IT'S ABOUT THE HEART

 IT'S ABOUT THE HEART

       Another terrible tragedy occurred yesterday.  A sick and evil man, convinced that blacks were the cause of  the trouble in our society and had to be removed, according to one statement I heard on the news, walked into a black church, sat in for an hour on a Bible Study/Prayer meeting, then took out a weapon and started shooting, killing 9 individuals in all, including the pastor. Heartbreaking. Inexcusable. And once more the President is stepping in and exploiting the tragedy of Charleston with his propagandist rhetoric about gun control. And he won't be alone. (Yet if there had been one responsible gun owner, then maybe only one would have had to die - the one evil heart  that held and used a weapon of hate.)
        But this is not about guns and gun control.  This is about hate and what lies in the heart.  Do we really think that criminals care about gun (or other) laws? Do they care that there is a law against  murder? I think not.  People disregard Temporary Restraining Orders and kill in spite of them all the time, whether by gun, knife, car or bomb. The manner of murder isn't the important thing or we would outlaw knives and cars!  We need to work on the HEART and the only one who can change the heart is JESUS CHRIST. No law can do that - We have laws against murder galore on our books. We have the Ten Commandments, which includes "You shall not murder."  A dark heart doesn't care what the best law says.
       What we have are loads of laws. Unfortunately, what we seem to have lost is the intrinsic value of human life! If all we are, as some teach now, is a bag of chemicals, then how can any of us have a problem when people are killed, whether by gun or having their heads lopped off by ISIS? If there is no intrinsic value to life, then why do we have a problem with what Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or other dictators have done, killing millions, or what ISIS & Al Qaeda are doing today?  We seriously need to reevaluate the meaning and value of human life! That's the scary issue for me, whatever the reason, whether it's hate based on race or sexual orientation,  self-hatred resulting in cutting, bullying and suicide among our teens,  gangbangers or veterans, the convenience of aborting an unwanted (or "badly timed") baby or just to replicate a video game or steal a pair of sneakers!  In every case listed, one theme is in common:  life is cheap and meaningless.
        If we only recognized the value of our lives that God has put into us!  The worth He has imputed to us by coming to earth - God made man - to die in order to make it possible for us to be reunited and reconciled back to Himself (and then truly to our own selves) both now and eternally.  WOW!  What value!  What  intrinsic worth!  What purpose He has planned for us:  to show others the value they are to Him, the hope of reconciliation with God and man, to build  one another up rather than tearing down, to heal rather than kill. To make our communities safer rather than destroying through vandalization and looting!  To unify and reconcile rather than divide.  

       This is what we were created to do!  When we follow Him, we will be new people - a new KIND of person. ("Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" 2 Cor. 5:17). This doesn't  mean "turning over a new leaf" in the usual sense. A bad hair day and the old returns. But when we become new people in Christ, and put our eyes on Christ (rather than our world, politics, the media, anything we hear from those around us, or even on our own circumstances),  tuning our ears to listen to our Shepherd & Lover of our Souls, Jesus Christ, then we receive a new SPIRIT – GOD’S Spirit living inside of us. We think and discern differently  because we have the mind of Christ instead as we come to know HIS will and His heart. And that will be the only means by which this nation or world will truly change and senseless violence like this and so many other instances we've seen, will end. It won't end completely until Jesus comes back and destroys all evil, but in the meantime, it is happening in one person at a time who calls on His name and follows in His steps. 
       The "system" of this world will always "major in the minors":  focus on the externals like controlling the weapons that darkened and misguided individuals use to spread their pain, hopelessness and evil, but it will never fix the problems. Creating new laws won't fix the problems.  Shutting up or destroying those we disagree with won't fix the problems. ONLY going to the source - exchanging our broken, terrified, hopeless, hard, and rebellious hearts once and for all - for the open, loving, giving, pure and compassionate heart of God and accepting His outstretched and nail-pierced hands, sacrificed for us - will begin to bring healing to this sad and self-destructive world!  This also gives Christians more of a motivation to BE the people of God that He has called us to be:  His voice, His cry to reconciliation, His arms and feet, going where He calls.  Is there a higher calling than that?  I think NOT.  Let’s do it, then – with His Spirit guiding us,  let’s BE the Church of God, marching out like an ARMY of  GOD for GOOD!