School shootings
What’s The Cause? What’s The Solution?…seems like the appropriate questions to ask in light of the seventeenth school shooting in America this year, and it’s only early March. Seventeen or more families each have their own opinions down in Florida. That is, after they get through grieving and dealing with why, and why my child. Tragic consequences at a peaceful school in south Florida at the end of this week has everyone concerned and asking many good questions. Of course, finger pointing won’t solve it.
Politicians are divided, as is our country, on the cause and solution. Is it truly a gun control problem? Yes, and no! Washington attempts to resolve our issues for us. It’s like we have stopped thinking for ourselves. Our government has gotten control of our education, health and welfare. I ask—are you happy with the results? We know the expression—guns don’t kill, people do. I’d go further; autos don’t kill, people driving them do; drugs don’t kill, the people taking them do. Finally, do unborn babies cause their deaths; no, grown people do, and legislators are facilitating these murders.
People are going to get the guns, knives or explosives one way or the other to act out their anger or grievance. Legislators can’t keep a guy from driving drunk, or fast, or simply drive into a crowd. And how do you control people’s desire to escape from their sorrows and emptiness through drugs. And lest we forget, the right of the woman to make her own choice; even agencies are there to help her with that choice to abort.
A victim
This latest shooter is a victim. Yes, I said a victim! When you read more and more of his circumstances, he really did not have a chance to not act on his pain. No stable family; for sure no father influence, lost his stepmother recently, lost his girlfriend also. Expelled from school and there is so much more we don’t yet know. And we know that teenagers really don’t grasp consequences to most of their actions. See, none of this can be legislated. The signs were there, and some people actually notified the FBI, who at this moment is being blamed for botching the information they had received.
This is a heart issue. And the solution is Jesus; yes Jesus. Over the past several decades our nation has drifted away from the Lord who founded this nation. No prayer, no discipline, no Bible studies in our public schools. Politicians have seen to that. And the rising number of absentee fathers is staggering. Welfare has certainly influenced that rise. We have lost our moral compass because we have individually, and even as a church, placed our trust in earthly, worldly wisdom, or at least closed our eyes and acted as if nothing bad will happen. And it contains no heart changing power.
There are countless kids in most of our schools across America suffering from the same emptiness, lack of moral compass, and hurt as the shooter in Florida. Many are seeking to be recognized, loved, disciplined and encouraged. But seemingly, no one is there for them. No one is at home for them! So, what should we expect?
Be an influencer for Christ
Dads, and moms, start thinking soberly. Look into your children’s eyes, what are you seeing? What about their friends—how are they influencing your children? Do you even know their friends? Are you teaching and modeling Godly truth? Are you listening to them, hearing their stories, feeling their pain?
This is first and foremost a ‘home cause, and the home where Jesus is Lord is the solution’. It’s not in the schools, on social media, and for sure not in Washington. It begins right where you live. And it starts with YOU! Many of you are praying for a ‘revival of repentance’ in our nation. That first starts in our own hearts, then in our children’s, and God has the power and desire to spread it from there.
Can you even imagine the influence that you can have on your children, who in turn will have an influence on their friends in their school? You don’t have to influence the world, just your children. They just might reach out and impact a lonely, desperate boy like Nikolas Cruz. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Let’s put God back in school through our children and grandchildren. That truly is the only solution.
Psalm 78.1-8 is the pattern for this revival to happen, beginning with faithful dads and moms. “We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done… which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep his commandments” (selected vss. from Psa. 78 ESV). In and through him, you can make a significant difference. Do you agree?
