Last Christmas season, I wrote an article called, "Massacre of the Innocents." We learn in Matthew Chapter 2 of the horror caused by Herod as he ordered the slaying of all the boys younger than age two in Bethlehem and its surrounding areas. He did so because he feared another Jewish king arising and taking power, as foretold by the Old Testament Prophets. The wise men from the east, on their way to see the Christ child, stopped in Jerusalem and revealed to Herod of His birth. This led to the slaughter of the children.
As we grieve for the loss of the children in Connecticut, we see then that such wickedness dates back thousands of years. In fact, more thousands of years before Herod ordered the extinction of the Bethlehem boys, Pharaoh ordered a similar mass murder of all the Jewish boys in Exodus 1:16. Speaking to the Hebrew midwives, he said, "When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him," and when the midwives did not comply, Pharaoh commanded the Egyptians in verse 22, "Every son who is born you shall cast into the river."
The evil that befell Newtown, Connecticut then, has a long heritage. Although we tend to think of such mass slayings as recent developments, a product of our times, the largest schoolhouse death toll in America occurred in 1927, when a deranged school treasurer blew up the school in Bath Township, Michigan, in what it known as the Bath School Disaster, killing 38 elementary school children and six adults.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not in any way trying to diminish the significance of last week's shootings. What I wish to do is to show is that our little mad gunman is part of a much longer history of such terrible things, and although he is completely responsible for the carnage, with no excuse before God, he is not wholly responsible.
This may sound like a contradiction in terms. He is completely responsible, in that his evil has no justification. In his sick mind, he may have had a reason for doing such things, just as Herod and Pharaoh had reasons for their slaughters. But there is no escape from the full culpability for his acts. There is no partial blame here to be shared with others, no mitigating circumstances. The shooter, who lived only twenty years on this earth, will now spend and infinite number of years condemned to suffering far greater than we can imagine.
Yet he is not wholly responsible. We must remember who the ultimate foe is. Satan, who induced the fall of man, is the author of evil. He opposes God's goodness. Jesus directly spoke to such people in John 8:44, " You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning... he is a liar and the father of it." There are numerous passages that describe Satan as the ruler of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, Ephesians 2:2, II Corinthians 4:4), and he used Pharaoh, Herod, Judas, and the Newtown killer as his tools.
There is no doubt that God our father is more powerful than Satan, and His Son Jesus Christ will one day vanquish Satan and there will be no more evil. Until then, wickedness will arise from time to time as Satan inflicts these terrors upon us and our society. I would suggest that Satan has far more experience, knowledge and skills than we do, and although we are compelled to resist him in any way possible, as humans we will not gain victory over him. That victory belongs to Christ.
We will mourn the children of Newtown, and we should do all that we can to protect our little ones. Despite all of our efforts to try and "understand" suffering and the motives of mad men, let us not forget that a determined devil will occasionally defeat all of our best defenses from time to time. When people call for a "national conversation," there will be national discussions on gun control, mental illness, and school security, but don't expect a national conversation on God and Satan.
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