Another school shooting and once again the finger pointing begins. We blame school security, gun lobbies, parents, and lack of mental health services, but we seem to have forgotten that this problem didn’t exist 40 years ago. Something has changed. When I was a child, access to guns was easier, mental health services sparser, and bullying more common, and yet my classmates didn’t kill each other. Can we please take a step back and ask ourselves what has happened to our culture that made it OK to uncork our anger by plugging others with bullets? One thing is clear, in our zeal to protect “creative freedom,” we have allowed the glorification of violence in films, games, and music and yet seem surprised that kids kill kids? 

We laughed at Dan Quayle for warning about the breakdown of the family and now it takes a government to raise a child. We dismissed parents who wanted to proactively protect their children by calling for the regulation of music lyrics which glorified violence and demeaned women and now find ourselves hearing the incredibly sad stories of the brave #metoo women who suffered the fallout. We allowed politicians to take prayer out of the classroom only to have it moved to the graveside of dead children.

It was you.

It was me.

It was every man.

We all got the blood on our hands.

We only receive what we demand.

And if we want hell then hell is what we’ll have.

(Jack Johnson – Cookie Jar)

Ultimately, we are suffering at the hands of those organizations who have diligently worked to eliminate God from the public sphere. I find it quite interesting that these groups go dark when shots ring out on a school playground and politicians, school administrators, and law enforcement officials implore us to offer “thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families.” The very moment when the line between church and state is blurred they are nowhere to be found because they fear the pushback they would receive if they interfered with our natural spiritual response to physical tragedy.

We admirably bring in counselors after these horrendous events to help children, parents and teachers grieve, but what can they offer? If they can’t discuss God how can they possibly address death, the afterlife, forgiveness, and redemption? Children don’t just want to talk about their feelings, they want answers, and survival of the fittest hardly seems an adequate explanation when your best friend has just been shot.

I admire the young people who have staged walk-outs because of all the school violence. How dare we leave our children unprotected! But let’s not cheapen this discussion by thinking it is just a matter of laws and regulations. We don’t need more metal detectors, we need more moral detectors. Our young people have broken spirits which need spiritual healing. The answer is not just medications or trendy counseling methods. Culture has failed our children, so what we need is something countercultural, and you need look no further than Jesus. Christianity was a persecuted religion and yet it grew rapidly because it offered an alternative culture that valued women, babies, family, and morality. How can we possibly counsel children, parents, or teachers without bringing up the One who already knows our pain? In a world of violence, we need to remember that Jesus already took a bullet for us, so maybe we should dab a little bit of His blood on the lintels of our homes, schools, and businesses to protect our children from the cultural angel of death.

Photo by Rhodi Alers de Lopez on Unsplash