Thoughts on the Texas shooting

Have you ever noticed that before God made anything He created the environment first. Before God created plants he made the soil. Before God created fish He made the water. Before God created asteroids He made the firmament or space. God always creates the environment before He creates that which will fill the environment; that's important for us to understand.

Before God created Adam He created the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden was more than a geographic location; it was an environment. The word Eden means presence. In Eden, Adam was in the presence of God. In some special and unique way, God walked with Adam in the cool of the evening. As a whole, Eden was the presence of God. That is why Adam did not need a church house or a temple. He did not need a prayer bench or an altar. He did not need a prayer book or a copy of sacred Scripture. Adam didn't need these things because he was in the presence of God. In Genesis 28 it says, “The Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there he placed the man whom he had formed.” God made the environment Eden His place of presence and then He made the man and put the man in Eden.

This is important for us and directly related to the shooting in Texas because the environment is critical for the creation. If you take a plant out of the soil, it malfunctions and dies. If you take a fish out of water, it malfunctions and dies. If you take an asteroid out of space and throw it down into the atmosphere, it malfunctions and burns up and dies. When you take man out of the presence of God, man malfunctions and he kills people.

It would be interesting to do a detailed research project on the worship life of those people who shot up schools. From Columbine to Heritage High School to Sandy Hook and now to Texas do we find that those shooters were men who were consistently worshiping and in the presence of God? Or do we find that they are men who have completely disconnected themselves from the presence and the worship of God. I do not mean they occasionally go to church. Did they have some vague concept of God? Or did they in some way believe that they were God's hand of judgment? The question is, were these men consistently in the presence of God? I am not a person prone to gambling, but offhand I would be willing to bet everything I own against their being men of God.

I do not mean to offer a simple solution to what is a gigantic tragedy, an issue of deep personal complexity. But I will say this, all the legislative agendas on the left and the right, all the rage and fury expressed by conservative and liberal political leaders, all the efforts by Pro and anti-gun advocacy groups will never find a solution. We will not stop men from malfunctioning and killing others with a solution that comes out of a state capital or national capital. Because the problem is not a legal problem or a moral problem or a psychological problem or social problem primarily. Primarily the problem is that when men are out of their designed environment they malfunction and they die and in the process kill others.

 As of society, the idea of God doesn't fit well with our sexual and personal mores. We don't want a God telling us how we can act in our personal lives and in our sexual conduct. So, we have withdrawn from God’s presence (Eden).  We don’t want any busybody upsetting our selfish agenda, sexual or otherwise. However, when we got rid of God we also got rid of the author of life. The killing, the murder, the crime, the violence is the unintended consequences of sinful man saying, “I will reject God's authority so that I can pursue the pleasures I want.”  If you want to reject God's authority regarding behavior you will also inadvertently reject God's authority concerning life.

The only solution is for people to return to the presence of God in worship. The priority of worship ought to be greater than anything else in our lives. Forgive me for sounding like an old codger, but I'm going to do just that. There was once a time when the spiritual leader of the household would tell his family, “We are not going to do this, or that, or the other thing, because it will keep us from being in the house of worship. That sadly has become a rare attitude. It is much more likely now for people to say, “We will not go to the house of worship because it would keep us from doing this, that, or the other thing.” It is no coincidence that as we have been less and less a people in the presence of God we have become more and more a killing people.

Until you address the issue of men not being in the presence of God, the culture of killing cannot be addressed by gun control, new laws, more jails, mental health care options or early intervention profiles.  Certainly, we need to pray and our sympathy naturally extends to those who are so hurt.  But all the sympathy in the world will not make a difference.  Returning to the presence of God is the only solution.  

Worship GOD this week in the community of other believers or just wait for the culture of death.