Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.
If ever a 2-day span illustrated a passage of Scripture, I’d say yesterday and today took care of it. As if the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 dead and 30 injured wasn’t enough, today a nation turns on the news to see that a man has entered an office building in Orlando, Florida, and opened fire. This time 1 died and 6 were injured. Of course, the acts themselves don’t shed light on the truth of this Proverb as much as the reaction of people all over the country.
Acts like these always invoke similar responses. No matter the political or spiritual view of the person responding, one thing is for sure: we all seem to agree on the wickedness that drives a person to pull off something like this. We all seem shocked, surprised, horrified. No one ever gets interviewed by the news and says something like, “It’s about time somebody got rid of 14 more people. We don’t need ’em. The world’s too crowded as it is.” Of course, if someone ever did dare say anything close to that, we’d all jump through our TV screens and get rid of one more person! My point is not to make light of the tragedies, but rather to make crystal clear that sin really is a disgrace to all of us. It deflates us, makes us feel hopeless, and incites a passionate anger within each one of us at the person, or people, who subjected us to it.
The downside, of course, is that we can’t seem to agree on what to do about it. Ask people if they’d rather be exalted or disgraced, and everyone’s picking Door Number One. But ask those same people if they’re willing to live righteously, and you’ll get a bunch of odd looks. See, we want the benefit, but we’d rather not pay the price. What we’ve seen in Orlando and Fort Hood (and other locations of mass shootings over the years) is the logical end of a society that wants to live by it’s own rules. We want the freedom to choose without consequence while being free to punish – or judge – others for the free choices they make. We want to determine right or wrong (if we even agree they exist) based on our situation, but when a man starts shooting others because in his twisted mind it seems right, we say that’s crazy. Don’t misunderstand me: I think the shooters in Florida and Texas deserve punishment to the full extent of the law, but I can’t help but wonder who the crazy ones are – them for carrying out seemingly random, senseless killings, or the rest of us for not being able to see that a country run without moral absolutes cannot consistently result in anything else?
Nothing can save our great country from the disgrace of sin except for righteousness, and only One is truly righteous. The sobering question is this: how many more breaking news stories will it take before we turn to Him?
I pray not many.
