Suffer the children
By Pastor Rasheed Z. Baaith
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you, that in heaven their angels see the face of My Father who is in heaven.” Matt.18:10)
Poet legend Gil Scott-Heron once proclaimed that America led the world in “shock.” He has proven to be both prophetic and accurate. The murder of those 20 children last week in Connecticut accentuates what he voiced.
America one more time was trying to make sense of what is insensible, to articulate a horror that cannot be described in comprehensible terms. How do you describe the unimaginable?
The question becomes what would compel a young male to shoot his way into an elementary school, head to a classroom, killing two adults on the way and then proceed to assassinate 20 children, shooting some of them as many as three to four times, ripping their little bodies apart? What kind of culture, what kind of time and what circumstance birthed this terribleness?
There will be of course sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, law enforcement experts, politicians and many more who will dissect the young person’s life, the moments leading up to the moment of misery, the event itself and so much more. And at the end of all the analysis, the cause will be much less understood than the effect.
Yet, the cause does not seem to me shrouded or mystifying. All of the apparent causes of this madness, be they social, medical, educational, cultural or anything else, are at their core moral have at their issues of morality. In other words, these are spiritual or God matters. Only instructions from God can evolve them.
No one wants to raise that reality. It would mean acknowledging that man has neither the capacity nor the authority to solve this crisis or prevent the next wave of evil that is on its way. And each wave of evil is more dreadful than the one that preceded it. You may not have been aware of it but from the continent of Africa to Sarajevo and to Syria; from Scotland to Norway and China, from Columbine to Newtown, children have been deliberately attacked, wounded and killed, deliberately.
That kind of intent cannot be called anything but evil and evil is spiritual in nature. If the Bible reads and it does, that we “do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil,” then we are compelled to recognize the true cause of our new, alarming reality.
That cause would be demonic in nature, under the leadership of a being named Satan. Whether the world wants to believe it or not. But why now? What has given Satan the boldness to possess and puppeteer someone to do what this young person did?
I advance or posit that the theological condition of today’s Church is one reason. Today’s church has become so determined to compromise the Gospel as revealed by Jesus Christ and the Apostles, so relentless in accepting so much in worship that is not of God and more desirous of wanting people in the pews than of teaching people that blessings come as the result of obedience to the Living Word of God.
We are not called to popularize the Gospel, we are called to teach it and live it.
America, like the rest of the world is under judgment for disobedience, hypocrisy and blasphemy. Things will not get better, they will get worse. While we cannot ameliorate these conditions, we can have an expectation of hope. But only if that hope is centered in Christ Jesus and we “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience,” not allowing others to make our faith a “shipwreck.”
Time to choose whom you will serve.
