Society Murdering the Value of Human Life

The mass killings of 2012 are appalling. 

In both Colorado and Connecticut, the killers were considered very smart. Neither was apparently motivated by politics, religion or race. Both played video games.

Many games have the player go from room to room killing and killing and killing. Many boys and young men enjoy the thrill of mowing down person after person. In Norway, Anders Breivik trained with the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, before murdering 77 people.

The value of pixels on a monitor is nothing. You can kill “people” all day long with games, but there’s an impact on the mind and the spirit. Some few people will fantasize about doing the real thing. An even smaller number will do it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s latest three games have sold over 40 million copies, and that’s just one series of violent games. It only takes one game player to go out and kill 27 people.

The lives of the 27 people in Connecticut were of tremendous value to their families but not to Adam Lanza, their evil killer.

The value of life has not only been diminishing in video games. Violence in movies and television has been growing. Even in the general culture, the value of life is diminishing. There have been more than 54 million abortions since the Supreme Court declared life in the womb unworthy of protection.

The American healthcare system is headed toward denying care to those whose remaining life is not considered valuable by the government.

The root cause of the problem is a move away from belief in God. In the Declaration of Independence our founding fathers declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”

The belief that the government has a responsibility to secure the right to life is fading. Increasingly, the government is securing the right to sin. It protects abortion. It protects pornography (which demeans the value of human dignity). It even protects ultra violent video games.

The reason the government is doing this was explained at its inception by John Adams when he said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

Addressing His disciples, Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.”

The church is being trampled. Many Christians have lost the ability to be salt and light in culture. If every Christian was doing what he or she was called to do, companies could not sell 40 million copies of violent video games. Movies and television programs would be much more wholesome. Pornography would not sell. Millions of girls and women would not be seeking abortions. Adam Lanza’s parents might not have gotten divorced. Adam and his parents might not have skipped going regularly to church. And, Adam may not have murdered 27 people in cold blood.

God created life to be valuable. If you ignore God and ignore His wisdom, the value of life drops. The Romans used to line roads with people on crosses. They fed them to lions and watched them kill each other as sport. It was Christianity that stopped this behavior by teaching the value of life.

God sent his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross for the forgiveness of the very least of mankind, including the worst sinners. We should value life because God does.

If we value life, we should stand for the value of life in our church, our politics, our entertainment, our business, and our family. We should be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. We should impact the world by changing lives.

There were people who knew Adam Lanza and his mother were having problems. If they’d been reached a month ago, there might be 27 more people alive today. Right now, there are people in need of help. The next Adam Lanza is playing video games today. He could be in Georgia, in California, in Wisconsin. He could be in your neighborhood.

We can do nothing for Adam now. We can do something for the millions of children being raised in a culture that’s diminishing the value of life.