A friend recently asked me to watch a DVD called Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, produced by Frontline and PBS, and to offer any comments I might have. I watched it and was surprised, even after a decade, how troubling 9/11 remains to me. The victims are buried, but their ghosts still haunt us with the question, “Why?” As I was preparing my response, the unwelcome question struck again, this time in response to the massacre of Newtown, CT. In this picturesque New England village, twenty-eight innocent persons were executed, 20 of them kindergartners.

I stumbled onto this news on the TV during lunch. “Oh, dear God. No. Please no.” Something deep inside me lurched. My heart just sank deeper and deeper as the media released the unfolding and grizzly details of the massacre. Various experts were discussing how we should go about processing an event such as this. How did you process 9/11? How are you processing Sandy Hook?

I found myself working through grief with tears and prayers mostly. I simply do not know how else to respond to the hollow and desolate feelings. However, as I monitored the news, it dawned on me; the media was processing the story much differently. They were spoon-feeding their audience the politically correct answers as to why. In fact they were preaching! The blood was still drying as they posited their wisdom. I felt as though I had entered the Radio Sanctuary of the Secular. Below was their order of service:

Main Sermon: The Mass Slayings at Sandy Hook Elementary

Sub-sermon #1: The Lobbying Strength of the NRA and their ongoing mission to prevent the control of handguns and assault weapons (like the ones used at Sandy Hook).

Sub-sermon #2:  A Modern Day Heretic, a Pentecostal minister, is vocal, saying we have all been sold a bill of goods in regards to Hell. God is not a monster prepared to perpetually incinerate more people than the Nazis ever dreamed of killing.

Sub-sermon #3: Gay Latter Day Saints were struggling with the rejection they have experienced within their religion. They were evicted from an LDS facility where they thought they had finally found a safe place—a refuge from the intolerance of religion.

Click. I had to turn off self-proclaimed crazy smart radio. It was making me crazy. I was appalled, thinking, ”Is this slick propaganda all you have to offer us as the morgue is overflowing! Once again, goodbye, NPR. I will try and process my grief and confusion by way of today’s passage—Isaiah 30:15-21.

Here is some of the backstory. Isaiah is speaking to the rebellious children of Israel. He calls them false sons. They earned this label because they refused to listen to the instruction of the Lord. They had plans-a-plenty but they weren’t God’s. They had solutions-a-plenty but they weren’t God’s. They had made alliances with those things they believed would most likely save them. In this case it was Egypt. Israel wanted safety but they placed their confidence in a government to provide it instead of Yahweh.

Just yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a segment offered by Paul Harvey from 1965 titled “If I Were The Devil.” In that broadcast (which is well worth listening to) the devil says,And the old I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: ‘Our Father, which art in Washington.’”

Israel insisted their prophets reinforce the idea of dependency on government, “Speak to us pleasant words, prophecy to us illusions” (c.f. II Timothy 4:3). He goes on to say oppression and guile (inherent to the false saviors of politics and government) will lead to a very sudden and comprehensive collapse. We may ask, “If it is not from politics and government, where then shall our salvation come?”

For thus the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said,

“In repentance and rest you shall be saved,

In quietness and trust is your strength.” (from Isaiah 30:15)

For the record, it has never been the Lord’s heart to cause or allow Sandy Hooks or 9/11’s. Some sovereignty-laden doctrines have God sitting idly by watching the carnage. On the contrary: “The Lord longs to be gracious to you and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him.” (Isaiah 30:15)

            Why are there massacres? Because there is evil in the world. Evil is not the faceless societal anomaly NPR portrays it as. Evil is the same malignant force that was crouching at the door of Cain’s angry and murderous heart in Genesis 4. It mastered his heart just as it mastered Adam Lanza’s yesterday.

Evil traces its origins to an angel named Lucifer, who had been cast out of heaven with a third of the angels. Modern man has filed this story away as mythology. In other words evil is a what, not a who. With this notion firmly entrenched, society is left to manage the whats with laws and policies. In other words, we have placed our trust in “our father, who is in Washington” instead of our Father who is in heaven.

The radio station I was listening to (which claims to be “crazy smart”) would have me steer clear of any Christian worldview because it is obviously bigoted and angry. It would go on: butif you insist on a God, be assured, it will not send men to hell.

 For the time will come (and I suspect is now here) when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths… But you be sober in all things. (II Timothy 4:3-5)

As much as we would like it to be, our world is not a safe place, at least not yet. It is, in fact, a battleground. It will never be a safe place until we have rightly identified who the enemy is and who our Savior is. Evil is the manifest expression of a malevolent personality bent on destroying and opposing all that God desires. His methodology is to disseminate well-crafted (crazy smart) philosophies which lead men to make alliances with anything or anyone but God. God, on the other hand, is a benevolent personality who “longs to be gracious to us, who waits on high to have compassion on us.”

God’s righteousness is the opposite of evil. As God answers the prayer, which he taught us to pray, “that His will be done on earth as it is heaven,” the Light of Truth will expose Satan’s darkness, which conceals reality. God’s methodology is for us to recognize we are temporarily living on a high stakes battlefield then to enter the fray. How are we to do that?

Read Romans 12:2, II Corinthians 10:3-5, II Timothy 4:1-2. We enter the battle with intentionality. We start by refusing the filters media, popular culture or pop-philosophy imposes on us. They all start with the wrong assumptions and, therefore, all end up with the wrong analysis. As we share the grief of Sandy Hook and the other inevitable nightmares this world will produce, let’s compose our hearts willingly and deliberately.

In repentance (changing our minds) and rest you shall be saved.

In quietness and trust is your strength…

 Then, we shall hear a word behind us saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:15)

Father, create a fresh vision of our role in this war against evil. Help us to see that the safest and most productive place for us is the front line—always allying ourselves, as children of Light, with your eternal Word. Grant us discernment to know where we are living as false children, having made alliances with the god of this world, embracing temporal wisdom and paying the price. Permit us to grieve and cry with those who are grieving and crying. May our grief become a longing for your justice. May our tears be converted into holy resolve to trust you alone. Until your kingdom comes. Amen.

 

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