Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-22-15

Here we are again. TV news filled with glimpses of carnage and videos of crying mothers and friends. The illogical scenarios, the horror, of multiple murders at innocent settings. The perpetrator, a “loner” – oh, those loners.

Here we are again. The instant prescriptions. The dictators of democracy telling us what is wrong, what must change. The president of the United States, as before, while bodies virtually are still bleeding, lecturing us that the problem is not so much hate nor racism – which would open the door to a special perspective – but gun laws.

Here we are again. We have another national trauma before us. News magazines and cable news will get their bumps, activists will raise dust, and nothing will change. Laws will not change, but neither will attitudes. And this is because human nature will not change… not much. It can change, but the history of humankind teaches that people must desire their natures to change, and that seldom happens. People have to want it, and that box is seldom checked on the list of humanity’s progress.

“Guns don’t kill people,” folks used to say; “people kill people.” Technically, it’s those shiny little bullets. But I am not trying to be a wise guy or insensitive: the clear view is that haters will hate, and sometimes kill, with any means at their disposal. If guns are available, guns are used. Jim Jones passed out poison Kool-Aid. ISIS uses scimitars: guns are less efficient for that sport of theirs, and the objects of their hatred “need” to die by hook or crook. Or sword.

If the United States has, arguably, the greatest freedoms in the community of nations, then it stands to reason – that is, it no longer is a paradox in contemporary America – that the greatest abuses of freedom will take place in the United States. Unbridled liberty carries the seed of unchecked license.

A culture that kills its babies – with so many people, the Establishment, courts, and government inventing all reasonable cases for infanticide – can be expected to likewise be a culture of death, including death by guns, guns, guns. If the world lasts long enough, future anthropologists and archaeologists will study our “action movies,” cop shows, violent video games, toy weapons… and wonder how the same culture could also so loudly have demanded gun control.

You know: how the directors and producers and actors from Hollywood, who finance the gun-confiscation campaigns, became millionaires from the blood-and-gore crime movies and kill-or-be-killed computer games. But the enemies of our peace and security are not Pop-Culture moguls, nor hateful individuals with dark agendas (all of them, it seems, from broken homes and histories of behavior-modification drugs). But “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Do I argue that we must resign ourselves, forever, to these nightmare scenarios? No, I argue that we should not be surprised; and that we need to look to the proper answers – not counterfeit remedies.

When the president and others characterize these maniacs, we are told that they are products of something particularly American. Hmm. The recent history of other “advanced” nations reminds us of the murder of Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme on a city sidewalk; of Norway’s Anders Breivik, who killed 69 people with his guns and wounded 110 others; of a 2002 school shooting in Erfurt, Germany (18 killed) and in Winnenden, Germany in 2009 (15 shot and killed). And somehow the massacres committed by Muslims do not get classified by liberals as gun-related. But the victims are just as dead. The recent list of mass shootings in schools and malls in places not called the USA goes on: Dunblane, Scotland; Veghel, Holland; Tuusula, Finland; Toulouse, France; Taber, Alberta; Freising, Germany; Montreal; Kauhajoki, Finland; Paris…

So the problem is not, automatically, our society, except as lack of normative restraints leads to lack of… behavioral restraints. Jesus said, “The poor ye will always have with thee,” and I don’t think it is blasphemous to suggest that a valid paraphrase would be “Hate ye will always have with thee”; and that in each case we would do well to remember the rest of Jesus’s words: “But ye will not always have Me” (Matt 26:11).

In other words, no Jesus, no peace.

While I am paraphrasing, we can apply the principle that “anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28) – that when one looks at fellow human beings with evil hatred in his heart, he in God’s eyes commits murder.

It is not the gun in the hand but the evil in the heart that provides the perspective we need to employ against these maelstroms in our midst. Dr Alveda King, to whom I turned for help when writing my book “The Secret Revealed,” said this week that neither guns nor race was the main issue in the Charleston shooting: it was hate. And this is a woman who is the niece of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., who had preached at this very church, and who was himself gunned down by a hater, and whose father was also shot and killed in a church.

Alveda King said hate is the core issue. Although – of course – she is sensitive to racial injustice, her own ministry is devoted to the hate crime of millions upon millions of abortions performed in America. She knows hatred. And she knows the antidote.

It is very telling, speaking of hate, that the Establishment is ready to point to guns and racial prejudice after this murder spree. We are told that the monster Roof reviled the influence of blacks in America. And he did. But it did not stop there, as the Establishment would have us believe. Isn’t it typical, those who would redistribute our money also want to program every individual’s perceptions. Yes, he specified hatred for “what blacks were doing to the country.” But if that were the whole story, this stereotypical white redneck would more likely have sought out a hip-hop club or a corner where black gangs hung out. We learn that he had several close black friends. Confused, aimless, random?

No. He went to a church. During a Bible study. Where model citizens were praying, and studying the Word of God. On virtual holy ground, the oldest black church in the south, a longtime symbol of faith and spirituality. “Mother Emanuel” church. This twisted kid hated Christians. After toying with the idea of shooting up a college, he went to church.

He hated Christians more than he hated black folks. In fact, he loved to hate. Increasingly across the world the hatred of Christians is turning from prejudice to murder. Guns, swords, imprisonment, beheadings, torture, forced repatriation, take your pick. The haters do.

Love is the answer that is otherwise missing. “Love has no fear, because perfect love casts out all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced His perfect love” (1 John 4:18). That love is Jesus Christ, in Whom there is peace and eternal security. “God is love.” He expressed His love for us in His Son. As Frederick M Lehman wrote,

The love of God is greater far, Than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star, And reaches to the lowest hell. A guilty soul bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win; His erring child He reconciled, And pardoned from his sin.

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure – The saints’ and angels’ song.

The effect of Christian love was evident this week at the killer’s bail hearing. In court, surviving relatives confronted him via video camera. One by one, they confessed their hurt… forgave him… and prayed he would come to know Christ and seek forgiveness. Love triumphed over evil. Outside, there were no riots or incitements by outsiders, only prayer vigils, a memorial service, and hymn-sings. Miracle of miracles, those who grieved became the healers. No demonstrations in Charleston… except demonstrations of love.

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Lehman’s words are from the favorite old hymn. Another church song of the same title was written by Vep Ellis years later – just as powerful and convincing:

Click: The Love of God