The Unsatisfying Answer

Once again Americans’ collective grief is palpable. James Holmes, 24, opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre. When the shooting finally ended, 12 people were dead and 58 were wounded.

Why? Well, worst of all, there appears to be no motive whatsoever. Simply a random act of violence. This makes it so different from other tragedies. Other tragedies are the result of pure accidents, physical failure of some sort, or even carelessness.

But the senselessness of this shooting only compounds the tragedy.

So—what is going on here?

            Depends on who you ask.

A biologist might tell you, “This is an evolutionary one-off. A critically flawed piece of the collective gene pool has been eliminated. James Holmes never had and never will have children.”

A sociologist might tell you, “The isolation and constant exposure to violent images and messages leads to aberrant behavior.”

A political scientist might tell you, “Extremism in political discourse and the ready availability of weapons makes something like this inevitable.”

But as a person of faith, I would suggest to you that there is something terribly broken on planet earth. We live in a fallen world. The fallenness of our world is a huge truth that we typically experience in small, annoying ways which are relatively easy to ignore. But every once in a while, something so grotesque, something so incomprehensible occurs, that we just can’t look away.

So there it is. The unsatisfying short answer. We live in a fallen world.

The Bible tells us that just before the flood, God reached this reluctant conclusion: “God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night” (Gen. 6:5, Msg). And I know what you’re thinking, but things were no better after the flood either (see Gen. 8:21).

So, is this what we’ve come to?

            God have mercy on us.

                        But wait—on second thought—that’s exactly what God did!

You see, God is not surprised by our human horrors. Brokenhearted—yes. But surprised—no. This only serves to make God’s grace all the more shocking. With eyes wide open, God is the one who says to you and me, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rm. 5:8, NIV).