Why Political Social Media Posts Miss the Real Root of the Florida School Shooting
Once again this week, our nation has experienced another mass shooting, this time in a school in South Florida. The news media provided coverage once again of the horror that took place and the pundits and politicians took turns standing in front of the cameras making all the “right statements” and asking the nation to pray for the families and community affected. There were also the obligatory calls for disarming Americans and the rebuttals from the NRA and other 2nd Amendment groups.
However, none of these people addressed the real issue that has brought our country to the place where these attacks have become more and more frequent. We should all be horrified that these attacks take place but none of us should be surprised. We have for years, through our government and education, taught our children that human life is simply an accident of nature. We just happened, and humanity has no greater value than the rocks we stand upon, which also just happened with no design or planning. We teach this in our schools, and our government has endorsed it as the correct explanation for human existence. This is not only promoted by our government and educational system but reinforced by every medium possible. Movies, television programs, books, magazines, comic books, video games and other media all present this same line of reasoning: Humanity is a cosmic accident. We have now raised a generation that has been taught that life has so little value that killing an infant either inside or outside of the womb is not a criminal act—it is simple health care.
On top of the outside influence of governmental system, the educational system and various media outlets, we now have a generation that has been raised to believe that there is no real value to a human life, because all life is simply arbitrary. These same children have been raised watching television 24 hours a day that is filled with violence of every kind. They have played first-person video games their parents purchased for them which placed them in the role of mass murderer and rapist. We should not be surprised that this learned devaluing of humanity has infected a generation in which life has no value and if life has no real value, then taking a life is no different than kicking a rock down a road.
Once again, none of us should be surprised at the growing number of murders and mass attacks and even the growing number of suicides. They are the inevitable result of the devaluing of human life, which we not only have allowed to be taught to our children, but we actually invested our resources and our right to vote to teach them that life has no value.
The truth is too many of us have waited too long to be horrified. We should have demonstrated our outrage and horror when the biblical values our nation was founded upon were diminished by the lies and deceptions promoted by atheists and humanists. Maybe if we stood horrified together, then we would not be watching the news being horrified today. It isn’t too late to bring change. It isn’t too late to teach that humans were designed by G-D and are not simply part of creation, but the very reason for creation. {eoa}
Eric Tokajer is author of With Me in Paradise, Transient Singularity, OY! How Did I Get Here?: Thirty-One Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before Entering Ministry, #ManWisdom: With Eric Tokajer and Jesus is to Christianity as Pasta is to Italians.
