My Take

The senseless murders last Friday of both children and their teachers in the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, broke the heart of every human being not “past feeling.” They also naturally raised the “why” and the “where” questions—Why did this happen? and Where was God?

As for “why,” one famous news commentator observed, “Answers will fall into one of three categories: those who blame guns, those who blame psychology, and those who blame culture.” Another commentator lamented, “...[this happened because] there is an evil that exists in the world, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

“Nothing we can do about it”—these words sound so hopeless and despairing in the face of calamity, not just of human impotence but also of God’s. They sound as though the commentator was answering the “where” question with, “It doesn’t matter where God was. He doesn’t seem to be able to stop this kind of thing either.”

My own answers to the “why” and “where” questions are not intended as some kind of final word of wisdom, though they are based on Scripture.

I believe the murders last week are an example of unrestrained evil beginning to overtake our country. According to the biblical narrative, evil entered the world through the Fall. Since then God has allowed evil to operate in the world in ways, at times, that are devastating and heart-breaking. This makes the world a dangerous place, while casting us as those in need of God’s protection. The illusion that we, individually or collectively, can somehow shield ourselves from the danger, that we don’t need God moment by moment to deliver us from evil, is just that—an illusion.

The illusion of safety and sufficiency apart from God is one our nation seems to be embracing headlong. We censure the mention of God and the name of Jesus in the public square or in schools. We reject God’s definition of marriage and limits on sexual conduct. We turn our backs on worship in favor of sports and other forms of recreation. We entertain ourselves with unrestrained violence. We celebrate the macabre, the crude, and the obscene. We brazenly turn our bodies into instruments and canvasses for the same. We ignore the cry of the widow and orphan. And the list goes on...

Then we wonder, Where is God when we need him? The thing is, needing God is not something we are free to pick and choose only as it suits us. When God is dismissed from the public arena, he leaves. And he takes with him the deliverance from evil he would have otherwise provided, exposing us to the the very real dangers of “the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.”

Please understand, I am not suggesting that all of the recent displays of random and murderous violence in our country are examples of God acting in judgment against us. The only thing required for evil to overtake a country such as ours is for God to stop delivering us, which appears to be precisely what is happening in response to our dismissing him from our society.

Someone may wonder, What about other countries? Why don’t they suffer like this?

The answer is found in relation to the kind of evil people collaborate with. There are different grades of evil, some worse than others. The worse kind of evil is closely associated to brazen attempts to contravene God’s overall plan for the ages. Hitler’s murder of six million Jews is an example. Another kind of evil very similar is associated with apostasy, with people intentionally turning away from God having previously acknowledged and embraced him. The evil unleashed by apostasy is famous for its devastating intensity.

There are numerous examples of this in Scripture. After listing several, the Apostle Peter notes that for these kinds of people, “the last state has become worse than the  first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them” (2 Peter 2:20b-21).

In the Old Testament, the Book of Hosea is particularly clear about the connection between a nation dismissing God and the removal of his blessing and deliverance, followed by the overrun of evil. In Hosea 4:16, God says, “Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the Lord now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?” In other words, “How can anybody expect me to treat these people like something they are not? They have stopped bringing themselves under my guidance and cares like lambs. They are as independent and stubborn as a heifer!”

The next verse goes on to express the Lord’s exasperation: “Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone’ (Hosea 4:17).

That’s precisely the problem—God leaving us alone, no longer treating us like a nation that honors him; and, worse yet, allowing the evil of apostasy to overrun our land instead.

I know history well enough to know that our country never has been entirely righteous or entirely Christian. But I also know claims have been made, and I think rightly so, of America’s exceptionalism based on our Christian foundation and heritage. In the past, our nation sought to honor God, with glory to Jesus Christ given freely, publicly, and  unashamedly. For some it was lip service, I’m sure. But for many, it was heart-deep and substantial. It made a difference in our values and in the way we lived. Unrighteousness, in various forms, existed, but it was kept off stage. It wasn’t given top billing and so formally embraced as the way things ought to be.  My deep concern now is that we have turned away from our foundation and heritage, turned away so far that we can no longer lay claim to God’s deliverance from the evil unleashed through our apostasy. We are no longer lambs, but stubborn heifers.

So what can we do?

The answer is not to devise worldly ways of shielding ourselves. Those never work. The only sure deliverance from evil comes through separation from it, through refusing to collaborate with it in any fashion, while actively doing the will of God and collaborating instead with his kingdom. Then God will welcome us back (2 Corinthians 6:14-18) and he will deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:9-13).

Finally, please don’t underestimate the power of people turning to the Lord, even one at a time, to stem the tide of evil. One of the titles of the Holy Spirit found in the Bible is “spirit of holiness.” Though that sounds redundant, the title “spirit of holiness” in the contexts where it is found uniquely points to an imparting of the desire to be holy and to live a holy life. Don’t underestimate the power of the spirit of holiness, wherever it is taken, to restrain evil wherever it is found.