The Truth of Sin and Hope

Columbine High School (Columbine, CO) 

Red Lake High School (Red Lake, MN) 

West Nickel Mines Amish School (Nickel Mines, PA) 

Sandy Hook Elementary (Newtown, CT) 

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, FL) 

Santa Fe High School (Santa Fe, TX)  

Robb Elementary School (Uvalde, TX) 

This somber list records the deadliest school shootings in the United States. It is horrendous. And worse, this list does not even include university shootings or innumerable other gun violence events in which injuries occurred but fewer or no fatalities. 

Killing is always gut-wrenching; the killing of innocent children even more so.  

Uvalde strikes us like Sandy Hook or West Nickel Mines. Children 6–10 years old. Who could do this? Who can understand this?  

In SAT-7’s ministry focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), we hear of similar tragedies nearly every week. 

• In Syria, thousands of children have paid a terrible price – killing, maiming, recruitment to radicalism, abuse, abduction, hunger – in the now 11 years of a brutal war. 
• In Yemen, more than 10,000 children have died, and thousands of others have experienced endless suffering in the past seven years of war. 
• Child victims regularly become collateral damage, dying and suffering in armed conflict in Iraq, Libya, Palestine, and Afghanistan. 
• “There are over 61 million children living in countries affected by war in MENA out of a total child population of nearly 166 million. This is to say that over a third of children in the MENA are affected by ongoing conflicts and violence. One in every three children. In this region, living in war is becoming the ‘new normal’ for millions of children. Adolescents and youth comprise a significant proportion of the population in humanitarian contexts. This age group is the most exposed to protection risks such as child marriage, recruitment, and child labor.”

This illustrative snapshot of violence against children in the Middle East and North Africa is not meant to trivialize what just happened in Uvalde. The senseless killing of children is wrong and evil no matter where it takes place.  

When it happens, we wonder how our Christian faith speaks to these kinds of events? What understanding does it provide?  

In part, I believe we are living in the last days. I believe that as Jesus tarries His coming, we will witness an ever-greater impact of sin in this fallen world. In the last days, there will be according to Rom 1, 2 Tim 3, 2 Peter 3, and Jude 1:  

• People who suppress the truth in their wickedness
• Terrible times  
• Brutality  
• Evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived  
• Scoffers who will follow their ungodly desires  
• Every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice  
• People who invent ways of doing evil  
• People who are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless  
• False teachers who introduce destructive heresies 

Things are indeed waxing worse and worse, and mass shootings are now a part of our lived experience.  

Life is cheap in these last days in multiple and various ways, e.g., abortion, death-dealing wars, including what’s happening with Russia and the Ukraine, random killings, systematic criminal killings like those occurring every weekend in Chicago, and school shootings. 

What makes a young man want to kill children? Is he mentally ill, as the media often claims? Perhaps he is. I’m not negating the potential of some psychological programs to help troubled young men, if they can be identified and if they will seek help.  

But perhaps more often, he is not mentally ill. The issue at the bottom is not psychological or social but moral. He is simply given over to sin. The root of this sin could be his own heart, the individuals around him, or a declining, morally decrepit American culture. Or it is all the above.  

Whatever the source, sin works out as an uncontrollable rage making the young man not only want to die (mass shooters are often suicidal) but take as many people with him as he can when he goes. Rage is an evil emotion-then-behavior rooted in twisted feelings of rejection, inadequacy, loneliness, and alienation. And there is also the hopelessness that leads to believing the lie that the only way his life can have meaning is to end it by seeking revenge upon others in some sensational fashion. 

This kind of evil can develop in a lone gunman or radical terrorists. It is Satan’s fake triumph, conquering the soul of a person created in the image of God who comes to believe God is not there or does not care, and all that’s left is nihilism.  

So, the primary challenge in the U.S. today is not that different from the primary challenge in the Middle East and North Africa. Though “religious” with functioning dominant religions, our different cultures are disconnected from profound spiritual moorings. We’ve rejected moral parameters in the mistaken belief our fate is in our hands, or rather, in our feelings. We think we are social creatures of our own making. We control our destiny. 

Except this doesn’t work. Ironically, the disillusioned young gunman discovers this create-yourself approach to life is found wanting when what he sees around him and within him offers no hope.   

We live in a fallen world where sin is real, and the Devil is the Prince of the power of the air. Evil events will happen. This is not fatalism. It is realism. 

We do not know why God allows tragic events like Uvalde or ongoing trauma in the Middle East. We do know that He knows why and is engaged day by day. That, too, is realism, the truth.  

That is where our Christian beliefs and our testimony should speak to the moment. We know the God of the Bible is present, loves, and provides a path to healing and hope. 

So, our response to heinous events in which innocent children are gunned down, in the U.S. or the Middle East and North Africa, should be multi-layered:  

• Weep with those who weep. Mourn with those who mourn. Pray for the families involved. That means more than bland comments like, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.”   
• We don’t blame God, and we help others understand that, in the face of evil, our God is still sovereign, holy, and just. We must speak and live out this truth in love.  
• “Let us not become weary in doing good” (Gal 6:9). We can work socially, politically, or via the church toward ways to identify and help troubled youth and share the Gospel in the MENA, aiming to prevent more shootings.   
• We do not live in fear but trust the Lord with our safety. “The Lord will keep you from all harm – He will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore” (Ps 121:7-8). 

The best remedy for hopelessness is hope. Christians of all people should understand this.  

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). 

Dr. Rex Rogers
President, SAT-7 USA