5 to Live By

The Sandy Hook Elementary School Edition 

Linking you to the top 5 Christian blog posts of the week—posts that provide robust, rich, and relevant insights for living. This week I highlight posts that provide a healing perspective on the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. 

Amazing Grace: A Tribute to the Victims 

CNN provides a moving tribute to the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School with their faces shown during the singing of Amazing Grace. View it here in Amazing Grace: A Tribute to the Victims.  

God’s Restraining of Evil 

A question has haunted many committed Christians. “Why didn’t God, who could stop this horrible tragedy, not stop it?” Randy Alcorn provides biblical wisdom when he explains that God may already be halting 99.9% of all possible evil. As he says: 

Might God be limiting sin all around us, all the time? Second Thessalonians 2:7 declares that God is in fact restraining lawlessness in this world. For this we should thank him daily. 

He also shares: 

“But many children suffer; why doesn’t God protect them?” We don’t know the answer, but we also don’t know how often God does protect children. The concept of guardian angels seems to be suggested by various passages (see, for example, Matthew 18:10). 

And Alcorn points out that: 

Evil and suffering make up part of a world in which God allows fallen people to go on living. How much evil and suffering is too much? Could God reduce the amount without restricting meaningful human choice, or decreasing the urgency of the message that the world’s gone desperately wrong and we need to turn to the Redeemer before we die? 

Read all of Alcorn’s biblical wisdom principles in Why Doesn’t God Do More to Restrain Evil and Suffering?  

The Culture of Death 

Peggy Noonan suggests several responses to and reasons for such horrific violence. She believes that we—our culture of death and violence—are in part responsible. As she says: 

Third, everyone who has warned for a quarter-century now that our national culture has become a culture of death—movies, TV shows, videogames drenched in blood and violence—has been correct. Deep down we all know it, as deep down we know our culture has a bad impact on the young and unstable who aren’t sturdy enough to withstand and resist sick messages and imagery. 

When Hollywood wants to discourage cigarette smoking it knows exactly how to do it, because it knows exactly how much power it has to deliver cultural messages. When Hollywood wants to encourage environmentalism it knows how to do it. But there’s a lot of money to be made in violence, and God knows there’s a market for it—in fact, the more people are fed violence the bigger the market grows, so it’s an ever hungry, always growing market. This is exactly what you want if you’re in a tough business and don’t have a conscience. 

Republicans have no sway in Hollywood, none. They are figures of mockery, sometimes deservedly so. If they get into the act here, Hollywood will be able to ignore them, and nothing will change. But the Democrats and the president are in a different position. They could change things for the better. 

President Obama should have a Nixon-to-China moment. If he tells Hollywood it has made America sicker, Hollywood will be forced to listen. It won’t be so easy for them to turn away. 

If the president had strong, clear, uncompromising words—if he made an address aimed only at them, a clear and unsparing one that told the truth as everyone knows it—that would make a real difference. 

Right now Hollywood is buzzing about gun control, and not only because as liberals they believe in it. It is also a diversionary tactic. They are trying to evade any part in responsibility for our culture. What a dazzling moment of leadership it would be if the president were honest about them, and to them. 

And yes, of course he knows they’re part of the problem. He is famously a good father to his beautiful girls—responsible, there. And you know he would never let them watch a lot of the things his supporters produce. He just wouldn’t want that garbage entering his children’s heads. 

Read all her thoughts in Newtown.  

A Lament for the Victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School 

At RPM Ministries I shared my heart: 

How in the world do we respond to the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut? There are no easy answers, only difficult truths.  

I then discussed Telling Yourself the Truth in Blessed Are Those Who Mourn. And then I discussed Telling God the Truth in Biblical Lament. You can read all my thoughts in A Lament for the Victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School.  

Newtown and My Troubled Heart 

Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile speaks for me and I suspect for many of us when he wonders why we move on so quickly. As he put it: 

I understand that human beings can’t cry forever. I fully realize that anger needs to give way to resolve. I know that feelings are a gift from God but we can’t feed upon them unceasingly. But I’m still left feeling I should feel more and asking why I haven’t. What about you? 

Read all of Pastor Thabiti’s reflections in Newtown and My Troubled Heart. 

Join the Conversation 

Which post impacted you the most? Why? What blog posts in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School have ministered to your hurting heart? 

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth