I generally prefer to wait until all the facts are in before commenting on tragic events like the recent Las Vegas massacre, but the absence of commentary from the mainstream media on the spiritual warfare that is the basis for man's inhumanity to man struck me as something that should be noted and reflected upon as society moves further away from a worldview based on the reality of an omnipresent God and turns more and more to a secular, agnostic, and emotive worldview.
Most reporting in the earliest stages of an unfolding story is based on facts as they occur, the planes flying into the twin towers for instance. It is not long before reporters, like the rest of us, move from talking about "what happened" to asking "why did it happen?".
In the absence of answers to the question of "why", news reporters start asking witnesses or survivors "how they felt" or "what was it like" and because the answers to those interviews create an emotional response in viewers, we remain glued to the tube for hours on end. The longer we are hooked on the emotional impact of the moment, the less likely we are to look for root causes. Indeed "emotivism" itself prevents us from making moral judgments.
Emotivism is the doctrine “that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.” (h/t Crisis Magazine).
Sure, virtually everyone will conclude that what was done in Las Vegas was "WRONG", but there are several paths people take to get there.
The secular humanist might reason that the random taking of innocent life creates uncertainty, removes productive citizens from us, and thus weakens society. He would then seek to find a legislative solution.
The agnostic might reason that humans evolved with a violent nature in order to survive. He would then shrug his shoulders and tell us to arm ourselves and live with it.
The scientist might argue that such violence is due to mental illness and look to Medicine to work for a cure.
The mainstream media has given voice to all of those worldviews.
As a Christian, I believe that we are all sinful creatures and that our murderous nature has been present since the fall of man. We are slaves to Sin, and we will remain in bondage until we surrender to Jesus. How much of the violence men suffer upon their fellow man can be traced to a rejection of Jesus?
Yes, we hear voices in the media asking us to pray in a generic sense, i.e. pray for the wounded, pray for the families, but the media is afraid to state who we are to pray to.
There is but one cure for us and that is Jesus, and that is whose name we must invoke in our prayers.
And the Gospel of Jesus is what we should be shouting at the top of the news if we hope to prevent future tragedies of this sort.
Most reporting in the earliest stages of an unfolding story is based on facts as they occur, the planes flying into the twin towers for instance. It is not long before reporters, like the rest of us, move from talking about "what happened" to asking "why did it happen?".
In the absence of answers to the question of "why", news reporters start asking witnesses or survivors "how they felt" or "what was it like" and because the answers to those interviews create an emotional response in viewers, we remain glued to the tube for hours on end. The longer we are hooked on the emotional impact of the moment, the less likely we are to look for root causes. Indeed "emotivism" itself prevents us from making moral judgments.
Emotivism is the doctrine “that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.” (h/t Crisis Magazine).
Sure, virtually everyone will conclude that what was done in Las Vegas was "WRONG", but there are several paths people take to get there.
The secular humanist might reason that the random taking of innocent life creates uncertainty, removes productive citizens from us, and thus weakens society. He would then seek to find a legislative solution.
The agnostic might reason that humans evolved with a violent nature in order to survive. He would then shrug his shoulders and tell us to arm ourselves and live with it.
The scientist might argue that such violence is due to mental illness and look to Medicine to work for a cure.
The mainstream media has given voice to all of those worldviews.
As a Christian, I believe that we are all sinful creatures and that our murderous nature has been present since the fall of man. We are slaves to Sin, and we will remain in bondage until we surrender to Jesus. How much of the violence men suffer upon their fellow man can be traced to a rejection of Jesus?
Yes, we hear voices in the media asking us to pray in a generic sense, i.e. pray for the wounded, pray for the families, but the media is afraid to state who we are to pray to.
There is but one cure for us and that is Jesus, and that is whose name we must invoke in our prayers.
And the Gospel of Jesus is what we should be shouting at the top of the news if we hope to prevent future tragedies of this sort.
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It's impossible to tell yet if the Las Vegas shooter was motivated by some twisted ideology or was simply a sociopath. What we can be sure of is that this act was evil. The more we preach the love of God through Jesus Christ, and model it in our lives, the more likely it is that we can reduce the numbers of such outbreaks.
ReplyDeleteSadly, it will be impossible to prevent all expressions of evil, short of the Lord's return. Come, Lord Jesus!
Wonderful article to meditate on.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
ReplyDelete