I recently read this news item at FoxNews.com. (WARNING: Do not link to this item if you are a sensitive soul. Do link to it if you believe that people are essentially good.) I won’t soil this blog with the sordid details. Suffice it to say that I cannot recall having read or heard of any persons (juveniles, nonetheless) violating other persons in a more horrific manner. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop ruminating on the reality that this actually happened. A group of human beings did this to other human beings.

A few observations:

1.) If I were king (and one day I will be…) these boys would already be dead. The notion that it is “pro-life” to allow humans who violate life in this way to continue to draw breath is, on its face, absurd.

2.) To all the charismatic spiritists out there: there is NO reason for us to believe that these perpetrators are, or were, demon possessed. It drives me crazy when Christians immediately presume that those who commit these kinds of grisly crimes must have been motivated by an evil spirit. (E.g. The Virginia Tech shooter is alleged to have been demon possessed or oppressed here.) People are bad - they do not need to be acted upon by some outside evil force to make them that way. Which leads me to my main point:

3.) People are bad. Totally depraved. I have been asking myself, “Self, what should the Christian learn from these kinds of horrible crimes?” My answer: This unfathomable evil lies in the hearts of all men. Deep down, I am that evil. The reason I don’t rape, steal and kill is not that I am a really good guy. I don’t rape, steal and kill (much), because of God’s undeserved grace in my life. I didn’t deserve godly parents. I didn’t deserve good churches and good communities. I didn’t deserve the relative safety and comfort of an American, suburban, middle-class childhood. This is all grace.

Had I been born into the same circumstances as these perpetrators, there is no reason to believe that I would have mustered from my own flesh the requisite goodness to resist this evil. Before God saved me, I was His enemy. I was at war with God Almighty. Every impulse of my being was directed at resisting Him. This rebellious resistance may not have fleshed itself out in the kind of headline-making brutality that we see with our perpetrators here. Rather, it worked itself out as a quiet, respectable pride. It bottled itself up in a seething, unspoken anger.

What’s the difference, really? Circumstance. God’s sovereign grace. It’s quite humbling. Maybe that’s what we should take from this - a grateful humility.

…

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them… For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened…

 

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

 

Romans 1

Brothers and Sisters, that is all of us apart from divine grace.