Sunday, October 11, 2015

Is the Shooting Problem External or Internal?

It seems like every day we hear about murders. A few weeks ago was Umpqua Community College. Then this week, there has been the rash of shootings at Texas Southern and the shooting at Northern Arizona University. We in Cleveland have recently seen a rash of shootings involving innocent children in the cross-fire.


Everyone is wringing their hands over this and so they should. This is tragic when a human being loses their life at the hands of another human being. It is even more tragic when it is an innocent like a five month old baby in the back seat of a car. But the response has been focused on issues like gun control and better education. These are externals and externals can never solve the problem of the wicked human heart. The human heart is the source of this type of rage that results in a human taking another life.

The Bible makes this perfectly clear. Jesus never addressed the type of problem we are seeing by regulation or laws. He went straight to the problem of the human heart. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says that a person who calls another person "fool" or "empty head" or in our vernacular S___head is guilty of fiery hell. James says that we lust and we do not have so we commit murder. Murder is nothing more than an outgrowth of an unsettled heart. It knots and festers in the heart and eventually it comes out. Why do we act out? Because we have a heart problem.

For example, I have a rage deep inside of me that only those closest to me have seen. It is a rage that resulted in a series of fights when I was in college. I was one of our fraternity's designated fighters when the fraternity across the street messed with us. I remember taking a guy who was taunting us and literally whaling on him in the head. Scary! While my anger has been overshadowed by God's presence inside of me, it always sits within me and without supernatural intervention, could still come out at any time.

The problem of the human heart can only be solved through the deep love we have from knowing God personally through Jesus Christ and feeling that love from our family and friends. The is transformative love that can change a person from the inside out. That is the only way to truly break this cycle of violence.