School Shootings and Other National Sins

There is an apparent origin for national sins that has resulted in school shootings. There is a basis in American history. The root cause is a total disregard for the value of human life. For those of us who have lived many decades ago can testify that human life was valued above all things. However, we can trace the history of our country and see how it all came together. A tragic change in the thinking of our people occurred in the 1960s.

Society found itself at the intersection of a five-way crash such as the support for abortion, school shootings, edicts from the Supreme Court, the trans-gender movement, and permissiveness by those in authority. All of these can be traced back to the 1960s when America lost its innocence. It was more than a time of hippies and free love, Woodstock. It was more than protests over the Vietnam War. It became a time in which I am more important than anyone else.

Yes, there had been school shootings, the first of which probably took place in 1870, but these were rare events, not as they are now. A growing movement in earlier decades challenged the position of a pregnant woman when she concluded the need to abort. The Supreme Court issued decisions based on social norms and not the common sense of law. There were those who flirted with the idea of pretending to be the opposite sex yet held  their desires captive in hiding until the claim, “coming out of the closet”. Holding children accountable for their behavior supported by parents was replaced by the concoction children have the same rights as do adults.

All of these issues crashed together in a one decade of the 1960s. The catastrophic result was that the value of life was no longer so valuable. By removing that value, horrible things began to happen. It is not a matter of better police protection. It is more of a matter in which we reinstate the conviction that life is not replaceable. Beatings in public places, drive-by shooting just for the sake of fun, all join in the chaos. We have reaped what we had sown. A baby in the womb is not a baby for these people. One woman said publicly, “it is just an embryo!”

This is reminiscent of ancient Old Testament times in which parents threw their young children into fires as sacrifices to idols. Today our idols are college degrees, a  great job, lots of money, and don’t forget prestige. We have come to the place that we no longer value the breath of another person, infant or adult, because we are more important than anyone else. Killings and crimes has escalated because pleasure of self is more important.

I must repeat ….. The collision of events that occurred in the 1960s gave birth to what we are experiencing today. It’s all about self. Morals and ethics cannot be taught in college. They must be lived out by parents in individual homes and places of recreation and places of worship. The latest school shooter at the Annunciation church has been quoted in his writings, “I know this is wrong, but I have to do it.”  If the value of life had a significant place in our society today, I insist that things would be different! The liberality of those things already cited is like a gun that we have held to your head and pulled the trigger all because another person is no more than a “thing.”