We Have Deeper Problems

We have far deeper issues than guns – what people have been doing with guns recently is just an extreme and tragic microcosm of the real issues.

Our real issues are these:

            -we don’t know how to treat one another with dignity and respect

            -we don’t know how to raise our children to be sane and reasonable adults

-we don’t know how to value each individual equally regardless of their social standing or opinions (so kids and adults who are “weird” fall through the social cracks and no one cares because they don’t “contribute”)

-we don't know how to have real friendships (though we think we do), where we can ask someone "How are you doing?" or "How are things going?" and really be interested in the answer to the question, more than just niceties and civility

            -we don’t know how to teach or practice self-control

-we don’t know how to stay married and work through our problems, modeling longsuffering, patience, and humility

-we don’t know how to maintain sexual purity (because sexual purity is relative to each person’s experience; that is, until they commit some kind of heinous act that objectifies and victimizes another individual, at which point we’re finally concerned and in a justified outrage – but why does it take getting to that point for us to be outraged?)

-we don’t know how to discriminate between what’s fun and what’s potentially harmful (ie that shoot-em-up video game is harmless because my kids know it’s just a game, and they’re not being subliminally taught that how you handle your problems is by removing people who are in your way)

-we don’t know how to have a real conversation about what’s right or wrong without getting angry and insulting (because the ages-old narrative of corruption in positions of power blinds us from the fact that the same corruption is actually inside of each of us, seen in that we are now empowered by being able to state our opinions on social media for all to see, and we turn into jerks with anyone who disagrees with us, proving we’re not different than any corrupt leader throughout world history)

-we don’t know how to have a real conversation, period; the communication age has backfired so that we actually are less able now to communicate than before

-we don’t know how to judge what’s truly right or wrong (because we act like truth is relative, though we don't really think so)

            -we don’t know how to love well and make people feel loved

-we don’t know how to regulate our depressed mental and emotional moments without victimizing ourselves and making everyone else who has ever wronged us “the problem”

-we don’t know how to see where we ourselves have contributed to the world’s problems, because “every way of a man is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2)

-we don’t know how to truly measure our self-worth and have a strong sense of identity, even with our warts, instead fluctuating anywhere between overvalue (I’m proud of myself, true to myself, and my party is the savior of society) and undervalue (I hate myself and want to be someone else)

But there’s good news.  If Jesus is alive, then we can come to Him, and He can help.  If recent events have laid your heart in the dust so that you can be described as “poor in spirit,” (and aren’t you by now?) Jesus calls you “blessed” (Matt. 5:3), because you’re right in the place where He can move in make things new.  The problem is far greater than what everyone else is doing or what you yourself are doing - there is something wrong with us.  But Jesus came to make you and me into the real you and me, and if we come to Him, we'll find truth, and with it, peace.

Why must we be in the driver’s seat when we repeatedly drive ourselves off the cliff?