Why the school shootings?

I don’t know, beyond a broad answer that likely would satisfy few. I do know there are those who want to lay the blame at the feet of the 2nd amendment. It is not the time to defend the 2nd amendment, nor is it the time to call to repeal it. Emotions, understandably, run high. There are others who lay the blame at various policy issues. That is, some say we could stop these events by arming teachers, putting police in every school, limiting access to schools. There are those who lay the blame on ideology. Is it really a great surprise that people who are daily told they emerged from the slime and will return to the nothing at death find it easy to gun down other cosmic accidents?

I don’t believe, however, that a perfect grasp of our God given right to protect ourselves and others, nor a perfect strategy for keeping gunmen out of schools, or disinclined to go there nor even sound biblical teaching on the objective evil of killing His image bearers will solve the problem. The problem runs too deep for such solutions.

While it seems mass shootings are becoming nearly a daily occurrence, they are not. That said, we do live in a country wherein every day roughly 2000 babies are murdered not by crazed gunmen, but by law-abiding citizens, not by socially awkward teenagers but by their very own parents. Every day, 2000 babies. The daily murder of the unborn trumps and trounces “what-about-ism.” Every other tragedy, every other evil pales in comparison.

There is only one solution. That solution is not difficult to understand. There is not in the least, given the desire to do so, anything difficult about it. The solution is repentance. Wholesale, national, crying out to the living God for His mercy in Christ Jesus repentance. Every other solution looks to our own wicked hearts, to the wicked, godless state. Every other solution misunderstands the nature of the problem- our fallen natures.

When God in His grace sent first hardship and then prophets to call His people to repentance, the message was never “Try harder.” Nor was it, “Change this policy.” Nor was it, “Adopt this ideology.” It always “Repent.” And as long as men sin, the message will never change. A pandemic with a million dead. School shootings becoming as common as thunderstorms. Empty shelves and shrinking money. The blood of two thousand babies flooding our streets daily. And the one thing these all call us to do is the one thing we won’t consider.

We don’t, of course, repent simply to make it stop. We repent because we are the problem. Not policy, not ideology, us. We are not homo sapien, man the wise but homo homicide, man the man killer. Our only hope is the Man who laid down His life for us. Repent. Believe the gospel. And suffer the children to come unto Him.