Tragedy @ VT

Yesterday was a tragic day in the life of our country, and it served as that backdrop against which the single largest crime in our country’s history took place.  32 lives were unexpectedly ended by a gunman (who also took his life bringing the total to 33) on the campus of Virginia Tech.  As of this writing all we know is that a 23 year old immigrant from South Korea came to school, not with the English books in which he was majoring, but with two guns and a thirst for blood.  There is no motive, no reasons, and no answers.  Only questions.

 And as the community and the country looks for answers and searches for a way to get past this terrible tragedy, they are confronted with so many different ideas and empty promises that it will be almost impossible to make meaning of everything, or find closure.  I listened this afternoon as the different “faith advisors” spoke mostly in empty platitudes.  There was no real hope in their statements or love rolling from their tongues, but only bumper sticker theology of finding hope and inner peace within oneself.

A society of people looking within themselves to find hope and comfort will only find meaninglessness and loneliness.  There are no answers within us.  No hope that we, by ourselves, can overcome this kind of senseless violence.  It is the idea that we can fix our problems because we are born with a good nature, and have a pull toward goodness and away from evil that has continued to send this country into an ever quickening downward spiral into hopelessness.  Our country is in the midst of a spiritual drought that will continue to increase in its intensity as long as we seek our answers from everywhere but the creator of the universe.

“Where was God yesterday” you ask.  He was in the same place He is everyday; at the door of this once Christian nation begging to be let in, begging to help us in our pain.  But stubbornly we blame Him for not being there when all along He has been pleading with us to turn from the emptiness of this world and into the always loving arms of Christ.  The death of Jesus is not cliche.  God sent His Son to die; to be tortured and executed for crimes that you and I, the living and the dead at VT, the gunmen and the victims have committed.  Jesus died to redeem us from the slavery that we all have to sin, but all we want to do is claim that we are good enough and that we can save ourselves.

The Bible teaches just the opposite of this idea.  It teaches that all people are sinners and that sin has separated us from God and that we, in our sin, have a pull toward evil and not good.  It describes us a slaves to sin and enemies of God.  And it tells us that no matter how good we are or try to be, we cannot be good enough for Heaven.  But it also provides the answer to our problem when it tells us about the sacrifice of Jesus:

Romans 3:23-24
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and [those who have faith in Him] are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:54-57
“‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  

The reason that I heard no hope in the statements of those religious teachers was that I heard nothing of Jesus.  There is no hope apart from Him.  All the religious elite and wise men of this world can do is maybe cure your grief temporarily, but they have nothing that can help your desperate soul find hope.  Of all the things that they can tell you, there is only one truth in life that matters, and that is that Jesus paid the price for your sin and mine and that He will give Heaven only to those who have faith in His gift and follow Him.

This tragedy has shown that no one is invincible.  Death will come to every one of us.  It might come in our sleep as senior adults or it could come in an instant as it did for those who died at Virginia Tech.  And, when it comes, there are no second chances.  Death is final.  The victims and the shooter both met the God of the universe yesterday and their eternal home was decided, not on the merit of what they had done, but on whether they had answered the call of Christ to live for Him and not the world.  I know that this is a hard thing to read, because we want to call the shooter evil and the victims good, but those victims that died thinking that their goodness, and not faith in Christ, was enough to get them into Heaven are today and for all eternity bound in hell.  Most of them had no chance to “set things right with God” as their deaths came so suddenly.  It could happen to you or me, and we must be ready.

I plead with you to let the love of Jesus comfort and guide you.  I pray that you would see the urgency of life and death and that you would answer the call of Christ to live for Him and for Heaven.  He will give you a hope and a future, no matter what happens in this world.  His love can endure anything.

Romans 8:38-39
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”