The horrors of the Sandy Hook shooting have haunted me for weeks, as I'm sure they've haunted most. We all want an explanation. How could someone do this? How could a person murder young children? This crime is so heinous and so tragic that an emotional response is beyond appropriate. Unfortunately, the response quickly turned from an emotional outpouring of sympathy to a political tug of war. Not less than 1 hour after the news of the shooting broke, people were posting comments about gun control. It's not the guns, people. I had the opportunity to hear a man from Israel speak on NPR a few days after the shooting. Israel has extremely strict gun laws. This man made the statement, "When people can't get guns and want to kill people, they build bombs." The people of Israel very unfortunately know this to be true.
A few days after the tragedy, some news outlet posted a picture of the shooters from various other tragedies alongside the picture of the CT shooter. (I refuse to use his name.) I noticed immediately they all held the same expression. Their eyes were eerily the same. A wildness. A demonic wildness. Yes, I firmly believe all of the young men who committed these crimes were demonically possessed. This is a very unpopular idea in our society. We want to place the blame on guns, movies, games, etc. The idea of demonic possession is very uncomfortable and forces us to realize that we cannot control everything. It also forces us to realize that the only way to combat this power is through the power of Jesus Christ and we all know how controversial Jesus Christ is. John 10:10 calls Satan a thief and that he comes to kill and destroy. We saw this on the 14th. The Bible clearly tells us children are very special to the Lord. He repeatedly calls children things like gifts, inheritance, precious ones, blessings. Matthew 8:5-6 is so clear. Jesus Christ himself tells us that whoever welcomes a little child in His name, also welcomes Him. He goes on to say that if anyone harms a little child, it is better for that person to be drowned in the depths of the sea than live. Jesus is very serious about treating children with compassion, love and the utmost care. Because Satan hates Jesus Christ, he hates any and everything that Jesus loves. Logically, Satan finds great joy is seeing children suffer and die. He also takes pleasure in seeing mothers and fathers emotionally and possibly spiritually destroyed from such violent loss.
This power that Satan holds over this world is nothing new. King Herod anyone? Because he holds this power, evil like this will not go away until the day of Christ's return. People who are possessed with this evil will find a way to kill. So what do we tell our children? In my estimation, it is naive and misleading to tell our children things like, "Don't worry, that won't happen to you. You live in a safe place." I'm willing to bet all of those parents in Newtown would have told their children the same thing prior to December 14th. The fact of the matter is, we are not guaranteed safety no matter how quaint or secure our town seems. Granted, it is not likely that this type of event will occur, but evil is everywhere and the likelihood that our children will be faced with some form of evil at some point is a guarantee. My children are very young. My 1 year old is clearly oblivious. I've kept my 5 year old from seeing the news, but I have brought up various topics with him that were previously kept quiet. We've talked about evil and why the Bible tells us we must flee from evil (1 Thess 5:22). We've talked about why there are certain things we must not watch, participate in or read. We've talked about why the Lord tells us to dwell on things that are pure, excellent and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). Counter-cultural? Absolutely. But let me ask this- is our present culture working? Not so much. When we open ourselves up to even just a small window of evil, we are opening ourselves up to some very dangerous things.
All hope is not lost, however. Consider the following from Johnathan Bowers:
"The cross demonstrates that God regards our affliction not as something strange to the palette, but as a cup he has drunk to the dregs. By giving up his own Son, God entered into our pain. He knows what it's like to suffer loss. But he also did more. By putting his Son to grief, God turned grief on its head. "But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). This brings us to the final point.
C. S. Lewis writes in The Great Divorce, "They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."
Lewis is not being novel here. He is simply restating what Christians have hoped in for centuries, the promise that gives all our suffering purpose: "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)."
