Last year, multiple schools across the United States have been impacted by shootings that have resulted in the deaths of both students and faculty members.
The latest school shooting, that occurred at the Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, which was also Ash Wednesday, and committed by a troubled teenager armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle — eerily the perfect ingredients for a massacre — was, according to gun control group Everytown USA, the 17th incident of gunfire in schools this year, and the sixth school shooting resulting in injuries, in this case, several injuries and the death of 17 other people between ages 14 – 49 years old.
No remorse was seen from the suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who, after the shooting, walked to a store, bought a drink at a fast food restaurant, and stopped by another fast food restaurant after discarding the rifle, a vest he wore, and the magazines of ammunition in a stairwell, and blended in with the fleeing students to get away.
The latest school shooting, or massacre, in Parkland, Florida, according to US authorities, marked the 25th fatal shooting at a US elementary, middle or high school since — and including — Columbine in 1999.
The Florida massacre of Valentine’s Day was also the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, in 2012 that claimed the lives of 20 children, between the ages of six and seven years old, and six adults.
I’m no preacher. But a message sent to me recently by my friend and compadre, veteran journalist Ding Cervantes, recently got me thinking why these un-Godly acts: school shootings; rape; murder; and other heinous activities, are being committed by today’s youth seemingly without any remorse.
Evangelist Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, was interviewed on a show several years back and had talked about these incident as well as the devastating September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
She was asked by the host “how God could let something like this happen?” referring to the attacks on September 11.
Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.
She said: “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are. But for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”
“In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school… the Bible says ‘thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ And we said OK. Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said OK.”
“Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience; why they don’t know right from wrong; and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing?
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.
Do your part and help spread the word. Otherwise, don’t complain about the dreadful state the world is in.
God bless us all.