It’s Not Somebody Else’s Fault

In the wake of the massacre of Aurora, Colorado, people have had a chance to reflect on one of the biggest mass shootings in history.  There are stories of heroism.  Three men gave their lives while protecting their girlfriends. 
Twenty-five-year-old Jon Blunk was sitting next to his girlfriend, Jansen Young, at the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" when the gunman opened fire in the dark theater. Blunk instinctively pushed his girlfriend to the ground and threw his body on top of hers. Blunk, a security guard, served five years in the Navy and was in the process of re-enlisting in hopes of becoming a Navy SEAL, family and friends said. He was killed in the gunfire; his girlfriend survived.  Twenty-four-year-old Alex Teves dived on top of his girlfriend, Amanda Lindgren, when the gunfire erupted. Covering her body, he took the bullets so they did not harm her. She survived the massacre; he did not.  Matt McQuinn, 27 years old, threw his body in front of his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, as the shooting continued. Yowler survived with a gunshot wound to the knee; McQuinn's body absorbed the fatal shots. Or this 13 year old girl who tried to save the 6 year old girl she babysat for.

The thing that is bothersome to us though is the people who look to lay blame for this.  For example, the lawyer who filed an immediate lawsuit on behalf, not of one of the victims or even one of those hurt.  He blames the theater, the doctors, and Warner Bros for the shooting.  Give me a break!  I searched the web and found a preponderance of ads looking to “help” victims of the shooting.  Where there is senseless evil, there always seems to be somebody looking to profit from it.  Tragedies like this bring out the best and the worst of us.  James Holmes was troubled individual who acted ALONE!  There is a cost to the lawyers who want to “help”.

It seems that we want to always look for blame to others when we sin.  The point is that we all sin and no amount of blame can make up for that fact.  No amount of security, no amount of preventative medicine, no amount of litigation.  Our litigious society has now added a cost to the blame game that continues to cripple our country.  Do we really think that these lawyers do this out of the goodness of their heart.  I am not sure which is worse, James Holmes or the lawyers that seek to profit.  A deranged man is just that, a deranged man.  How can we protect a culture from a deranged man?  From most accounts, he acted fairly rationally and gave little clues this was going to happen.  It simmered seemingly just below the surface.  

To some level, we all are just as potentially dangerous as James Holmes.  It does not take much to act like him.  We live in a fallen, depraved world where Satan would love to have an army of James Holmes.  And it would not take much for each of us to act in similar ways.  It is not a big gap between the anger we feel and express and the anger that caused a man to shoot up a movie theatre.  That is what Jesus was saying when he says that those who insult our brother are as guilty as a murderer.

On the contrary, there are the heroes, the rays of hope who stand as evidence that there is also good that can come out of even the worst of situations.  These heroes are symbols of the ultimate sacrifice Jesus paid as he entered our fallen world. 

God is Good No Matter What

It is very easy to look at things from a human lens.  I guess that is because we are human.  Several weeks ago while we were in church, we received a distress call from our daughter who was on her way home and had a major accident on the highway near Chicago.  I won’t repeat the story – you can find it on Debbie’s blog here.  The bottom line is that our daughter by all rights based on what happened should have been killed or severely injured, but she wasn’t.  She walked away from an accident that any other time of the day or week would have been far worse.  She did not hit any other car or hurt any other person.  The car spun 360 degrees on the highway and struck the median as shown below. 

It was an act of grace.  Bethany was not hurt.  We might even say she was spared.  But we have godly friends who lost a son due to a freak accident.  Are we any more spiritual than they are?  Hardly so.  For some reason, God did not take Bethany home that night.  It was grace.  Our friends had to take years of heartache and dig deep down into their relationship with Christ to even persevere.  Their son’s faith encouraged many to come to faith likewise and the parents have also been used of God to tell their story.

I am reminded of two simple truths.  First, we live in a fallen world and as a result, Christians endure pain and suffering as much as non Christians.  In fact, Christians endure more pain because they name the name of Christ.  Secondly,  God gives grace.  He gives grace to each of us to enter into a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.  That relationship overshadows the trouble of this life.  When God takes a Christian out of this life, there is reason to celebrate because they are home.  He also provides the grace in this life to persevere in the loss of loved ones.  Paul says whether we live or die, we are the Lords.

We can love a God who is so infinite and loving despite the circumstances of this life.  My God is not a genie in a bottle.  He is a loving Father that I can trust fully no matter what.