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TITLE: CULTURE OF DEATH
TEXT: Ho. 4:1-2; Ro. 1:28-32; Mt. 5:28-30, 12:33-35;
Ps. 119:11; Heb. 4:12; Ephe. 6:12; 1 Pet. 4:17;
2 Chron. 7:13-15
INTRODUCTION: This morning I want to talk about the culture of death that has seemed to have flooded our society.
We have just experienced another tragic shooting at one of our schools. This time 17 killed in a senseless act of evil at a school in Florida.
And before the bodies are even removed from the schoolbuilding the political pundits are speaking out trying to make political points out of it to meet their political agendas.
Many on the left will say it is the fault of guns and that they need to be restricted in this country. Others say that we need to do more on mental health to stop these senseless acts of violence before they happen.
When the truth of the matter is that neither will accomplish what their intended goal may be.
Whatever your feelings on guns may be the fact is no gun by itself has ever killed or maimed anyone. It takes a human being to do that. Plus we have over 240 years of gun ownership in this country and there are millions and millions in circulation. And unless we want to shred our Constitution and move to a police state that is the way it will continue to be.
And just how do we deal with the mental health issue while still protecting our basic freedoms as Americans? Do we lock up or confine anyone we may perceive as odd or who may exhibit weird or even destructive behavior? If that become the case than our streets may become pretty empty and we may all find ourselves at risk.
I mean just who will determine who has a mental issue and is at rick?
I understand the need we all seem to have to try to fix the problem of this kind of violence in our country but the methods we often come up with most often are just to make us feel like we are doing something but will have little to no effect on the problem.
To ever fix a problem you need to first find the true or underlying cause.
So why school shootings and other acts of mass killing in America in seemingly increasing frequency? Just what is the root cause?
How come we see this kind of violence today when 50 years ago it wasalmost unheard of especially in our schools with children killing other children?
Hosea 4:1-2 (NIV)
1 (NIV) Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.
2 There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Does this seem to describe life in America today?
2 There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
In doing some research for this message I found some very interesting statistics that I feel may very well lead us to the root cause of the senseless killings especially on our school campuses.
The first school massacre recorded was July 26th 1764 in Settlers' log schoolhouse in the Province of Pennsylvania in what is now Franklin County, near the present-day city of Greencastle.
Four Delaware (Lenape)American Indians came into the school and killed and scalped the teacher and 9 students.
The next three school killings recorded were in 1893, 1898 and 1940.
The next mass killing was not until 1966in the University of Texas tower shooting that resulted in 17 deaths.
From 1966 on there has been a dramatic increase in this kind of violence in America.
From 1966 to the latest school shooting in Florida there have been a total of 19 mass school shootings resulting in 149 deaths.
The largest to date was the Virginia tech massacre in 2007 where 33 people were killed by a lone gunmen, not with an Ar-15 rifle but by using two handguns.
What really struck me was the timeframe when these kings of mass killing seemed to really start to escalate—after 1966.
In looking for a root cause I think that the timeframe of increase is very significant.
What could be a possible dynamic or link in this time period that may provide a clue to the root cause of this kind of increase?
In my view it was just 3 years after the Supreme Court removed God and prayer from our schools.
In doing so the teaching of moral absolutes such as we find in the 10 commandments of God were removed from the public education of our children and a void was created that the enemy wasted no time filling with his religion of Secular Humanism. The basic theology of if it feels right to you then it is the right thing to do.
With the removal of moral absolutes from the education of our children such as thou shall not kill and replacing it with the theology of secular humanism with all its reliance on self and self-gratification just what did we expect would happen?
Plus in the 10 short years from the removal of God from our classrooms the courts gave us legalized abortion on demand in 1973 where the killing of our unborn children was actually government sanctioned.
A devaluing in the minds of our youth that all life is sacred then began. That the only reason that they are here is not that they are a life created by God and sacred but they are only here because their parents allowed them to be and if it were not convenient to their parents they may have been among the millions of aborted babies.
When we removed God from our schools in many cases we removed His love and compassion and value for life as well.
One thing that seems to be common in most school shooters is that they were loners who were ostracized by their peers.
And sense the advent of social media such as Facebook and twitter they not only faced ridicule at school but were defamed on these public platforms for all the world to see as well. Made to feel like they were nothing, had no value to anyone.
The human psyche can only take so much rejection before something may snap…
I often wonder what may have happened if some of the kids around them at school would have actually befriended them out of simple compassion for someone different and struggling with life.
Would that have made a difference?
Is it these kinds of kids that are the ones that move more and more to violent video games to express how they are feeling feeding the desire for violence and even revenge?
Are we in America actually creating a culture of death?
Life is not valued at the beginning of life’s spectrum nor at its end….Through legalized abortion and in some states legalized euthanasia we are telling are children that life is no longer a sacred gift of God and is of tremendous value in His sight.
A Scripture that I believe may very well describe our nation today and the course that it is currently on is:
Romans 1:28-32 (NIV) 28 (NIV) Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Our political class today will never be able to address the problem of this kind of violence in America because they don’t seem to have a clue what the cause is…
It is not guns! No gun by itself has ever killed or maimed anyone…They are but a tool and like any tool can be used for noble or in-noble purposes. They can be used as an instrument of good or evil depending upon the one that is using it. The same is true of a hammer or an ax olr a knife or most any other inanimate object. All can be used for good or for bad but the determining factor is not in the object but the heart of the one holding the object.
Many try to tell us that this is just an American problem but it is not! Germany which has very tight gun control laws has had mass school shootings. Russia which does not allow citizens to have guns of any kinds has had mass school shootings! Israel facing these kinds of killings a lot but has found ways to keep them at a minimum through the hardening of soft targets. The entire Mideast is rampant with these kinds of murderous evil using bombs which kill larger numbers than guns do.
And even though the method or instrument of the murder may be different the root cause is always the same! Hatred in the heart of man…
Jesus gives us the answer as to the why or the root cause in:
Matthew 5:21-30 (NIV2011) 21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’
22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
What Jesus is teaching here is that to deal with any sin you have to deal with it at its source. And the source is always found in the heart.
In order for adultery to be committed it first is committed in the heart or mind before it is committed in the flesh. A man or woman must lust first and lust begins in one’s heart.
The same is true of murder. Before anyone murders someone in the flesh he first must hate in his heart.
So Jesus is telling us to keep these things from happening we must deal with them at their true source---our hearts….
Matthew 12:33-35 (NIV)
33 (NIV) "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
Good or evil is first manifest in the heart and from the heart it becomes an act of the flesh.
Our founding fathers understood this principle very well.
AbrahamLincoln once said: the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
How true that has proven to be.
When we started to deprive our children of Godly values in the classroom and as they became of age and started to become the teachers and business leaders and politicians in the next generation they brought their values, or lack of them, with them.
There has been a constant desensitizing to the value of life in our culture.
I believe it started with the removal of Gods influence in our classrooms shortly followed by the legalization of the killing of our unborn children.
And moved quickly to the acceptance of euthanasia by many in our nation.
We devalued life at the beginning and then at the end.
And the graphic and death centered video games that our kids are feeding themselves on today is astounding.
Some kids spend hours playing life like games where their goal is to kill everyone else in the game to become the winner….
And even when the game is over the kid may lie in bed at night and go over in their minds what they could have done to do better in the game, how they could have killed more people so they would have scored more points….
Our special forces use similar games in their training to be as lethal as possible on the battlefield.
They help hone their reaction times and accuracy.
I remember after the Columbine school shooting in Colorado where two young men came in with handguns and killed 13 and wounded another 21 that the authorities were amazed at the number of fatal shots, the head shots that these teenage shooters made.
How did they become so proficient with a handgun? On the shooting range? NO! They honed their skill on a violent video game.
One Marine Major said the game that they were playing was not much different than the ones their special forces trained with.
Add to that all the violence that can be seen at the movies and on TV in prime time and what you end up with is an enhancing of the culture of death that we have allowed to infiltrate our nations children’s minds..
And possibly what has contributed to the problem as much as anything else is the breakdown of the American family. The high number of one parent households and households with both parents gone and the kids left to pretty much fend for themselves.
And as long as we look for solutions in the getting rid of inanimate objects thinking that will make any real difference we will continue to see this kind of mass murder happen and in even more frequent numbers.
The problem is and has always been the heart….
Do you know what the first murder weapon was? A Rock!
Cain killed Abel with a rock and yet there was no outcry to ban rocks….Why? Because the rock did not kill Abel—Cain did! If a rock had not been handy than a club or even a fist would have been the instrument used.
Lizzie Borden killed her mom and stepdad with an ax and yet there was not cry to ban axes because the ax did not kill her parents she did! And if an ax would not have been available she would have used some other object to accomplish what her heart had decided to do.
The cause of the first murder was the exact same cause of every murder since that time even to the latest school killings in Florida….Hatred in the heart of man…..
So what is the answer? Just what is the solution?
King David possibly says it best in:
Psalm 119:11 (NIV) 11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
The Words of God are powerful! They are full of and promote life not death…
Hebrews 4:12 (NIV) For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
The Word of God judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
That is why it is so important that we hide the Word of God in our hearts so that Gods Word can judge our thoughts and attitudes and bring them into alignment with God.
That will work for us individually but what about with others around us including our nation’s children?
Church, we need to re-evangelize America!
The Church needs to stand up and say enough is enough!
We need to take back our schoolhouses and our state houses for Christ!
Start to elect those to represent us in the affairs of government who understand that the problems we face in America are all spiritual in nature.
Ephesians 6:12 (NIV2011)
12 (NIV2011) For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
It took decades for the enemy to advance to the place that he has to get his grips on our nation and it may take decades to get our nation back but it will never happen if we don’t rise up and try.
And for the sake of our children maybe we need to get our kids out of the most secular public schools and colleges and put them into private schools and colleges where they can be taught about God and moral values again.
Not all public schools are the same. I believe the school will be largely influenced by the teachers and administrators of that school.
If they have godly teachers and administrators than even though there will still be restrictions places upon them their lights will still shine forth into the lives of the students there.