When the World Cries, "WHY?" How Does the Church Answer

In the wake of events like the mass shooting in Florida last week, everyone always asks, "Why?" This is especially so when there have been children killed and wounded.  What can the church say in the face of such horrors. Is it enough to send up "thoughts and prayers." How do we comfort families who, like Job, cry to God asking "Why?"

First of all, we cannot explain why God allowed such a thing to happen. We don't know why. After all, God sees the end from the beginning. We cannot. So there are always larger issues at play that we cannot even fathom. We have families to protect. God has an entire universe to make safe and secure. Of course we do not understand. How can we?

We can, however, make a pretty good guess as to why young people have taken to shooting up their schools. That used to be pretty rare. Nowadays, not so much. Since the shooting at Parkland High, there have been at least two other planned attacks foiled in just the short time since it happened. They were foiled because people started to pay attention to the signs. One grandmother simply opened up the journal her grandson left sitting out on his desk. He'd been trying to get someone's attention all along, but everyone was too wrapped up in their own problems to notice his distress.

I can offer a two part answer to the question of "Why?"  Not as to why God allowed this terrible tragedy, but as to why it's happening more frequently.

1. Our young people too often have no spiritual anchor and, let's face it the teen and young adult years of a person's life are emotionally trying. We all remember how hard it was from our own youth. It's why teens and young adults have such an appallingly high suicide rate. Suicide is almost always a cry for attention by a child who is overwhelmed by it all. Suicide says "I am in pain and you aren't fixing it for me!" Kids commit suicide in part to stop their own pain, but also in part to inflict pain on those they see as responsible. They hope by this act to make sure people know they are to blame and feel bad about it.
2. In our 24 hour media environment, every time a kid shoots up a school he becomes famous for a few weeks. The news media, in effect, broadcasts the shooter's suicide note to millions upon millions of people. It's why such things often happen in clusters. One unbalanced soul sees that another equally unbalanced soul has got a huge amount of attention simply by shooting the people he blames for his trouble.  So, it suggests a way to go out in a big way and make lots of people feel bad for not fixing his problems for him.

The cure is for parents and schools to pay better attention to their children; to give the kids an anchor to hold them steady through the storms of adolescence. The church is uniquely qualified to offer such an anchor.  In our churches we secure the safety of our children by giving them real things to do in the church. We should listen to them sing, let them pass the offering plate, do special music, talk to the elders about what could be done to improve the youth program. We can take them camping, go to the lake for Sabbath School and potluck. Above all, we MUST spend time with them. We must give them a real stake in the life of the church and thus give them an opportunity to meet God and hang out with Godly people.

Rudderless kids often sink into despair. They feel ignored and mistreated and lash out. The difference between now and when kids used to drive to high school with a gun in the gun rack of their pickups without starting a random massacre, is that back in the olden days, such a thing would NOT have got you worldwide attention and your name splashed all over the television, radio and Internet.

Remember Satan's second lie. "Thou shalt be like gods." His first was "Thou shalt not surely die." The media provides both immortality and a godlike ability to wreak vengeance upon your enemies, both at the time of the killings and then over and over and over again for weeks afterward.

Until we stop giving fame to mass shooters, most of whom are trying to commit suicide anyway, this isn't going to stop and the devil knows it. He will use political wrangling over how to stop such shootings to further divide us. One of his favorite tactics is to make us think that somehow there is something we ourselves can do to stop horrors like this. Are we not gods after all? Write a law. Take away all guns. Force people to be good somehow and to stop murdering each other. In all the long history of the world, no law, no disarming of the people, no incentive ever offered has stopped the slaughter. Too often it is the ones writing the laws and taking away the arms that end up committing mass murder. More than 252 million people died in the twentieth century alone, at the hands of governments whose purpose was to make everyone good. No one but God can make everyone good and even He must allow evil men to die in the billions in order to do it.

While we cannot guarantee there will be no further shootings, we can make sure fewer of our children feel so lost and desperate that they feel like killing themselves and others. The truth is, only God can end this and sadly, because of the nature of sin and God's having given us the free will to choose whether or not to sin, we must wait until Jesus comes to fix it.

In the meantime, let us hold our children and young people close. Let us bind them with cords of love. Let us show them, by example, how to make their lives better by focusing their energies and attention on others. 

That's the answer the Church has when the world asks, "Why?"  Love your children better. Stop rewarding despair with publicity. Thoughts and prayers should come before something like this happens, not afterward.


© 2018 by Tom King