Prayer, Massacres, Gun Control, and the Elephant in the Room

Within a day or so of the massacre in San Bernadino, the New York Daily News ran a full page spread with the title: God Isn't Fixing This." Their point, as you read the article, is we need better gun control.

I see it much differently.

The reason God may not fix this is not likely about gun control. It has to do with the proverbial elephant in the room. It is called national sin.

We kill one million (1,000,000) babies each year in American abortion clinics, and write laws to ensure the slaughter continues. We can’t even agree as a nation that selling baby parts is nothing short of what the Nazis were guilty of.

We have elevated sexual perversions to the law of the land. We gleefully substitute the almighty and holy God for gods of power, lust, fame, and money (we even had a TV show, “American Idol’). We have voted for men and women for all kinds of political and judicial offices who openly mock God, who have voted to remove any mention of God in schools, or the market place. We send our children to government schools where they are taught to mock God and promote various sexual sins.

I could go on and on. So can you, I suspect.

Yet we like to think, in the midst of all our willful national sins, God will run to our aid?

Ancient Israel lived with a similar perverted notion of the holy God. They did exactly what we are doing, and they also expected God to deliver them. They learned a very hard lesson when He did not – although He has warned them again and again.

For example, 2 Chronicles 36: “15 The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; 16 but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy.”

One of the prophets Israel mocked was Jeremiah. Here is what God said through that prophet (chapter 7): “Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, 10 then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—that you may do all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares the Lord. . . .

13 And now, because you have done all these things,” declares the Lord, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you but you did not answer, 14 therefore . . . . I will cast you out of My sight . . . .”

16 “As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you.”

I quoted only a small portion of this text in chapter 7 of Jeremiah, but I hope the point is clear enough. God’s patience is not without limit.

We talk too much of the love of God and of prayer to the nearly complete exclusion of His demand for our holiness.

In fact, speaking of God only with regard to His love, and not balancing that concept with the equally true concept of His holiness, judgment, and wrath is to simply repeat the ancient church heresy called Marcionism. You can read about that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

No, guns are not our problem in America. Our rejoicing in our sins is our problem. And only when we turn our attention back to God in national repentance will our many problems be resolved.