Making Sense out of What Happened in Aurora
Let’s get this out of the way as soon as possible…there is no making sense out of what happened in Aurora. What happened in that dark theater at midnight will hold the attention of all of us in this country in the coming months as we search for answers; answers which will never come. In the end, we will get no closer to the, “Why did this have to happen?” as we are at this very moment. For, you see, it is impossible to draw a rational conclusion from irrational behavior.
I think, for those of us who are not suffering a personal loss from this event, there is a very troubling aspect over what occurred. Life is the most precious commodity we have. There are no “do over’s”, no reset button, no rewind switch. We don’t get a second chance. Lose your life, and well…you lose your life.
Since our life is so precious, we like to think there are built-in safe guards in place to prevent things like this from happening. We build redundant systems in airplanes, in case something goes wrong; so hopefully, the back-up part will work. We put in airbags in our cars in case we have an accident. When a madman does something like this, we are reminded of our own mortality…that all of us are hanging on by a thread.
It is this sense, or belief, that if life is so precious; how can it be ended so quickly…so senselessly? It is this line of thinking that keeps a great many believing that there had to be others who helped Lee Harvey Oswald help assassinate John F Kennedy. How could the entire world be turned on end due to the actions of one man? Yet, deep down inside…we know. We know that sometimes, we cannot avoid death at the hands of a madman, no matter how hard we try.
It’s easy, during times like these, to be angry at God. We look to the skies and shake our fist, and scream, “How could you let this happen? If you are a God of love, if you are a just and kind God, why do you continue to allow things like this to happen?”
Yet when something like this occurs, it is the exact opposite happening. These things happen when God is not present in the heart of the person carrying out these evil acts. I will leave it to God to determine if the individual is evil…but the individual’s actions are clearly evil.
Unfortunately, the pain and suffering caused by these individuals seems never-ending. Whether it is a jeep full of madmen pulling up to a village in Darfur to rape and murder innocent women and children, or a madman blowing up a bus of Israeli tourists, or madmen flying planes into skyscrapers, or the likes of a Timothy McVeigh blowing up a building in Oklahoma City…these angels of death all have one thing in common, an absence of God’s love.
The vast majority of us get up every day with no malice in our hearts, we mean no harm to anyone…and yet, sad to say, there are monsters among us. They have been there since time began.
About 35 years ago, I was the victim of a robbery. I was in a store manager’s training program for a large food chain when a gunman came in to rob the store. I had a gun shoved in my side, and told to lie on the office floor while the store manager was forced to empty the safe. The entire time, that gun was pointed at my back. I had gotten up that day, prepared to do an honest day’s work to provide for my family. The monster had gotten up that same morning prepared to kill me…all for a few thousand dollars. Having a loaded gun pointed at you changes you. The lives of those in that movie theater will be changed forever too.
…and so it goes, the agony of knowing that, those monsters that were under our beds as a child, are real.
So, what are we to do?
We must never lose sight of the fact, while the monsters have forsaken God’s love, we have not. It is God’s love which will provide our strength during our darkest hours. We need to trust that God will provide and protect those who have gone on to be with Him. We must never forget that God does not see death as we humans do. We see death as a separation from the people we love…God sees death as an opportunity to be reunited with those He created, and those who have accepted His grace.
God has called those we love to a place by His side where there are no monsters.
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