We all sat stunned at the horror of what happened in Newtown, CT. It goes beyond comprehension, especially when you try to understand it only from a human perspective. We were watching Mike Huckabee’s Saturday TV program, and he commented on something a colleague had said. He had asked, “Where is God?”
Huckabee’s response opened his program. He said his answer to this colleague was, “He’s not here. We’ve asked him to leave.” He went on to add that the escalation of the secularism of our culture has more and more taken God out of the equation, as well as out of our culture. It’s not the absence of God as much as it is the growth of the evil.
Yes, there has always been violence and hateful acts, Joel Rosenberg posted the following on his blog. He said, “The demons of violence and lawlessness are loose all across America – in Newtown, Connecticut….in Aurora, Colorado….in Oak Creek, Wisconsin….just as they were in Littleton, Colorado and at Virginia Tech in years gone by. But why? How is it possible that violent crime in the United States has surged by more than 460 percent since 1960?
“The answer is as painful as it is simple: the further we turn away from God in our nation — the further we drive Him out of our society, out of our schools and courts, and out of our media and out of our homes, or the more we give mere lip service to religion, the more men are “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Timothy 3:5) — the worse things are getting.
To me, it’s just more evidence that we live within a spiritual reality that is all around us, but which we cannot see. And since we cannot see it, we ignore it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Daniel saw it: Zachariah saw it in the Temple; Mary saw it when the angel announced she would become the bearer of the Messiah; Joseph saw it when he was encouraged to take Mary as his wife, even though she was pregnant. Paul saw it as did the Apostle John. Even Martin Luther, the reformer saw the Devil and threw his inkwell at him. This spiritual world is real. And there is a war going on in that spiritual realm, and in some way we are part of it.
Maybe what we need more of, instead of prayer in the schools and God in the pledge, is that we who are believers recognize that we are in the midst of a spiritual battle and it is real. We cannot sit on the sidelines and pretend it isn’t there. The forces of evil are having a field day, and only when we become serious about following Jesus will there be a reversal of the evil.
Question: What do you think about the reality of the spiritual world around us?