Daily Verse | Job 4:15
“A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.”
Thursday’s Reading: Job 8-10
Thursday and I’m back after a short visit with my mom for another milestone birthday. I hope to be remembered as one of those children who “arise and call her blessed” (Prov. 31:28).
I was in upstate New York during my time away, about an hour away from the Tops grocery store in Buffalo where a white 18-year-old self-described “mild-moderate authoritarian left[y]” shot and killed ten people in a racially-motivated massacre. On my trip home, another massacre occurred, this time in Texas, where an 18-year-old Hispanic, Salvador Ramos, killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
The two massacres bookend a string of shootings; in a church in California where an Asian man shot and killed one and injured five, and in a Dallas hair salon where a black man shot and injured three Korean Americans. All come just a month after a black man, Frank Robert James, was arrested for shooting and wounding ten people in an attack on a New York City subway train.
I remind you; I only mention their skin color because the Klown Klub in Washington DC is convinced that “white supremacist domestic terror attacks are the number one threat we face, you guys!” and of the five shootings I just mentioned, only one was a white dude—and he wasn’t even of the correct political persuasion. I mean, of course, that he wasn’t a right-wing conservative Trump supporter protesting a stolen election while bitterly clinging to his guns and religion.
These are horrific crimes not only for the loss of life, but the fact that these are innocents—people just going about their daily lives. Particularly heinous is the killing of the children.
Worse still are the absolute hot takes of our political class in the wake of these killings. Progressives waste no time in capitalizing on these calamities because they are, for the most part, heartless trolls who have a political life to juice with outrage. If they can just get in front of the cameras and gnash their teeth with the latest sound bites, it keeps them in the news to advance their political agenda.
Here’s Irish-American Robert Francis O’Rourke, otherwise known as “Beto,” the fake Latinx and failed presidential candidate, storming a press conference held by Texas governor Greg Abbot and other officials as he gives an update on the shooting.
The bodies weren’t even cold yet. I’m sure Beto, who’s currently challenging Abbot for the governorship, thought this stunt would “fire up his base” and he’d be heralded as “speaking truth to power.”
Nah. He’s a disgusting male Karen who steps on the bodies of dead children to score cheap political points.
Then there’s Resident Teleprompter, another fake humanitarian who, to his credit, started with some heartfelt words.
To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There is a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you are being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. Suffocating. It is never quite the same. It is a feeling shared by the siblings and the grandparents and the family members of the community that is left behind.
[…]
So tonight, I asked the nation to pray for them and give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.
But then he raised his voice and began a rant filled with lots of rhetoric and no specifics. He also called on “God’s name” a lot.
“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” he said.
Oh good. He’s identified the culprit: the “gun lobby.” And he knows what needs to be done.
Good.
Good.
What are we going to do?
Next, he invoked the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High School, Oxford High School and other shootings.
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act.”
Good.
Good.
What are we going to do?
“And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.”
Wait. This is a flat-out lie. The “assault weapons ban” of 1994 had no discernible impact on mass shootings. Yes, the number of shootings with so-called “assault weapons” tripled—but only in 2012, eight years after the so-called ban ended. Otherwise, the number of shootings remained essentially the same.
So “don’t tell me” that we should do what you did in 1994—which did nothing.
“What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for, except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forests with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake!”
This lame joke was from his “campaign” for resident. He thinks that “assault weapons” are some kind of military-grade guns that are powerful enough to penetrate “Kevlar vests.” The truth is that an “assault weapon,” often (wrongly) called an “assault rifle,” is a semi-automatic rifle that shoots .223 caliber rounds that pack less punch than the .308 caliber rounds used by the M-1 rifle the AR-15 replaced.
“For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.”
OK, finally. We’re going to stand up to the “industry.” Great. When? How?
“Most Americans support common sense gun laws.”
Define “common sense gun laws.” Then show me the data.
“These kind of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why?”
Well, in Australia they took everybody’s guns away. In a lot of other countries, citizens are not allowed to possess guns. That might have something to do with it.
Wait. Is that what you’re suggesting?
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”
Who said we’re “willing” to live with it? Why are you blaming us for “letting this happen”?
“Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to stand up to the lobbies [sic]?”
It’s the lobbyists’ fault. I have heard this before.
“It’s time to turn this pain into action … It’s time to act.”
Right. You said that.
“It’s time for those who obstruct or delay or block the common sense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.”
Is that what time it is?
“We can do so much more. We have to do more.”
So I gather.
What I think I heard was, we need to act. We have to “stand up” to the gun lobby, implement “common sense gun laws” like the failed 1994 assault weapons ban, and we must not forget those who oppose “common sense gun laws.”
Like I said, short on specifics.
Here’s the bottom line: nothing that Brandon or any other politician says or does will “fix” this problem we have because it’s not a “gun” problem.
It’s a heart problem.
“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’” — Jesus, Matthew 15:18-20
We were a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, and our Founding Fathers understood that only a virtuous citizenry would be able to responsibly handle the freedom that our Constitution gave us. As John Adams said,
“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.“
As I’ve argued before, we are clearly no longer “a moral and religious People.” If Adams was correct, then our Constitution is wholly inadequate to govern us. It will take a return to faith and the virtues of Judeo-Christian values.
Fox News published an article titled, “Does Texas school shooting highlight need for faith, higher purpose in kids’ lives?” It quoted a few Christian faith leaders who answered in the affirmative. Of the quotes, here’s the one that rung most true to me:
Hancock added, “At the heart of the problem is the fact that the majority of the young men that were involved [in shooting incidents such as the one in Uvalde, Texas] do not have an active father at home. It points to something that’s relatively recent in our society: a national boy crisis.
“We are praying that God will be near in this time of pain and loss, that the church will rise up, and that amid tragedy, courageous men of faith will stand in the gap to love, serve and mentor a generation of hurting boys struggling to understand what it means to be a godly man,” added Hancock of Trail Life USA.
As Dana Loesch wrote in a series of tweets:
Not a single politician is asking: 1) How did this murderer get into the school? 2) What security did this school have and how can we protect schools like we protect our concerts, banks, museums? 3) WHERE WERE HIS PARENTS AND THE ADULTS IN HIS LIFE? 4) How did he buy a handgun? 5) Did he pass a background check? 6) No one in his house saw what was going on?
These are the questions asked by people who not only want answers, but solutions.
The “gun lobby” didn’t head his household, the “gun lobby” didn’t neglect to monitor his behavior, the “gun lobby” didn’t neglect to secure the school, the “gun lobby” didn’t leave any doors unlocked, and the “gun lobby” didn’t tell him to murder anyone.
Right.
We have to rebuild a virtuous culture. “Culture is a powerful force for good. When good behavior is normalized and deviant destructive behavior is ostracized, shamed, and marginalized, you get more good behavior.”
The foundation of a virtuous culture is a return to God.