If you pay any attention to the
news at all, you heard about the shooting in a church in South Carolina a
couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately,
these things don’t seem to be particularly uncommon. It seems like every few weeks, or at least
every month, we hear about something like this.
And each time it happens we hear
the same reactions. The politicians all make the same speeches. They say what a terrible thing it is, and
they then use the occasion to push whatever their own pet political agenda
is. And then the other side, whichever
side the other side is, responds with their same speeches, agreeing that it’s a
terrible thing and trying to use it to push their own pet political
agenda. And they start arguing back and
forth, and nothing much actually happens.
And a few weeks later, or a month later, or two months later, something
else happens, and the cycle repeats itself.
I’ll tell you right now that I have
no political agenda to push. The reason
why is that I have no idea what the solution is. I don’t know what should be done. And that’s what’s most frustrating about
this. We sit here, and we watch events
unfold, and we feel powerless to do anything about it. We can pray, and we should. Some churches even held prayer vigils or
similar events. But we’ve done that
before, when other things like this have happened, and again, it does not seem
to have changed anything.
Does that mean that we should give
up on prayer? Of course not. We should pray. As the Apostle Paul says, we should pray
without ceasing. But the thing is that,
while God has unlimited power, and can do anything God chooses to do, God
usually chooses to work through us. So,
while we should pray, we should also do something.
But I just said we feel powerless
to do anything. I do, anyway. How can we do something if there’s nothing we
can do?
Well, here’s something to think
about. I read something that the shooter
in this South Carolina incident said. He
said that, while he was in the church, everyone was so nice to him that he
almost could not go through with the shooting.
Think about that. He had been planning this for months, but the
people in that church showed him so much love in just the hour or so that he
was there that it almost negated all his months of planning.
Now, don’t take this the wrong
way. I’m not blaming anyone other than
the shooter for his actions. I’m
certainly not blaming his victims. But
think about it. What if more people had
shown the shooter more love at other times?
What if he’d been shown more love in the days and weeks and months ahead
of that night? Maybe he wouldn’t have
ever gone to that church. Maybe he’d
never have come up with this plan in the first place. Maybe he’d never have had any desire to try
to do something like this.
It’s speculation, of course. But I think that’s the one thing we can do in
the aftermath of this. We can show more
love. Show more love to our
families. Show more love to our
friends. Show love to people we don’t
even know. Show love to the person we
see on the street, or in the store, or in the clinic, or wherever you see
people. Not that we’ll save the whole
world that way, but on the other hand, who knows what might happen?
If we show love to everyone we see,
maybe it’ll catch on. Maybe those people
will show love to the people they see, and those people will show love to still
more people, and on and on and on. And
maybe, somewhere along the line, that love will convince someone not to go
through with something like this. Maybe,
eventually, that love will even change the world.
I don’t know.
Maybe that seems far-fetched, and
maybe it is. But maybe not. Here’s what the Apostle Paul had to say in
Romans 12:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as
far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my
dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to
avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is
hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink…Do not be
overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
“Overcome evil with good.” I really think that’s the only way these
kinds of things will be stopped—with goodness.
With love. More laws aren’t going
to stop it—he already broke all kinds of laws.
More speeches aren’t going to stop it.
More political arguments aren’t going to stop it. The only thing I can see that will stop it is
goodness and love.
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