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Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2007

Grace Church of Burlington April 29, 2007 “No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul.”                                                                                                  John Calvin             These have been difficult days for our country. Monday, April 16th, left us all in shock. Then, as we had a few free moments, we were glued to the news channels to try to find out, "Why? Why would a madman take the lives of innocent victims and so many? Later we learned of the packet that had been sent to NBC news and we wanted to find out what it contained. Again, we asked, "Why?"             Have we found out? Do we yet know why someone would do something so senseless, hurtful and indiscriminate to so many innocent people? At one point, Geraldo Rivera said, "This man was so evil, so narcissistic, so full of hate that if he had a button to destroy the world, he would have pushed it."             And yet, if you take the time to read the internet blogs, you will sadly discover that a lot of people either still want to deny the existence of evil all together, or many want to blame this on the evil in society as a whole, as though it were this man's environment that led him to destroy it (and those in it).             But the evil that is so apparent in the heart of Seung-Hui Cho is also coming out in many people's reactions to this tragedy. Within hours of the shootings, I was appalled at the gall of some Virginia Tech students who were blaming the university, politicians blaming gun laws, both pro and con, and of course the psychiatrists blaming nature (or God) for giving Seung-Hui Cho a "chemical imbalance" (I wondered if they had measured the balance of chemicals in Cho's brain to know that).             We don't want to admit this, and we will pass off the blame as much as we can, and we will analyze and theorize to run away from it, but the core problem is one shared with all humanity: people are sinful. We see it in varying degrees and affecting us in different ways, some more obvious than others.  However, with honest self-evaluation, though we may not see how we could be capable of such a horrible deed as the Virginia Tech slayings, we are capable of some pretty bad stuff. In fact, we are guilty of some pretty bad stuff. What if every secret deed, every private thought and every intention of yours were readily visible to others? That's what the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah was talking about when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).             Our hearts go out to those who lost friends and relatives in the Virginia Tech slayings, and I pray for God's grace to fill their void. But more than anything I pray, as I do in the midst of each of these horrible national catastrophes, that the people of our nation will come to understand the root problem and its solution. Our problem is sin. There is only one solution: God's payment and forgiveness through His Son.             Romans 6:23 summarizes this with identifying both the problem and the solution: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”             And let’s not forget that Scripture puts hateful anger in the same category as murder (Matthew 5:21-22). I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve found hateful anger rising in my soul toward someone just because they are in front of me and driving slower than I think that they should. None of us is truly “innocent.” We may not be as bad as Seung-Hui Cho, but we are all sinners, and that's bad enough from God's perspective. The vital question is: Have you received His provision, the solution, forgiveness and spiritual restoration through Jesus Christ? It's available to you today. “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).