how about a little fire, scarecrow?

in the days since the charleston murders, we have seen politicians do what they do best:  push agendas.  it started from the early hours following the shooting when the president began his renewed focus on gun control in his speech.  as the news developed, it became apparent that the killer was a white racist who committed the killings for racist reasons.  the race baiters barely were able to get their rhetoric spun up when they were shut down by the reactions of charleston's citizens, who instead of reacting with ignorant violence like we saw in ferguson and baltimore, instead came together not as different races or different religions, but as fellow human beings finding solidarity in the loss of nine of their own.  well, this would not do.  the public's tiredness over the issue of gun control quickly led to the topic fading back into the political quagmire from which it rose.  now, in an effort to find some sort of blame, we see the politicians going after a flag.  the absurdity of this focal point is actually quite laughable, as if the flag was what caused the terrorist to become a racist killer.  what is the end game of these attacks?

in debate, there are various techniques used to avoid answering a question.  we will see many of these being employed in the coming months as the presidential race heats up.  one such method is called the straw man defense.  the premise behind this technique is that when a person is asked a question that they are a) not prepared to answer or b) do not want to answer, so they set up a "straw man" to attack to divert the attention away from the original question.  it is essentially setting up a decoy because it is easier.  in the aftermath of a senseless tragedy such as this, people want answers.  they need to know why, because the idea of taking a life in cold blood is so horrific that people scramble to try and make sense of it, to understand it.  these desperate attempts to come to terms with what has happened are due to a need to maintain control.  whenever something happens that challenges our sense of control we try to rein it in and put it in a nice, neat, orderly explanation box so that we can say, "this is why."  it is a natural reaction to an unnatural event.  but then it happens again and our sense of order is upended and we start looking for other culprits to explain it away.  the answer is there, but we don't want to face it as a society.  politicians sure don't want to face it, because much of it lands in their laps, and thus the scarecrows began being set up and torched.

we have seen the straw men of racism, guns, flags, mental illness, and a plethora of other scarecrows burned in the past few days.  so in order to fully understand what happened, we have to get to the root cause.  trying to solve the problem by sensitivity training, gun control, symbol destruction, and medication are like putting band-aids over skin cancer.  they may cover up the problem temporarily, but the cancer is still spreading and the person will end up dying unless something changes.  in order to save the victim, you have to address the root cause, which is the cancer that is destroying their body from the inside.  so what is the root cause?  it is the same cause that has been present throughout history.  

think back before columbine.  the idea of someone shooting up a school was not given a second thought.  the worst thing we had to worry about was getting beat up by somebody because you stole their girlfriend or talked trash to them.  the concept of mass shootings, outside of mob or gang activity, is a relatively new one.  people want to blame the guns, but guns have been around for hundreds of years, and repeating guns that hold more than one round have been around for over a hundred.  racism has been around since biblical times, and will always be with us.  it's unfortunate, but it's the truth.  no matter how much sensitivity training and race relations the government forces upon people, there are those that are going to judge someone because of the color of their skin.  there have been mentally ill people around since the beginning of time, although the diagnoses have recently become more specific.  but even without all of the mind-altering drugs we have available today, you didn't see them committing these atrocities.  so why the shift?  it is simple, as the best answer is usually the simplest.

the problem is we have lost our value of human life.  every evil committed against others can be traced back to not valuing their life.  in order to commit harm to another person, you have to first stop seeing them as a life that has value.  this process is usually a gradual one.  children aren't born racists, and aren't born killers.  it is something that happens over time.  and western society didn't get here overnight.  it was a gradual process.  first was the distortion of Scripture, or its complete removal from the equation.  see, when people view God as a loving creator, giving humans value because of His personal touch in creating them, then it causes us to see others as God sees them.  in order to do that, however, we have to see all lives as valuable to God.  early slave owners used Scripture out of context or ignored it altogether to justify their enslaving others.  they began by dehumanizing them, viewing them as animals.  this abominable practice continued all the way through the civil rights movement and can still be found today.  whenever you dehumanize someone, it makes it easier to cause them harm.  soldiers have done it throughout our history.  they refer to the enemy as japs, krauts, gooks, zipperheads, skinnies, hajiis, ragheads, etc.  the introduction of evolutionary teaching, which initially taught a hierarchy of races based upon their proximity to apes in the evolutionary process, only furthered this dehumanization.  humans were no longer seen as specially created by God, but just a higher form of evolved animal.  when we lose a Scriptural view of life, it makes it easier to forget or ignore the value that God places upon life.

step two in the devaluing of life in society came when roe vs. wade allowed the practice of abortion.  society began to no longer view life as valuable from conception, but only after birth.  this has morphed into the more modern practices of partial birth abortions, and have even culminated in those saying that a baby is not even a person at birth, but only after a few weeks or months have passed.  some even go so far as to say that a baby is not a person until after a year of age.  this devaluing of human life is now taught in schools by the murderous planned parenthood organization, which was founded by a racist as a way of culling the black population.

step three in the devaluing of life was the shift in entertainment.  in television and movies, violence has gotten more graphic and gory, now including scenes of children being killed.  video games such as grand theft auto glorify killing of innocents.  in the 1980s, gangster rap began to become popularized, with violent images being portrayed in the songs.  all of this bombardment of violence leads to a desensitization towards murder, which unfortunately is primarily aged at our children and teenagers.  they are told from a young age that life has no value, in both teaching and actions, so it is no surprise that they are so quick to turn to violence.  we are no longer allowed to teach the principles of Scripture on the value of life, and we are witnessing the disastrous results of that shortfall.

you see, you can take guns away, but people will still find ways to kill, even if it is with their bare hands.  when my bride and i worked at a children's home for at-risk kids, there were times we had to take away pencils from kids because they threatened to use them as a weapon.  so removing guns is not the answer.  you can take down flags from public view, but it won't stop people from being racist.  if anything, it will only further their hatred for other races.  you can medicate mentally ill people, but even the drugs that are used to treat many of these symptoms have side effects that are just as bad if not worse than the symptoms they are meant to treat.  and if that person runs out of that med, the withdrawal symptoms can quickly turn a person into a monster.

the answer comes from teaching a Scriptural view of the value of life, and in order to do that, we as CHRIST-followers have to show the world that what we have is worth entertaining.  an atheist in charleston said that what he saw in the days after the shooting gave him a compelling case for CHRISTianity.  unfortunately, this world may be past the point of no return, and unless there is a drastic shift back to biblical values, things are only going to get worse, and no amount of gun control or training is going to fix it.