We cry out over the killing of the innocent…
- Some cried out for Matthew Shepard in ’98, beaten and tortured and left to die by two other, seemingly heartless young men, believed to have targeted Shepard because of his sexual orientation.
- Most cried out on 9/11, when 2,977 people were murdered by Islamic terrorists, who specifically targeted those thousands because they lived on American soil.
- And we all cried out after Charleston last June, when nine African-Americans were shot and killed while praying — at the hands of a young white man, saying he hoped to ignite a race war.
We cry out over the killing of the innocent. We even call them “hate crimes”… crimes motivated by the killer’s disdain of the different. And yet…
Last Thursday, a 26 year old, seemingly also heartless shooter, walked into Umpqua Community College in Oregon, shooting and killing nine innocent others. According to multiple reports, the shooter shot and killed those who identified themselves as Christians.
And what does our current national dialogue seem to be centered on?
Gun control.
From the Intramuralist’s vantage point — which admittedly, is a limited point of view — as each of ours is — here we have another awful, horrendous mass shooting… another incident in which the innocent die young. But unlike Matthew Shepard’s death — where we talked about the callousness and cruelty of a man killed because he was gay… and unlike the scene inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston last summer — where we talked about the callousness and cruelty of men and women killed because they were black… instead of talking about the callousness and cruelty of college students being killed because they are Christians, we talk most about gun control. Something doesn’t make sense.
Make no mistake about it; gun control is an issue worth discussing. It is an issue worth discussing after each of these tragedies; none of us wish to feel this way again. But if the conversation after Oregon focuses more on gun control than on the motive for the shooting, we are omitting an inconvenient truth. The students at Umpqua were killed because they admitted a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Then I take note of what’s happening around the world…
ISIS kills many; they kill many solely because they admit to being Christians.
I see Christians persecuted in North Korea, Somalia, and Iraq.
Christians are also often targeted in Africa — in Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria.
They are targeted, too, in Afghanistan and Syria.
In other words, like it or not, ignore it or not, people who believe that God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to this planet to be their one and only saving grace, are being targeted in increasingly, multiple countries.
And only sometimes, we talk about it.
Let me say again that I have no issue when in response to tragedy, we respectfully debate what aspects of gun control are most effective. I also have no issue discussing the seemingly heartless targeting of innocent persons because they are gay or because they are black or because of some other, isolated factor; that targeting is — in my totally respectful, semi-humble opinion — wrong.
I do have issue, however, with the arbitrary acknowledgment of hate crimes. I have issue when we ignore the reason a man or woman was killed was because they had put their faith in Jesus. There exists an all too selective silence. I wonder why.
Respectfully…
AR