Four years ago our nation experienced an unspeakable act of evil. Adam Lanza, then 20 years old, murdered 20 innocent children between 6 and 7 years of age and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
This massacre touched the consciences of many producing deep grief and even deeper anger as the scope of this evil act was unfolded before our eyes and ears on radio, TV, and the Internet.
I wrote an article at that time in an attempt to explain why this act of terrorism took place and what we needed to do as individuals and as a nation to overcome this evil. But many of us shut our eyes and ears to the only solution capable of doing so. As a result we have endured several more similar acts of demonic terrorism against the innocent.
Therefore, I felt it worth sharing again the article I wrote 4 years ago in the hope the eyes and ears of those who chose not to open them to the truth then will do so now.
Evil has been a part of our world ever since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. We are surrounded by it constantly, but no longer recognize it. Why? Because we willfully ingest evil with our eyes and have thus become blind to holiness; we willfully ingest evil with our ears and have thus become deaf to the truth. We know longer hunger for holiness, but lies. And Satan is just as eager to feed us the lies our fallen, sinful natures crave. Yet it is in believing lies that evil takes deep root within the spirit of individuals and nations, flourishing and growing to a point where it yields a depth of evil that even our comatose consciences – both individually and collectively – respond to it with shock and bewilderment.
Such is what has happened in Newtown, Connecticut. The evil that was unleashed at Sandy Hook School was the harvest of a society and government that has actively labored for the removal of God from its culture. But there is another source even more guilty of allowing evil to grow to such monstrous proportions – religious leaders and teachers who have rejected the truth of the Bible and committed apostasy and are now teaching lies to congregations that “will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV).
For a few days people will flock to places of worship seeking comfort and answers to the questions that come to the surface when evil of such a degree as that manifested at Sandy Hook stuns us out of our spiritual slumber. We experienced this after 9/11, but we also experienced a quick return to that slumber as the evil that horrified us dissipated to a level our spirits have grown used to living with.
So please understand this, unless the Church takes a stand and begins to speak the truth from the pulpit – continually and consistently – regardless of whether it’s received with thanksgiving or rejected as the ranting’s of mad men, our nation will once again return to its spiritual slumber until another act of evil more horrific than Sandy Hook jars us awake.
There is an answer to this madness. It is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (ESV). The answer is simple, but it will take courage to speak it and even more courage to live it.