One Hope

I casually mentioned it while drinking my coffee that morning. I knew my girls would hear about the horrific events that unfolded the day prior and wanted them to be prepared. Without freaking them out. “So, there was a kid who took a gun into a school in Florida yesterday and killed 17 people. Most of them were kids, but a few adults were killed too, who tried to protect the kids.” That was that. It was much like the conversation we had in November when a guy shot up a church in Texas, murdering 26 people, and another guy rented a truck and mowed down people in New York, murdering 8. Or in October when over 50 people were murdered in Las Vegas. Or in September when the videos from 9/11 were on TV and we talked about the murder of thousands. Our kids have become accustomed to events that were absolutely unthinkable when I was a kid. They’re seeing evil demonstrated so often in this world that it doesn’t really phase them. Because it hasn’t directly affected them. Not yet.

I hesitated to weigh in on this conversation because I’m not an expert in any field, much less this one. I’m just a mom. I’m just trying to raise three kids to think about this world in a way that makes sense; in a way that honors God and quells fear. As a Christian I know I need to think differently than what is being poured into my social media feed by various news sources. As a believer in Christ, I need to filter all of these heinous events through the lens of scripture instead of my emotional go-to response, whatever that may be. And yet, that’s not exactly easy because I live in the here and now. As I drop my son off at his public elementary school every morning and watch him gallop inside, I pray this isn’t the last time I see his little backpack bobbing up and down behind him. I pray he’ll be safe. As I drop my girls off at their homeschool co-op in a mega church two days a week, I watch them walk in the doors and pray this isn’t the day some crazed lunatic decides to open fire on them because he hates Jesus.

This is the world we live in. This is the world we have to try to explain to our kids. This is their future even longer than it is ours, Lord willing, and so we grasp for solutions and we search for answers. We debate how we feel on social media, often taking our emotionally charged thoughts out on those who disagree with us. We’re all hurting and grieving alongside those who have lost their loved ones and we’re all wanting that pain to have a purpose. And it is here, in the searching for that purpose, that I believe lies the answer. It is the gospel. The thing most people have been running from. The thing that will bring the healing to hearts that more laws won’t. The thing that will bring healing to the hearts of those who commit these crimes in the first place, even beyond medication or therapy for mental illnesses. The thing that makes sense to a world that is senseless. It is not the only thing, but it is where I believe we need to start.

You may hate me for saying this, but the events of the past several months, past several years, are not surprising when we look at a world that has rejected God and the truth of his word. I don’t think we – as finite humans – truly understand the depths of evil. Nor do we truly understand how much of that evil God has chosen to restrain. We do not fully understand it because we do not fully understand our own sin. We think we need a savior to get us to heaven; but do not understand that we actually need a savior to save us from a holy God who hates evil. We think we’re good enough on our own moral character; not grasping that we are completely depraved from the start and no amount of good action is going to remove that depravity from our souls.

Most of us were raised with a moral conscience, but in a world where what is ultimately right or ultimately wrong is shifting sand, we can no longer rely on morality to keep us safe. As a society, we have determined there is no definitive truth, so there is no definitive standard. We can’t even rely on our churches to preach truth any longer, as many have truncated the gospel into a self-help program and abandoned the Bible as applicable to the world today. We have pastors who skirt the issue of sin and evil, just as much as a secular society, and yet God has been clear from the start. When there were 4 people living on this planet and one of them murdered his brother, God went straight to the heart. And that is exactly where our problem still lies today – our hearts.

The reality is our hearts are broken by sin and the only thing that is going to fix them is Jesus. I’m not trying to put a Jesus patch on a very broken world, but I am trying to say that is where we need to start. I am saying that Jesus is the only one who can fully redeem us from sin and evil. Until we are able to see that God has created us for his good purposes and he has given us a way to live (the Bible) and a savior by which we can be reconciled to him (Christ), we won’t get anywhere near being able to make sense of living in a fallen world. Until we submit our hearts to the one who can make them whole and stop running from Him instead, we will continue to ride the waves of suffering in despair.

And our kids will continue to suffer too. They are imploding and exploding in various ways all around us. Some shoot up and some shoot others. Some kill themselves and some kill others. Every day. They’re flopping around in a world that offers no validation beyond a like on social media or texts from fleeting friends. They are searching for people to love them and fill them in a culture that has shallow, fleeting pleasures. We need to have the answers that will help them. We need to have the ability to stand on the truth. And as I try to explain senseless acts to my kids, I have to start with the gospel. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have the one that will give them the most hope.