What Can We Learn from the Recent Violence in California?

 

          When horrendous rampages, along the order of the one which took place last Saturday in Santa Barbara, CA, occur certain groups and individuals quickly start assigning blame.  Guns are the most common and easiest target it seems.  But this case, unlike some of the more notable events of recent memory, many people are left scratching their heads as there was murder by means of more than guns alone.  The deranged killer, Elliot Rodger, apparently drugged his roommates then viciously stabbed them to death.  He then went out shooting people with guns and even used his car as a weapon, hitting bicyclists.  To cap it off, he took his own life committing one last act of rebellion against his maker.           

           Since the events occurred, a few days ago, many attempts have been made to try and process and understand the actions and the state of mind of the young man who set all in motion.  Words and phrases like “insanity,” “temporary insanity,”  “mental illness,” and even “evil” are being thrown around.  Anti-gun advocates are playing their predictable role in the crisis by calling for tougher gun laws and somehow finding a way to blame the NRA.  Hollywood is having fingers pointed in its direction due to the glorification of violence and huge windfalls from Americans consuming the portrayals of violence they produce.  Violent video games, as usual, are getting a strong factorial mention.  There is a strong element of sexism involved here as one of the primarily motivations for the killer was apparently the rejection he felt by women specifically directed toward what he called the “Blonde women of the Alpha Phi fraternity.”  As we might imagine, this hateful display and written manifesto of Rodger directed toward women, has feminists speaking out.

          When we see and hear about these horrific events, it is easy for us to view this young man as distant from ourselves.  In other words we see him as nefarious, deranged, and just plain sick.  And indeed, who could disagree?  There is no doubt he is, at a minimum, all those things.  But where the shocker might come for most people, especially those who are not very biblically literate, is in the fact that none of us are really much, if any, better. This young man committed these external, overt acts of violence against fellow human beings, but the underlying cause is identical in all of us.  

          Ephesians 2 makes it clear that the only thing standing between a person living their life for Jesus Christ and a person “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1, 5) is God’s intervention – specifically His act of “making them alive.” (Eph. 2:1, 5)  It is true that perhaps even as lost, unsaved individuals we did not commit horrible acts like Elliot Rodger, but how much profit is there really in bragging “I am lost, but not quite as lost as this other guy.”  It is the absurdity of a 400 pound man seeing a 500 pound man and then commenting, “How could anyone let themselves get in that kind of condition!”

          We have all heard the saying/statement “But for the grace of God, there go I.”  This is not a direct quote from the Bible, but the principle is easily established in many places throughout, including Ephesians 2.  You cannot understand violent behavior until you understand sin.  The media talks about violence, seemingly all day every day, but rarely if ever, mentions sin.  These are inseparable concepts going back to the origin of sin (Gen. 3) and the violence that quickly followed when Cain rose up and violently slaughtered his brother Abel. (Gen. 4)

          Since the dawn of human history people have fallen hopelessly into the trap of comparing themselves against the one standard that does not matter – fellow man; and failing to actually compare themselves against the one standard that actually does matter – God, as revealed through His Word.  Since the media, Hollywood, the criminal justice system, and a growing number of Americans fail to factor in the total depravity of the human heart it is easy to understand their scramble to try and find order in the midst of chaos.  Imagine hundreds, even thousands of persons, blind from birth, trying to describe the beauty of a clear night sky appearing on news programming giving their opinions as to what it looks like and why the stars shine so brightly.  Imagine print journalists writing articles describing what they cannot see.  While they fail to see the night sky with physical eyes, the vast majority of those commenting on the crime scene in Santa Barbara, CA are doing so while suffering from blindness of spiritual eyes.  That is the state all people are in apart from the enlightenment only God can bring to a person’s eyes, spiritually speaking.  2 Corinthians 2:14 says “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 

          The pursuit of truth, in this world, eventually leads a person back to the giver of truth – God.  Man, in his natural state, cannot and will not, ever see what the spiritual man alone has the ability to see.  The events of recent days are not a weapons problem, or a Hollywood problem, or anything other than the same heart problem that is universal among the entire human race.  We grieve over this situation and with the families who lost loved ones, but we grieve most of all because of the present reality of sin which brought it all to pass.

In Christ,

Dr. Allen Raynor, Pastor