Teen suicide - school shootings...words that should never be paired together and yet it is becoming a more common occurrence. Which leads everyone to ask the "why" question and point a finger at a variety of targets and offer a variety of solutions. Many of these deal with surface symptoms, the question for me is to always ask "what is going on beneath the surface?" or "how did we get here?"
Dr. Grant Osborne in his commentary on the book of Revelation says this when looking at Rev. 18:1-24: "Justice is often impossible to find in this fallen world. The Golden Rule has been modified in this world to say, 'Do unto others before they can do unto you.' It is generally agreed that the recent outbreak of school shootings is not simply the result of bad parenting or violence in movies. More than anything else, it is the result of a society of greed, an attitude that says I can do whatever I wish and no one has rights but me."
I believe that he is on to something and today I want to explore how the theory of evolution contributes to this narcissistic mentality. I have a Bach of Science in Forestry, when I was in college evolution was taught as a theory, today it is more promoted as a fact, despite that holes that can be shot into the theory...in my vertebrate zoology class the question came out "How do you hold onto faith and evolution at the same time...the professor admitted to being a theistic evolutionist...not a road I would go down...if that same discussion happened today I wonder if he would have been able to do that...
In that zoology class we mixed up proteinoid micro spheres and talked about how they could have washed up on some lava and bounced around, connected, somehow came to life and over millions of years evolved into everything we see around us including ourselves. Only the fit survive and the ultimate goal is to consume things (be one of the fit) and pass your genes on.
So what does that have to do with teen suicide or school shootings? Simple, the message that ultimately gets taught to our children is that there is no God, this life is all there is, so eat drink, be merry (consume things) for tomorrow we die...what a hopeless message. If this life is all there is then it is pretty depressing. If this life is all there is then I can do whatever I want...including walking into a school and opening fire...or if this is all there is why not end it right now...
Several years ago I had a conversation with 2 college students if there was absolute truth. They quickly said "No". So I asked them if I pulled out a gun and shot that man would it be wrong? They said "yes" To which I responded "How do you determine what is right and wrong?" They answered "What society deems is right and wrong." So I said Nazi Germany said if that man was a Jew it would be "ok" to kill him, so where they right? Their society said it was ok...they said "no, we won the war..." So I asked them "If we had lost the war they would have been right?" They really didn't have an answer for that one...I then shared how Scripture accurately explains the world around me...leads me to understand that there is a God and absolute truth and how we can know right from wrong...but that is another story for another day...
Can man live without God? No, if he tries we will eventually spiral down into chaos, live under a mound of rules and regulations or under authoritarian dictators...evolution may not be the "root" cause, but it serves and drives at removing God and eternity from the picture...freeing individuals to do whatever they want...including teen suicide and random acts of violence...
Christians have the mandate to carry the Good News of the Gospel to our world...we need to get about the business of doing that, because in the end it is the only way a society will be transformed...it is the only way our world will be prevented from spinning into chaos...
