Wednesday, December 19, 2012

What America Needs to do About Gun Violence


"Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you, O Lord."

The cold blooded murders that occurred in Newton, CT last week has finally struck home to Americans.  Everybody is talking change.  America does need to change.  Changing gun laws is just barking up the wrong tree.  A band-aid over a severed artery.  None of what our politicians have been proposing since the Newton slaughter will plug the sieve of evil manifesting itself in these horrific events.  God is our only solution and we can do nothing without him.  God defines true love and only God can cultivate a loving regard for our neighbor.  Society left to its own design only creates darkness. 

Our culture of death is to blame for America's violence.  Take abortion for example.  Abortion is society's, not God's design.  We cannot expect peace as long as we, as a culture, continue to condone the murder of innocents in the mother's womb.  America needs a change of heart in how they see their fellow man.

America's youth and young adults have grown up coming to grips with and trying to comprehend, rationalize, psychologically and morally accept the barbaric act and brutal crime of abortion.   The atrocity of murdering the innocent and helpless - a repeated practice that modern American society sanctions has its consequences.  Our culture has given its benediction to the slaughter of innocence since 1973 with the State sanctioning of murdering children in the mother's womb.  As long as this barbaric act remains legal and a part of our society, our American children must grow up having to grapple with this issue in their conscience - and many of them seem to be emerging a psychological mess.  Acceptance of abortion results in the shifting from an innocent, charitable outlook towards their fellow man, to a dark, sinister outlook that can justify snuffing out the lives of their neighbor, in or out of the womb for personal motive.  By sanctioning abortion as a society, we are creating an entire populace of darkened minds the likes of serial killers. 

Humans are not perfect and we repeat past mistakes.  To change our country, our children must acknowledge that society is guilty of a brutal crime and a state-sanctioned barbarism unheard of since the 18th and 19th century when American society sanctioned the widespread crime of slavery.  One has to undergo a moral and psychological twisting of conscience to accept abortion as a legitimate justifiable crime that can be embraced just as society once embraced the crime of slavery.  Like slavery, to rationalize abortion, one has to alter the mind and conscience and their perception of their fellow man in a way that sees their neighbor as soulless animals that can be easily dispensed with  "on demand" for any reason and at any time during the human lifespan.   

What America needs is to stem the tide of its culture of death.  It can't just be removed.  It must be replaced with love for and reverence for God and our neighbor.  No amount of tearing down nativity scenes is going to bring America that peace it desires.  America must follow the lead of the very people who the massacre affected most.  

The people of Newton, CT attended church services and prayer vigils immediately after the attack.  They didn't turn to government, they turned to God.  They turned to God because they know that only God can provide the peace and comfort they cry for.  Legalizing marijuana, legalizing gay marriage, perpetuating the state sanctioned crime of abortion, enacting more gun laws, accelerating environmental restrictions, or promoting euthanasia will never bring America the utopia and peace that liberalism promises.  On the contrary, these vices are the very cause of school, shopping mall, and movie theatre slaughters by our grown young adults.  Utopianism promotes vices as virtues with the delusion that the more vices get promoted, the greater the payoff will be.  Except the payoff never arrives, except in the form of an elementary school massacre.  

The people of Newton, CT know that God alone can bring them peace and comfort.  Their first act wasn't to lobby Washington - it was to lobby heaven; to seek out God.  In the same way, the people of America knew after 9/11 that only God must be sought in times of fear and sadness.  This was evident in the packed churches with standing room only of newcomers for several weeks after the 9/11 attacks.  All mankind knows deep down that only God will suffice.  God, not government, brings us comfort, paradise, and peace.  As St. Augustine said, 

"Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you, O Lord."