Band-aids and Carwashes

It’s not about guns. It’s not about racism. It’s not about mental health. It’s about hopelessness. It’s about loneliness. It’s about emptiness that will be filled with something and if it’s not filled with good, it will be filled with bad.

Let the politicians have their say. Let the media have their say. It is all the same. Point fingers to win an election or to win ratings. It’s the same thing all the time but, however well meaning they may be, it’s the wrong thing.

New Laws? Reforms? Taxes? We can’t fix a broken leg with a band-aid. We can’t fix a car by washing it. All of the solutions that get tossed around after every mass shooting are just that — bandaids and car washes.

No one seems to want to do the hard work of getting to the root of the problem. Why? Because that might cause self reflection. It might cause us all to look at ourselves as the humble, created beings we are instead of the self-sufficient, successful people we like to think we are. We might begin to see that there is something– someone — bigger than ourselves. Someone who is not out of reach but who wants us to seek, even grope for Him, and find Him.

But most of us don’t really want to find Him. Many of us like our lives just the way they are. Discovering that there really is a God who created us all would require us to listen to HIm, to obey Him, to humble ourselves and conform ourselves to His will. That would mean change. That would mean I have been wrong. That would mean I would have to stop doing things I enjoy and start doing things I don’t understand or don’t want to understand.

What is so sad is that it is those very things I don’t understand or don’t want to do that will solve this problem. We have taken God out of our homes, out of our schools, even out of our churches. We have forgotten the peace that comes from doing what God says is right. We have followed our own way and are now lost. We have raised a generation who knows not God.

It’s dreadful. The children have been denied even the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to follow God or not because they have never been introduced to Him. They are filled with despair, hopelessness, emptiness. They turn to find something that will fill the void. For some it might be money, others it might be drugs, others are lashing out to inflict the pain they feel inside onto someone else and the result is what we’ve seen this weekend in El Paso and Dayton.

God is the answer. Obeying His Word will bring us hope, joy, peace. This is not the easy way out. We each must do the hard work it takes to truly know God and what He wants. We each must do the hard work it takes to humble ourselves and change our ways. But if we don’t, we have only ourselves to blame when we see more of our young turning to evil to fill the void we have refused to fill.

“When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.” Judges 2:10

“ God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being…” Acts 17:24-28

“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 1 Corinthians 1:25

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

Diana Dow