San Bernadino. Paris. The Middle East. Look in the rear-view and we see Sandy Hook, Columbine at the previous intersection, and a highway behind us of people killing people. At every occurrence the world seems shocked and horrified, as if such things are surprising. But if we had been paying attention, this is exactly what we should expect. It makes perfect sense.
“… and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” – James 1:15
I’m going to pause for a moment so that I’m not mistaken for someone who has never experienced loss and therefore just blames abstract notions. I have friends who are dead – friends who are dead because someone decided to kill them.
But we know that these things should not be. Something inside us screams each time this happens: THIS SHOULD NOT BE. And yet it is, over and over and over. We’re right though, this should not be. But why should things be different, and more importantly, where did we go so very wrong?
There was a time, at the beginning, when we instead of going wrong we went right.
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them…
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” – Genesis 1:27, 31
Humanity was made to be in a perfect relationship of love with the One who made us and with one another. We’ve lost a sense of the first part, but most of us living on this world still have a firm idea on the second. We know we should have peace. We were made for it. And we all have the deepest longings to return to it. That is what it is that cries out within us when tragedy strikes. It is a remnant of the image that God has put in each of us. This is the only way to explain our outrage and horror at something that seems a part of daily life in a world without universal morality.
God has already told us where we went wrong.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Romans 5:12
Christianity has always had the answer as to why …
