So many things are going through my head today as I digest
the news following Wednesday’s shooting in San Bernardino. Having lived there
for seven years in my first ministry and during seminary, and it being Kathy’s
hometown, you cannot hear about this tragedy without thinking about the past as
well as the present. Thankfully, we’ve had no word of any harm coming to
friends and family there. But fourteen families are grieving today, and the
network of sorrow certainly extends throughout that community.
I’m saddened that before the situation was even resolved
with the shooters dead or captured, some saw fit to moralize on the evil of gun
violence in our society and the need for more gun control. I don’t disagree,
and I’m not opposed to such measures if they are constitutional and can be
shown to be able to accomplish real protections for society. However, every gun
used in this case (as in every shooting rampage of late) turns out to have been
purchased legally, with background checks, in California—which has some of the
strictest gun control laws in the country. And the shooters here (a married
couple) also had pipe bombs in their arsenal (illegal in any situation);
thankfully, the bomb deployed on a remote controlled toy car failed to
detonate. They also wore assault gear, had Go Pro body cameras to record the
carnage.
As details have emerged, this incident looks like an
intentional plan to inflict mass casualties, record it in order to scare
others, and continue until dead. In short, this was a terrorist operation. It
may not have been an ISIS or al Qaeda operation. The husband was a U.S. citizen
who flew to Saudi Arabia to marry his wife and brought her back. His family
says he was a religious Muslim, and it would seem they created their own
personal arsenal to create their own personal jihad. This was not simply “workplace
violence”—you don’t prebuild pipe bombs so you can react if someone insults you
at an office party, and then wear a Go Pro while you shoot up a room at random.
No, this would appear to be what many have feared—a radicalized, independent “cell”
of Muslim radicals. I would probably feel better if we found that they were in
league with a known terrorist group and not just homegrown, independent terrorists.
Another development that caught me off guard was a strong
pushback against politicians and others who urged that people’s thoughts and
prayers should be with those in San Bernardino during the ongoing incident. The
New York Daily News highlighted
tweets from four Republican candidates with the headline, “God Is Not Fixing
This” and saying that these politicians were “cowards” for not doing something
about gun control, and hiding behind “thoughts and prayers.” The Atlantic ran a similar story and talked
about this as “prayer shaming”—I didn’t even know that was a “thing.” But it
is, and it grows out of thinking that those who would call for prayer must be
pro-gun rights and conservative. Further, it shows a commitment to the idea
that praying is really doing nothing, and that God isn’t fixing this, but
politicians and elected officials could.
Such thinking is profoundly wrong on many levels. Not all
who pray are against gun control. When a crisis is ongoing, prayer is a proper
response for those who believe in God. A person in the building contacted her
father and her request was “Pray for us.” She was not arguing against gun
control, she was fearful for her life and asked for the only help that she
could seek—God’s. Can people (including politicians) use prayer as a platitude?
Certainly they can. But it is no more platitudinous than decrying gun violence
and calling for gun control before we even know what is going on.
This thinking also takes God out of the equation as not “fixing”
this. Such an arrogant attitude springs either from disbelief in God or a purposeful
disregard of such concepts as God’s sovereignty, moral responsibility, human
freedom, and the existence and all-encompassing power of sin in a fallen world.
Evil people will do evil because that is their nature, and it is the restraining
grace of God that keeps all of us from being the monsters that we could easily
be. Yet we cannot escape the issue of moral responsibility because in this case
and all others like it, we always ask, “Why did they do this?” We want to
understand what is, to us, incomprehensible. We want to say they were crazy or
on drugs or offended or religious zealots, but we want a reason that we can
judge.
Of course, those who believe in God will not be dissuaded
from believing that prayer is one of the most important actions to take in any
situation, regardless of what else we may be able to do. We also believe that
God rules in the affairs of men, and has already told us that when humanity
chooses not to acknowledge him, he gives them over to their own sinful desires
and imaginations, to passions that will undo them, and to debased minds and
thinking that will justify and celebrate doing what ought never to be done
(read Romans 1:18-32 carefully, and see what it says about the human condition
once the truth about God that is available to all is rejected). Our world
continues to experience the evil that people can and will do as they exercise
their choices out of their own motivations.
Finally, we do believe that God is fixing this world,
but in a way that will bring divine judgment upon all who fail to acknowledge
him and deliverance and blessing for all who receive his grace and forgiveness.
In fact, “…now he commands
all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in
righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given
assurance to all by raising him from the dead (Acts 17:30-31).”
Until
that “fixed” day, we repent, we worship, we pray, we bear witness, and as
representatives of the truth and compassion of Jesus, we do what we can to stem
the tide of evil in our society, whether systemic (such as racism) or
individual (such as a lack of daily food).
And we
wait in hope for that day.
