is wrong, they find other ways to deal with their problems. Who knows, they just might learn to get along. The road to correction also involves turn our lives over to God and follow His commandments.
By Carey Scott 7/25/12

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