I know what you might be thinking, oh another person’s opinion about this. I feel the same way.  I wasn’t going to write about this, and frankly I wish I didn’t have to. As I was setting the time for my next post to publish, though, I realized that it wasn’t right for me to say nothing at all. Too many thoughts were weighing on my heart for me to be silent. We have to talk about the incident in Roseburg, Oregon.

When I heard the news, I instantly turned towards Twitter to find out what people knew. To my dismay, I saw posts about gun regulations in the midst of counting victims. I’m not going to turn this political, or even state my opinion on the rules, but I’ll say this: we have a problem. We have become so numb that every shooting is instantly a political discussion. In the heat of adversary, where are the people caring for the victims? Where are the people helping the perpetrators? Has the toxicity of evil bred so deep into our souls that we only care about our personal agendas of self-righteousness? The Facebook discussions and the policy-pushings are the only things we care about.

When people are shot down in classrooms and malls, we jump at the chance to state our political opinions. But I’ll tell you this: gun restrictions or not, neither option will change the heart problem that we have. It has been there since birth. It’s an evil that makes all of us guilty. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that very verse in Romans 3:23 places my sins as the same as a lone gunman. What law can change the word of God? What opinion? Nothing but Christ can save us from ourselves.

As we now know, Christians were targeted in the shooting. I had seen it online before the news, and I couldn’t quite believe it. I pushed it to the side in my mind because it’s so easy for people to lie, and something like that couldn’t possibly be true. Slowly, those stories came back, bigger and stronger.
It was true.
It’s hard to believe the world has become the way it is today. We talk so much about loving ourselves that sometimes we forget about each other. Did the people in the gunman’s life expect any of this? Did they know something was missing? Only they can answer that, but now we have to prevent giving him the attention he so desired. I keep seeing articles and posts called “Oregon gunman singled out Christians.” I don’t like that. We need to change the narrative to “Oregon Christians stood up for Christ.” Those people didn’t have to get up, but they did. They didn’t have to risk their life, but they did. We should not be scared of death, but ready to undergo whatever the Lord has planned for us, just as many of them have. Let’s remember that instead.

No more politics, pointing fingers, or poisonous thoughts, just praise.
Remember them.

Image orignally from NY TIMES