September 15, 2024
It is mind-boggling and heartbreaking to learn that another school shooting has taken place in America, and this time in our beloved state of Georgia. Apalachee High School in Barrow County became the latest target for a deranged and troubled shooter on Wednesday morning.
The school was placed on a hard lockdown because of the shooting and in the hours following the incident, knowing that at least four died from gunshot wounds and nine others were injured, parents anxiously awaited to see if their sons or daughters were victims of the shooter’s rampage.
Dozens of law enforcement officers, emergency responders, and ambulances were observed outside the school.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced that he had directed all available state resources to respond to the incident at Apalachee High School and urged all Georgians to join his family in praying for the safety of all of Georgia’s students in Barrow County and across the state.
According to usafacts.org as of the end of 2022 there have been a total of 1,375 school shootings (including all public and private schools) since the tragic shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. As a result of all those shootings, there have been 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries. Unfortunately, the most recent five school years reflected a substantially higher number of school shootings than the prior 20 years.
Maybe the shooters are influenced and motivated by risky video games that encourage them to engage in extremely dangerous behavior. There are also television and motion pictures that can have an equally devastating impact upon the lives of teenagers. Every parent has the responsibility of monitoring what their children watch and carefully guiding them in paths of righteousness.
There have been many proposed solutions to this monumental problem, but this nation needs a spiritual awakening so that Christians become more passionate about living godly lives and about evangelizing our lost nation and world. Why? Because the salvation of a soul not only rescues a person from the wages of sin, but also helps to rescue a society from devastation and utter chaos.
There was a day when the Christian faith impacted our values and morality. Essentially, our understanding of Scripture, or lack thereof, forms our opinions about what is right and wrong, and what is true and what is false.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century, we have seen secularism making serious inroads into large swaths of American life. Our influence has been flagging. Our compromises have weakened our influence. Our friendship with the world is noticeable. Perhaps there is not enough difference in we who profess to believe in Christ to become the savoring salt and the light that dispels the darkness of a lost world. When the culture influences the church more than the church influences the culture, we have no reason to expect a greater moral compass or more biblically inspired values.
The average age of a school shooter is 16-17 years old. The true Christian would be sensitive to the aberrant behavior and the emotional challenges of such a teenager and seek to provide the help and Christian witness he might need to correct his thinking, check his moral behavior, and win him to Christ.
It stands to reason that true believers in Christ want to replace religious pluralism with the exclusivity of the gospel. They want to replace the call to relativism with the call to righteousness. They want to replace the theory of evolution with the doctrine of creation.
Christians desire to replace feeble compromise with firm convictions, social drinking with sobriety, safe sex with abstinence, the pro-choice agenda with a pro-life agenda, and the ten suggestions with the Ten Commandments.
Those who adhere to Holy Scriptures would want to replace same-sex intimacy with the sanctity of marriage, tolerance with truth, lust with love, and “thus saith the mind of men” with “thus saith the Lord.”
Finally, true believers would always desire to replace death, assassinations, and school shootings with compassion, mercy and grace. That is why we need to evangelize the lost – because it changes men and women into champions of love and peace. This solution may take a while, but I am confident it would work.
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J. Gerald Harris is a retired pastor and journalist who served as editor of The Christian Index for nearly two decades. You can reach him at gharris@loveliftedmehigher.org.
