What Changed?

Yesterday was the first nice day of the year in Wisconsin. It was hot, the sun was bright, the birds were chirping, and if you’re a fan of the color green, there is no better place to be. Everything is vivid and bright, colors complement each other, and the entire tapestry is such wherein one is compelled to contemplate the One who made it all.

I was in the backyard playing with my daughters when my phone started buzzing. It wasn’t a call; it was an alert, something my wife made me download onto my phone in case of emergencies, or breaking news stories. When the girls went off to play on their own, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and read: “11 dead, six injured in shooting in Virginia Beach.”

The headline seemed oddly out of place on such a glorious day. It seemed grotesque and misshapen.

It turns out a disgruntled former employee who had been fired recently returned to his place of work and slaughtered 11 people because of it. Have we come to a place in society where we can’t cope we being fired from a job? Do we have to resort to base violence and taking of lives every time something doesn’t go our way?

It hasn’t always been like this, and no, let’s not start blaming the guns, because guns were around long before these mass shootings started popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain. This is a recent phenomenon, one that seems to be increasing in frequency with each passing year, so the logical question would be, what changed?

If it were only one thing, it would be simple to decipher. We would be able to pull at the single thread until the entire mystery unraveled, but as is the case with such things it’s rarely just one thing.

I would submit, however, that the most important thing to have changed over the last thirty or so years, was the removal of God’s statutes, God’s Word, and God Himself from every public square. The correlation between the rise in godlessness and the rise in violence committed by average, everyday people, is undeniable. If this is the primary cause, if godlessness is the principle reason why so many see no value in the lives of other human beings that they are willing to snuff them out because they are disgruntled, then we are in for a dark future indeed.

Those who would insist that there is no correlation will readily point to the wars man has waged throughout history, but we’re not talking about war here, are we? We’re talking about seemingly normal people, your neighbors, your coworkers, the lady fetching your coffee, or the guy making your omelet; seemingly well-adjusted folk who snap one day. We are talking about individuals for whom life is so empty and hopeless that their only reaction is to go on a rampage and murder random people.

When you combine godlessness with a generation of entitled, coddled people who don’t know how to take criticism, or accept something as trivial getting fired, I fear such events will become so common as not even to be newsworthy anymore.

There is always a consequence to one’s actions. There are also consequences to the choices a nation makes, and though they might not be visible instantly, over time, they become glaringly obvious. We are reaping what we have sown, and the reaping has just begun. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.