Last week I wrote a letter to the editor. It started out with a spoof about how knives are dangerous weapons and should be removed from the general population. I lined out a plan of action about how serial numbers could be put on table knives to track them and a bunch of other silly ideas.
Why did I write it? Because of the gun controversy, and because in my town, stabbings seem to have become as frequent as shootings. Then I asked the question: why don’t we deal with the issues of the heart of man? If we did, then objects, as weapons, would no longer be issues.
I was shocked by the online backlash. Only one post out of several showed that the writer got the point. Omigosh! Some called me nasty names and told me what I could do. One wanted to know what I was hiding. Several thought I was just plain stupid. Knives aren’t an issue, guns are!
Well, really, ANY object used as a weapon (baseball bats, hockey sticks, cars?) can hurt, maim, or kill someone. How about this: does your right to safety supercede my right to swing my fist?
There is evil intent in all of us at some points of our lives. We live in a fallen world and it is ruled by an evil leader. His intent is to steal, kill and destroy. He whispers in our ears and sometimes we take those whispers to our hearts and begin to devise plans and situations that harm us and others.
Without a moral underpinning—a common standard to live by—then there is nothing on which to base our ideas or behaviors. If the standard is thrown out, then all we have are opinions. And those are as many and varied as the individuals who express them. How can a people move forward (or any direction at all) in such a predicament?
We stopped teaching a common morality a generation ago. Now we are facing the consequences of that, and yet we don’t seem to recognize the underlying issues of our time. It’s not about weapons, it’s about our abandonment of the Bible and the guidelines it gave us. These are the parameters that have kept us a free society for 200 years. They weren’t rules to throw off so we could be free: we ARE free because we have policies and regulations that we all agree to follow together.
Without the standard, then we fall into anarchy.
I am grieved these days for what’s happening in my nation. But I do know there is hope. Jesus still loves us. It’s still true that He gave His life to cover ours and kill our sin. He rose from the dead to give us freedom for eternity with Him. The all-sufficient God who made the universe needs no one, yet He longs for us to want Him. He would do about anything—if we would just turn to Him and let Him cleanse our hearts and set our feet on a path to everlasting life.
Oh, wait—He already did just about anything! It’s our move …
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” Matthew 23:37—39.
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