A Different World of Evil for Our Children

One of my Facebook friends made an insightful observation when she noted how different our world was compared to thirty years ago, particularly in terms of the types of traumatic tragedies that we experienced from the eyes as children. She contrasted what might be the defining tragedy of our childhood - the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion - and compared that to what our children today have had to grasp to understand: 9/11, the Aurora theater shootings, the Newtown shootings, and now, the Boston Marathon bombings.

I remember the Challenger explosion as a middle schooler, and I'm ashamed to admit that among a lot of us, there was a great deal of intrigue and excitement that was intermingled with any sense of grief. I had heard that in another classroom which was watching the shuttle launch live on television, the explosion was followed by stunned silence broken by one youngster (allegedly Matt Reardon according to schoolyard folkyore) who jumped out of his seat, raised his fist and shouted "Yeah!" He was subsequently disciplined.

But despite our immaturity and the propagation of ghoulish and tasteless jokes (e.g. Q: "What does NASA stand for?" A: "Need another seven astronauts" and Q: "What did Christa McAuliffe say to her husband before she left for the space shuttle?" A: "Remember to feed the dog and I'll feed the fish."), we kids recognized that this event was ultimately a really bad and horrible thing. But it still seemed so distant from impacting us personally that we still were able to maintain a sense of security and invulnerability, and yes, it probably freed us to make those tasteless jokes.

Parents and teachers were asked to talk to kids about that tragedy, and it was usually an angle around how the astronauts were heroes who paid the ultimate sacrifice in serving their country's quest for scientific and technology advancement. The adults talked about about how accidents happen and that most of us need not worry about a similar thing happening in our school bus or our family Honda Accord. They told us that evil corporations like Morton-Thiokol would someday have their comeuppance with the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement for making faulty solid rocket booster "O-rings" (okay, they never told us that). But there was a theme of "it's terrible, but it'll never happen to you."

Not so with the tragedies of today. Our kids are growing up in a world where movie theaters are being shot up and individuals walk into a elementary school classroom and mow down the students with semi-automatic rifle fire. They are growing up in a world where standing in any crowd of people which nefarious individuals view as a "soft target" could eventually lead to being taken to the hospital or morgue chock full of ball bearings and nails from an improvised explosive device. Now when adults give the same talks to children, there are no more assurances that "it'll never happen to you". That's been replaced with "be careful and be vigilant."

The Facebook friend also followed with a point that I agreed with, and that was, "It's not about guns. It's about our society." The point isn't on the merits of gun control legislation, which is a separate post altogether - for what it's worth, I do think common-sense gun control legislature is something that should be pursued - but rather that the desire to do evil has seemed to have amplified and evolved over the years and that regardless of the mechanism, there's a raging desire to kill and harm without regard for the value of human life. Yes, sin and evil has existed since the time of creation, but there's a certain indifference to human life and dignity intermixed with a pervasive venom which just feels different.

This is why I believe that only the Gospel - applied individually - will ultimately save us collectively. There are lots of good solutions that can and should be pursued, but very few of these deal with the wickedness of the human heart in any sort of sustained way. It cuts to the evil of the human heart and prompts us to confess, "I'm a sinner in need of forgiveness and change, which is impossible without God's grace and power" and it embeds a core of humility of love, a love that is commanded to love your enemies, persecutors and those with whom you disagree. This is the talk I'll have with my kids. And above all it's a message of God's love and care for them, which endures even in a world of unspeakable evil.