Sorrow in Virginia

A few days ago there was a shooting spree at Virginia Tech that has left 32 people dead; 33 if you include the gunman. Thirty-three people killed in cold blood as the man went from room to room indescriminately shooting people despite their screams and pleas, then himself.

What sense can you make of this? Why would a person do this? What makes a person kill other human beings so mercilessly and hate so much? Not only Cho Seung-Hui, but the killers at Columbine High School, the Nazis who poured forth the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges in the USSR, the Jihadist bombings of buses and ice cream parlors in Israel, the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the "cleansing" of Kurds and Shiites by Saddam's regime, Pot Pot's mass genocide in Cambodia, the "Rape of Nanjing" by Japanese Imperial soldiers, the genocides in Rwanda, militant raids on civilians in Sudan, and on, and on, and on where hundreds of millions of people have died?

The history of the world seems full of violence, bloodshed, suffering, and sorrow. Man to man killing and being killed, showing no mercy. The human race has been experiencing this since Cain killed Ablel. No end is in sight that we can control, if, as the Bible says, at the end of the world there will be even greater violence and a great battle when Jesus Christ comes back to earth.

Why do people do this. I think Jeremiah 17:9 can put this question in perspective, as much as is possible for us to know: “ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (NKJV). This is the state of the human race. All have sinned, not just Cho or Osama Bin Laden, but me and you. Being created in God's image and having a God-given idea of right and wrong, most Americans are horrified at this raw flaunting of depravity. But at the same time, lying, pride, and gossip are sins too. We do many bad things, not as bad in our minds as what Cho did on Monday, but bad nonetheless. We cannot really understand the depravity of Cho or ourselves, but God does. The verse right after Jeremiah 17:9 says, "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds" (NKJV). Seeing that we are all in bad ways and God sees the heart even better than we can, this can be a very terrifying thought!

Fortunately, our sins have been paid by Jesus' death on the cross. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicaly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed... that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus... a man is justified by faith apart from works" (Romans 3:23-26, 28b). By having faith (trust) in Jesus Christ, our sins are wiped clean, and we are forgiven. We will spend eternity with Christ when we die (John 6:47, 14:1-4).

But even so, sin, pain, and sorrow still exists among both Christians and non-Christians. Such is the world we live in. I cannot comprehend the grief that Virginia tech students and families are experiencing right now. I saw on CNN a profile of one of the students murdered. Just weeks before he had called his mother telling her he was to change his major to English. Perhaps he wanted to be a teacher or writer. His parents were probably excited and proud of him; he was to impact the world with his life. But that life was ended by a madman with a 9mm pistol.

Keep these people in your prayers.

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

The Day after Easter

I’ve been engrossed in schoolwork all day and now have a little bit of time to reflect on the meaning of Easter Sunday.

That day called Easter, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ, was originally a pagan sort of holiday that has been around quite some time. This does not subtract from the fact that Jesus did in fact die and rise from the dead. We celebrate the night Christ came into the world on December 25th, though the real time of year He was born is totally unknown. The exact date is unimportant – what’s important is that it happened. And what happened around 30 AD is that Jesus Christ died for our sins then rose from the dead three days later according to the prophecy of Scripture.

I wonder what His disciples were thinking on a Monday evening those centuries ago. In the past three days they had experienced the most astonishing events of their lives. First, Jesus, whom they were convinced was the Messiah who would drive the Romans from Israel and set up His kingdom was arrested, beaten, and nailed to a cross. The disciples deserted Him in fear. The week before those who saw Jesus entering Jerusalem were shouting with joy and praise at His entrance, but that day they shouted “Crucify Him!” and “Those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads” (Matt 27:40).

His followers were overcome with grief and shame, that the Rabbi they so dearly loved and thought to be the King was murdered, and they deserted Him, even though they swore they would never leave Him and were willing to die for Him.

Then that Sunday morning they had heard the report from women who had visited the tomb that Jesus had risen from the dead. Peter and John visited the tomb and confirmed that it was indeed empty, with the cloth they used to wrap Jesus neatly folded, showing the body was not stolen (thieves would never take the time to unwrap the body and neatly fold them). That evening the resurrected Jesus came to them and showed them from the Scriptures why the Messiah had to suffer and die, showing them the piercings in His hands.

By Monday, one might speculate what the disciples felt and what they talked about. The Bible doesn’t tell us every detail, but I can imagine the excitement, lingering disbelief, bewilderment, and joy they were experiencing. In three days their Messiah was killed, then arose, changing the world forever. They now had a message. That message was that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for the sins of humanity and resurrected from the tomb as witnessed by His followers, and anyone who trusts in Him receives eternal life with God as a free gift. With this message this small band of cowardly disciples became bold lions of courage - braving angry mobs, beatings, hate, insults, shipwrecks, arrests, beatings, torture, all manners of persecution and even a martyrs death - and turned the world upside down.

At that point in history, I wish I could have been there to see all this. But the message of Jesus Christ is still as true and important today as it was in the First Century: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).