Call It What It Is

This week was a horrific week in our country. A gunman opened fire on a crowd of concert-goers in Las Vegas, killing 58 and wounding more than 500 people.

It's senseless. It's cold and violent and unthinkable. In a word, it is evil.

Let's call it what it is. We can try to explain it. We can look for a motive or an illness or an abusive relationship or any number of things to help us feel better. In the end, I find it best to call it what it is. It is pure evil.

Only evil would kill unsuspecting people in mass. Only evil would modify guns to be automatic rifles and rain down bullets at an unrelenting pace for more than 10 minutes. Stephen Paddock is evil, plain and simple.

While that doesn't fit into a label or make us feel safer or more comfortable, it is the truth. It's the closest to a real explanation than we'll likely to get through evidence collection or criminal profiles. He was an evil man and he did an evil thing.

Evil has been around, almost since the beginning. In Genesis 1:31, God declared all of creation very good. If it was very good, it could not contain evil. However, somewhere between Genesis 1:31 and Genesis 3, things have changed. An evil creature, Satan himself, in the form of a serpent, tempted and convinced humanity to disobey God and sin.

With one foolish act of disobedience, evil infected all of creation. People became selfish and paranoid. Animals started being hunted and sacrificed. Plants got choked out by weeds. Disease grew and weather changed. Paul writes that all of nature groans because of the sin brought upon it by man.

Now, in our current state, we see evil in everything. It's in a hotel suite shooting at concert goers. It's in a van plowing into pedestrians. It's in hate-filled rallies intending to separate and oppress race. It's in US congressmen asking their mistresses to get abortions while championing pro-life legislation. Evil is all around.

We won't end evil with new laws. We won't end it with more dialogue or understanding. Evil can only end by the power of Christ. It is our duty, as believers in Christ, to share the good news of Jesus with others. Only Christ can eradicate evil. Only Christ in the hearts of human beings can truly end the evil we see.

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