The horrific tragedy that unfolded in Newtown, Conn. with the massacre of 20 young children and eight adults is merely the latest manifestation of a larger problem that the media and political leaders will not touch with a 10-foot pole—the increasing secularization and subsequent dehumanization that comes when a nation moves away the Judeo/Christian worldview.
To unpack this further, a society that espouses the biblical truth that humanity was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26,27) concomitantly believes in the sanctity of human life resulting a culture that is pro-life (abortion would be illegal), in a society that teaches school children they were designed for a purpose and sent into the world by their Creator (as opposed to the naturalistic view that humans evolved by chance) and a society that discourages pre-marital sex, senseless violence, pornography, and promotes biblical marriage (between one man and one woman) while discouraging divorce and co-habitation.
The unfortunate reality is that the United States has gone in the opposition direction from its biblical roots towards a godless secular view that undercuts the unique purpose and value of human life. That results in the breakdown and fragmentation of the nuclear family and a culture that manipulates and objectifies other human beings with violent movies, pornography, and the legal abortion of thousands of innocent babies every day.
In my mind, that demonstrates the hypocrisy and inconsistency of humanistic pro-abortion elected officials and celebrities who mourn the bloodletting of 20 post-birth children while advocating for the bloody termination of millions of unborn innocents—all the while shifting the blame towards guns!
Guns have been our legal constitutional right (Second Amendment) since our nation’s inception in the 17th century, and it is no coincidence that we rarely, if ever, had these instances of violence before Roe vs. Wade in 1973 and the breakdown and redefinition of the family from the 80’s to the present time. In the past 30 years there have been 62 mass killings in the United States. When you take God out of the equation in public schools, kill the innocent, promote alternate forms of family, celebrate adultery and pornography and violence, young people are stripped of a sense of human dignity, lose their sense of identity, and are led down the path towards Nihilism and fatalism as they become distraught in their sea of purposelessness.
While I agree with Mayor Bloomberg that we need to do psychological evaluation and better background checks and tighten the laws so that the wrong people do not have as much access to guns (when the Constitution and the Second Amendment were written our nation had a Christian worldview because a republic has to assume morality and virtue in order to fully work), I also believe blaming guns would be to skirt the deeper issues the humanists don’t want to touch, i.e., blaming guns for this and other tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres would be like blaming automobiles for the thousands of deaths that occur every year due to accidents on highways and streets.
I pray that this tragedy will cause the nation’s cultural gatekeepers to turn to God again as our only hope! I pray that the church will have a mighty revival that results in reformation so that the image of God will once again become the Meta narrative that frames our public policy and restores destiny and identity to our generation.
Joseph Mattera has been in full-time ministry since 1980 and is currently the presiding bishop of Christ Covenant Coalition and Overseeing Bishop of Resurrection Church in New York, a multiethnic congregation of 40 nationalities that has successfully developed numerous leaders and holistic ministry in the New York region and beyond. Click here to visit his website.
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