This is a burning question in the minds of our nation.  How could God allow the incredible tragedy to occur in Connecticut that resulted in the deaths of 20 innocent children and 6 adults?  What kind of God would do this?

One of the most profound statements came from a Jewish Rabbi who simply said… in the Jewish faith, we don’t blame God for evil in the world.  God doesn’t do evil, man does.  It’s true.  God didn’t allow this evil event to happen and God didn’t orchestrate it.  God isn’t to blame.  Man is.

You might say… isn’t God sovereign?  To which I would respond, what does the sovereignty of God have to do with the tragic events that occur in the world?  We live in a fallen world where the governing principle is not everlasting life, but sin and death.  When man rejected God through disobedience, sin entered the world.  That was an act of man.  The Bible tells us through the first Adam sin entered the world.  God didn’t do that, man did.  It’s just a short time later that we see the first recorded murder in history where Cain kills his brother Abel.  None of this existed prior to man’s disobedience to God.  It’s all the result of man’s disobedience to God.

But why doesn’t God just stop the evil?  God is a God of perfect love and He created man for the purpose of relationship in the context of His perfect love.  But, in order for love to exist, you must have free will.  Otherwise it’s not love.  In order for faith to exist, you must have free will.  Otherwise it’s not faith.  If God violates our free will, then He takes away our capacity to love and the choice to live by faith and that would violate His nature.  God cannot violate His nature.  Therefore, man has a free will and he is free to choose life and live God’s way or choose death and live according to his fallen nature that is ruled by sinful desire.  As a fallen humanity, man is okay with some sinful desires.  We love sexual freedom, freedom to alter our consciousness through drugs and alcohol, freedom to be greedy and coveteous.  But other sinful desires we don’t love.  We don’t love what we consider to be perverse sexual desires or murder.  But truthfully it’s all part of the same box of sinful desires.  Because man is ruled by sinful desires, man commits heinous and horrific acts of violence that we call evil, but it’s not truly evil… it’s simply sinful and part of the wild kingdom of life outside of God’s Presence.

So why doesn’t God fix it?  He did fix it at the cross.  Through the cross, man can be forgiven and transformed from be ruled by sinful desires to being ruled by the Holy Spirit.  Man can exchange his badness for God’s goodness.  Man can have a transformed heart… but it must be received by faith.  God won’t violate man’s will to make you believe or accept transformation… you have to willingly surrender as an act of will.

Now, the question with the event in Connecticut is did the shooter have the capacity to exercise free will because of his mental disability or illness?  Could something have been done to prevent this tragic event and I believe much could have been done.  You have to ask yourself, what was a single mom with a mentally disabled adult doing with assault weapons that were not locked up for safety reasons?  Was the young man on medication to help him manage his disability or in the case of Autism or Asperger’s symdrome is there medication that can help manage this disability?  If not, then what laws can we enact to help govern the lives of families with kids that suffer from mental disabilities and illnesses?  For instance, if you are a felon you can’t be around guns or illegal drugs.  Do we have similar laws for families with kids that could pose a risk to society.  Are there government checks and balances in place for mentally ill individuals who received Social Security or Medical / Medicare that requires them to be on medication under a doctor’s care to receive aid?  There are those who are saying we need more gun control.  Gun control isn’t the answer.  Gun control puts guns only in the hands of criminals and takes them out of the hands of law abiding citizens.  Gun control is part of the problem.  In states where registered gun owners are allowed to display their guns openly, crime rates are lower.  In Israel, teachers carry automatic weapons and display them on their shoulders openly.  You never hear of a shooting in a school in Israel.  Man has been given all the resources from God to rule and reign in this world with compassion and grace, but the fundamental problem is that man has rejected God and by rejecting God has replaced the love and righteousness of God as the governing principle with man’s sinful desires and thus we have evil in the world.  This isn’t God’s fault… this is man’s fault.

My heart grieves with the families who lost their dear children.  Husbands who lost their best friends and lovers.  But I also grieve with the family of the shooter who are now faced with the stigma and shame of this horrific sin.  I grieve with the families of every family with a child that suffers from a mental handicap or illness because society wants to blame all of these kinds of events on them.  Every culture needs a scapegoat.  But those who are mentally handicapped or ill are not evil.  They are not wicked.  They don’t have a seed of evil waiting to show it’s ugly head at some unforseen moment in history.  But they do need special care and attention and protection.  But it’s not God’s fault that they are the way they are.  None of this was God’s intent.  He intended for us to live in a tropical paradise, completely cared for in unbroken fellowship with Him and each other.  It was man who decided to leave the garden.