Worldview thoughts on the preponderance of evil
Emotions are running high after this tragedy. The unredeemed who are enemies of God will use this to try to prove an impotent god or non-existent one. First of all, God did not invent firearms. Secondly, we live in a country which is so committed to secularism, that it is considered a breach of human rights to publicly educate man's conscience by means of God's law. Sin is lawlessness--the rebellious setting aside of God's law (1 John 3:4).
The conscience is made for God's law--His law is written there in a rudimentary form. BUT, after decades of secularism, Americans have had their consciences put to sleep by secular humanism posing as scientific reality. Thus, we should expect senseless violence in our land in which our schools are teaching that there is no such thing as objective evil and no such thing as a transcendent fixed immutable moral code established by God and backed up and enforced by His holy authority and justice (and are taught that there is no judgment day, no divine retribution, no accountability to the Creator).
Secularism has amputated the soul of man, removed meaning, and made man a coincidence of nature. Such wholesale nihilism empties man of purpose and sears the conscience like a hot iron (1 Tim 4:2). Isn't it a paradox that unsaved men argue away accountability to God in everyday life, but then blaspheme Him when He doesn't step into history and stop senseless evil. If God invaded history to sweep away all evil, every unsaved sinner would be swept away in the blink of an eye.
God's long-suffering now means that some of man's evil will be unchecked. There will be countless acts of injustice and victimization perpetrated by sinners who want their own way at the expense of others (James 4:1-2). The wicked man disadvantages others for the sake of self. The righteous man disadvantages self for the sake of others. There is an immense gulf between the righteous and the wicked (1 John 3:10-12).
Zach, (corrected copy : )
Just some follow up thoughts on the problem of evil. 50 million abortions in America over the last few decades mean that our nation's collective conscience has been lowering the value of a human being to merely a lump of tissue rather than a proper perception of our true value: as a one of a kind individual, made in the image and likeness of God.
In addition, when secularists are confronted with evil, they will not call it evil; only 'anti-social behavior'. And because they believe that people are born good or neutral, their effort to bring some kind of moral renaissance will always be by manipulating the social environment with new sets of controls. It is absurd to even imagine that moral reformation can take place without the God of the Bible as the foundation and source of morality. Without our Holy Creator as the basis for reality, we are left with survival modes, arbitrary morality, special interest groups, and a substitute authority: self or the state. Thus, without the moral authority of God's moral government, the "ought" of moral obedience is entirely missing.
Secular proposals to restraining evil are always based upon removing more freedom in the interest of ushering in utopian
ideas about human flourishing. The answer Christ gives is the exact opposite: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. “These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man" (Matt 15:19-20).
Attempts to change man's environment without the Word of God and without the truth of God by the power of God (changing the heart) will only make men clever devils who will express their sin when no one is looking, or when they believe they will not be caught. The horrors of judgment day are clearly not in view when a wicked man murders those around him and then takes his own life assuming he will enter a state of non-being and annihilation. How different an eternity is described in Scripture: "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who WILL RENDER TO EACH PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS:to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek" (Rom 2:5-9).