I appreciate Dr. Jetelina’s insightful initial critique[1] of the popular ploy of naming mental illness (MI) as the cause of mass shootings (MS). She firstly noted that such incidents demand substantial and careful strategizing of a degree not compatible with the capacity of a person debilitated by MI. Further, she offered more plausible causes of MS by stressing such emotional drivers as envy and grievance.
Nevertheless she neglected to
consider the “elephant in the room” that the Bible calls “sin.” While secularists may laugh at my suggestion,
it is obviously the case that “scientific” claims have failed to disarm the
crisis at hand for the reason that such schemes as just cited, cannot be abated
by physical laws and mathematical formulas because the latter's' wiles are instead
aspects of human freewill.[2] And mass-shootings by automatic weapons are
never just a single murderous act.
Every pull of the trigger or shift of the scope onto the next person entails
the choice to murder each additional victim. Since the concept of "choice" is
incompatible with results from physical laws, scientific authority has
no relevance.
The biblical term “sin” entails both
disobedience of the authority of God and/or the moral law that normally exists in
every conscience even as it also elevates the rebel to the decider of their pragma-tic
urges. Is it any wonder then that chaos
erupts wherever the will of God is roundly ignored? The analogy of that inevitability is similar
to the expected result of a concert when each musician willfully ignores the
conductor. Surely only ugly noise can
result from the clash. No other outcome
is plausible.
In the case of the mass-shooter, he
may find fleeting glee in both the trauma he brought about, and the infamy tagged
onto himself. Yet there is a further,
immeasurably weightier consequence. I
confidently declare, there is hell to follow.
MS perpetrators apparently assume they will leave behind the fallout of
the evils they brought upon the world.
But they are wrong. Numerous
times the New Testament warns that every person will stand before the judgment
seat of Christ and hear the pronouncement either that, through His death and
resurrection and consequently His gift of salvation, we who receive Him have everlasting
life, OR instead, by refusing to trust Christ, our record of rebellion will
render our verdict, "damnation." Doubtless some will scoff at this claim. Yet I know of no one who has looked at the
evidence favoring the truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and who then
conclu-ded the evidence is either lacking or weak.[3] It is this unassailable fact of history which
substantiates the statement in the Apostles’ Creed that “He [Jesus] will
come to judge the living and the dead.” The only ones who doubt this either have not
considered the evidence; or prefer "to walk in the darkness rather than
the light" (John 3:19). Either way,
scoffers violate the principles of scientific methodology. True scientists follow the science as far as
the evidence takes them, and then when that path dead-ends, they yield to realities
that do have answers (spiritual) which, in this case, affirm the
reality of sin and its negative consequences, and consequently urges our reception
of answers that only Jesus provides; the reality of redemption that follows our
confession of sin. Unless we receive Him,
we face the prospect of hell. That
warning must be everywhere proclaimed, even as law-breakers would be wise to
heed it.
[1] Dr. Katelyn Jetelina (Epidemiology). "Its Hard to
Explain (And Fix) Evil." (June 3, 2022), https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/ FMfcgzGpGKdxRCKwvlPrXwpbzXjWHNGg
[2] I reject as absurd the materialist's objection that
freewill is an illusion. If that was really so, their own claims must also be
rendered illusory.
[3]
You may immediately access the case for Jesus'
resurrection in my essay, "Hoax? Myth? Or Literally True?" at my
website: www.christianityontheoffense.com/articles ** or Lee Strobel. The Case for
Christ: Updated and Expanded. (Zondervan, 2016).
