Let me begin by saying, the answer is simple. Violence begats violence. America is the most violent nation on earth. We are blood thirsty and we are entertained by it. We love revenge, love to inflict injury on those we think harmed us.
Apparently someone harmed this male that committed this autrocity so he did what He has been taught by American politics, American churches, American policy, and American television and entertainment. He sought to avenge himself. To strike back at others before they might get him. To go after those that had caused him harm whether "real or imagined". It's the American way, for goodness sake. We watched after 911, our own "Christian President" go for vengeance. He still is.
Every year in America we slaughter millions of unborn babies. Where are the news commentators while this autrocity and senseless murder goes on? Every evening, you can catch World Wrestling, the Tough Man contest, and great films of violence, full of bloodshed, and murder. If that isn't enough entertainment for you, the delight of watching war and weapons documentaries are every where you turn your TV channel to.
We have the satisfaction of watching, movies about the death penalty being used on the "bad guys" or even the evening news. Better yet, if you are young, there are a thousand choices of new video and PC games you can play. Drag out your XBox or other video game player and you can go into a world of hurt.
Better yet, you can wait until the news comes on and catch some real live violence going on in Iraq. Nothing like seeing men, women and children who aren't your blood kin being killed by the dozens, blood stains on the roadway, blood on the wall. What the heck, it isn't your blood afterall.
Now, I don't want to make the focus as television as the source of all our problems. "Televison is only the reflection of the heart of the society that watches it".
At least that's how I see it. No, let's go to the deeper issue, the heart of a country that claims 80% of it is Christian.
Now, you may have heard all that before, but the fact is God said, the following in the very beginning of time. Let's take a look at a command of God's that he made to Noah, the man of righteousness. This is one of God's earliest commandments to Noah, this is right after "He"- Yahweh had destroyed probably millions, of people with drowning them. He alone maintains justice, he alone is just, to decide who shall live and who shall die. He reminds Noah of this with this short but very powerful command.
Genesis 9:6
Whoever shed's man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God he made man.
Then Our Lord and Savour wrapped the same package up when as the very "revealed Yahweh come to be manifest, in the flesh as Yeshua (Jesus), declares to Peter the exact same thing, in paraphrase to the verse above.
It happened on the night that we as fallen individuals would have acted as Peter did, and drawn our sword to fight off "the evil terrorist", the Pharisees, Judas and the other Temple leaders that were coming to take our King away from us. We would have drawn our sword and cried loudly "Revenge" or better yet, as in the movie with Mel Gibson about the struggle for freedom in Scotland, we would yell "Freedom" and slaughtered everyone in sight that we percieved to be our enemy, allowing the blood to splatter on our faces as they did. Yet, in the midst of the opportunity to defend their King and as far as that goes, the King to defend himself, Yeshua (Jesus), reminds Peter of these very words spoken by Yahweh thousands of years before.
Matthew 26:52
Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into it's place; for all who take up the sword shall perish by the sword."
How we have perverted the Gospel with our misunderstanding of the Old Testament and the actions Yahweh took to set apart for himself a people after His own heart. How He allowed them, as an instrument of His righteousness, to use the sword only for the Theocracy of the nation of Israel at that time. God is no longer in the nation business, or the physical kingdom business. He is in the Kingdom of God business, building a spiritual Kingdom. There has been a covental change. God can do as He pleases, you and I cannot!
It was not the heart of the Father to kill and maim and murder others, but there was no other way to punish the wicked, to keep His people from joining into the pagan nations around them and their taking on the pagan nations, sin and idolatry.
He, being the only "just" being there is in all the universe "could and can" make that decision to destroy physically the wicked. He has never, given that over to the hand of men. He allows governments to be formed, he doesn't put a stamp of approval on one or the other. He allows men to be unjust to men, for He is working out His plan. How could one ever use Romans 13 in the way American church goers do for American, they would have to justify Hitler, Stalin or any of their regimes to say, God established them and to go against them is sin.
All government has a wicked heart and desires nothing more than to power over others. For the Word of God tells us that these kingdoms belong to the enemy, Satan.
Thus, we see, our own slowly dissolving into totalitarianism as well. Men always desire to be in power over other men. This has been church history as well.
Now some may argue, that Romans 13 states differently, and in one way it is true he allows men to establish governments, and laws, and some to carry the sword, but it has never been His desire or His way for men. For He would be contradicting His own statement in Genesis and in Matthew.
Yahweh knows the heart of men, and He knows in our fallen state, men will always seek power over others.
Yet, as Christians we have been called to "power under" men. Just as our Lord did, when He could have called ten thousand angels, when He could have armed His disciples and used His powers to destroy Rome and Israel right then and there. He knew what was going to happen to Israel for their rejection of Him, and that was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
He used a wicked nation to destroy another wicked nation - Israel. He had warned them and told them "for the blood of all the prophets and the saints were upon their heads"
Now, we ask, what can we do, to avoid future situations like the new "Columbine" killing at Virginia Tech? Well, my answer is this, we can't stop the world with their wars and hatred, with their thirst for blood, for their love of the sword. We can't even imagine that we can, for Jesus said, "there will be wars and rumors of wars", until He returns.
He also qualified what we as individual Christians are to do, and that is not to be a partaker of this world's ways of hatred, war, blood thirst, and violence. "Take no revenge, love your enemy"!
He set a people apart for himself, these are His people who have beaten their swords into plowshares. Who can lie down with a lion as a lamb, who can turn the other cheek, who can love their enemy, who don't answer insult with insult, injury with injury, just as our Lord did not in every aspect of His life.
We can do all we can to try to justify our love for blood shed, but the Lord has already spoken and when we disregard His word, and live like the world, act like the world, then we "who claim to be Christian" will suffer the consequences like the world - we will die by the sword.
It doesn't take a degree in psychology or security to understand the very simple, but powerful statement, that Jesus made on that evening. When if ever, there could have or should have been looking at things in the eyes of men, there been a breakout of violence and bloodshed, this would have been the time to do it. Yet, Jesus told Peter; "those who live by the sword will die by the sword".
What are you teaching your children at home, in your attitude's and opinion of these things? Do you love the world, it's VIOLENCE? Do you get all excited to see someone get blownup in a movie, killed by a gun, stabbed by a knife. No matter what that person is, or who he is, or what your opinion may be of him or her- it still comes down to this "they are created in God's image"- and if you shed THEIR blood, God will require that YOUR blood be shed too.
How we like to spout off the Ten Commandments to others, that is the "9" commandments, for one of the ten says this:
Exodus 20:13
You shall not murder.
By the way, there are 613 commandments, can you name them? Do you keep them?
We quickly judge others, when our own hearts are not right with the Lord.
All I can say, until real Christians start coming out of the woodwork (the world's molding) and take a stand like the once forgotten AnaBaptist and their now day brethern against being a part of the world and it's kingdoms, the Mennonites, the German Brethern and the Amish, we will see a lot more of the Virginia Techs type of violence, and I can promise with the direction the so called organized church is going now, with their love for violence, and war and all the gory murdering aspects of thinking they are going to build a "City of God" - ie; America, get out the easy chairs, and turn on your TV's because the bloodshed entertainment is just getting started.
How often I have heard the warmongers like to take Romans 13 out of context to justify their lust for hate and bloodshed, and yet they never read or qoute from the verse previous to Romans 13:1-7
What about Romans 12: 1-2 or Romans 12:17-21 or the ending of their favorite out of context scripture, verse 8 in Romans 13.
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
My answer as to why the senseless violence in America today is this- GOD SAID!
...but men say differently.
Jesus said it then and he says it now to the body of Christ -
"You nullify the commandments of God for the traditions of men! "
Thus, what we teach our children - Violence.
Dr. J.
No comments:
Post a Comment