What Is The Most Dangerous Weapon In Our Society?
On Wednesday Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, killing 17 people and wounding more than a dozen. If you haven’t heard much about it, this article gives a moment by moment account. This was the third deadliest school shooting in US history after Sandy Hook in 2012 where there were 26 killed, and Virginia Tech in 2007 with 32 casualties. A few years ago, on March 1st, 2014 an eight person group organized a knife attack that left 35 dead and over 140 injured in southwestern China. Then on March 22, 2016, three suicide bombings in Brussels left 35 dead and more than 300 injured. Sadly, these are only five events out of many…
All of these acts are tragic… all three resulted in the mass death of innocent people, but they all took lives in different ways. Some used guns, others used knives or bombs, but the end result was death and tragedy. I could go on and on about other events and other methods used, as war and terrorist acts are a regular occurrence in our world. Sadly, many of these things happen without us even hearing about them.
Every time there is a shooting, the controversial subject of gun control comes up. Unfortunately people use these sorts of tragedies to add fuel to political agendas. Some argue that shootings should warrant more gun control. Others argue that more gun control will only inconvenience those who seek to do harm and leave the innocent defenseless. I don’t really want to go down that rabbit trail in this post, but I will say that both views have their pros and cons. It is true that we need to be very careful who can legally purchase a gun. It is also true that people have Second Amendment rights and those should be upheld. The question is, how do we find a balance? But that’s all I want to say about that.
The truth is… people who want to kill are going to kill. The greatest weapon is not a gun, a knife, or a bomb… it is the heart. In the Bible, there is a verse that says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus said, “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander” (Matthew 15:19). It is a person’s heart that leads them to the extremes of killing and hurting others. Whether a person is influenced by religious or political agendas, or they are simply a product of an environment of poverty or bullying, the problem is ultimately in the heart. So what do we do to fix that? We can’t pass laws that deal with it… there also isn’t enough counseling or education that can resolve it.
Wicked hearts are the result of living in a sinful and broken world. For more on this, see my post “Why Does The World Seem So Messed Up?” The only way to deal with the tragedies that happen in this world is by dealing with the heart. God tells his people, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). We need a heart replacement. We need God to put a new heart in us that desires to do good instead of evil. So how do we get this new heart and new spirit? In Acts 2:38, Peter says “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” When we give our lives over to God and trust in what Jesus did on the cross, he transforms our hearts and gives us his Spirit. Though there are pros and cons for gun control and other laws and safety measures, we ultimately need transformed hearts… we need Jesus.
