The Orlando Massacre

I was shocked and deeply-saddened when I opened my news-feed on Facebook this last Sunday morning, June 12, 2016, to read that there had been a mass-murder at a nightclub in Orlando, just thirty miles from my home. It is with grief and a heavy-heart that I am writing about this heinous event, an event I had hoped and prayed that I would never write about, but have to.

Those who have died or were injured were innocent victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened anywhere in Orlando, or anywhere in America, anywhere large groups of people are gathered. There are many “soft-targets” within the metro-Orlando area, some of which receive over fifty-thousand visitors every day, seven days a week. The Pulse nightclub may have been chosen if the killer harbored anti-gay ideology, but we can’t read his mind after the fact. We all have targets on our backs because we can never know who will be targeted next, so it behooves all of us to be vigilant.

There will be lots of blame passed around over the coming days and weeks, and many “solutions” offered to help keep this from happening again, but they will all fall far-short of the true reason this happened. There will be many “scapegoats“…

Some people may blame the FBI for not “doing something” when they investigated the killer at least twice before he committed this heinous act. However, in a free society, where we value free-speech and free-thought, it isn’t against the law to hold to beliefs that aren’t “politically-correct“, or we would all be behind bars, myself included. As a Christian, in this increasingly-godless society, my Christian beliefs are not “politically–correct“.

Some will call for more “background-checks“, however the killer was a licensed Armed Security Guard and had passed a couple of “background-checks” already, so more “background-checks” would not have prevented this heinous act. “Background-checks” can only assess prior activities, but they are not good-predictors of future actions.

Some people will blame the weapon, an inanimate object, a tool, for what happened, however no gun has ever killed anyone without a human-operator. Guns and bullets don’t kill people, people kill people…PERIOD.

Some people will scream for more “gun-control“, claiming that if that type of weapon, an “assault-rifle“, hadn’t been “readily-available“, this might not have happened. That stance ignores the fact that if a person is determined to kill someone, they will ALWAYS find a way. Lest we get caught-up in this kind of rhetoric, Cain killed Abel with a ROCK. We must also remember that terrorists are using explosive-filled vests, “suicide-vests“, very frequently to kill large number of people. The fact is that an explosive-vest, with the right kind of high-explosives, could have killed far more people. Another thing to remember is that this type of weapon is readily-available in the underground-market even if it can’t be bought legally.

Some people will blame the religion or political-ideology of the killer for this heinous act, and that may have been part of his motivation, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The problem goes far-deeper than that, which we will explore shortly.

Some people will even blame the LGBT community for what happened, saying that if they weren’t so “open“, so “out“, even “in your face” about their sexuality choices, this might not have happened. Again, this may have been a contributing-factor, but it is only a symptom of the breakdown of the moral-fiber of our community. Orlando is home to one of the largest LGBT communities in the world, and Disney is their largest employer. My friend and neighbor work at Disney, and she lost several friends and co-workers. It was, and is a real human-tragedy, regardless of how you stack it up.

The root-cause…
Yes, there IS a far-deeper problem than just one deranged man massacring over fifty people, and that problem is SIN! We ARE sinners. Every last one of us, and without the restraining-grace of God, any one of us could do what that evil man did, kill many people. Nobody is “exempt” from the problem of having an evil heart, and it isn’t that we are “better-people“, because we aren’t. The Bible states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?“(Jeremiah 17:9) Jesus also said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.“(Matthew 15:19) That, my friends is the “root-cause” of what happened in Orlando this last weekend.

The “cure”…
Yes, my friends, there IS a “cure” for our sin-problem, but it isn’t: being a “better-person“, being “more-religious“, or even being “more-spiritual“. God provided the “cure” almost two-thousand years ago in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to save sinners, like you, like me, because we are ALL sinners in desperate-need of a Savior. Trusting in the shed-blood and finished work of Jesus Christ alone for our salvation is the ONLY “cure“. That, my friends, is the Good News of the Gospel. I need to be reminded of the Gospel every day lest I become just another “religious-person“.

There is a faction of people, who call themselves “Christians“, who are celebrating this event, but they aren’t truly Christians if their hearts are so full of hate. Jesus said that the second Great Commandment was to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no room in that commandment for hate.

What was the spiritual-condition of those who died? Only God knows for sure, so I can’t even presume to make any assumptions. If they died, having never accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they are reaping what they sowed, eternal separation from God. If they were Believers, trusting only in the shed-blood and finished-work of Christ for their salvation, they are in the joyous-presence of their Lord and Savior. What grieves and saddens me most, as a Minister of the Gospel, is that those who died without Christ will not get a second-chance. They will never have another opportunity to hear and believe the Good News of the Gospel. Their destiny was sealed the moment they took their last breath.

I am gratified by the outpouring of support that has flooded in over the last couple of days. The downtown-Orlando blood centered had way more willing-donors than they could handle, and had to ask potential-donors to make an appointment for later in the week. I don’t think that it was coincidental that I donated blood just last Friday, so my “pint-of-life” was already “in the bank” and ready to use. Food, water and other supplies also came pouring-in for those in need.

My message to fellow-Christians:
Homosexuals are NOT “worse-sinners” than we are, so before we join in condemning the LGBT community, we need to examine our own hearts. Examine them for what? PRIDE!!! PRIDE is rampant among Christians, but we have nothing to be “proud” of. Everything we have is by the grace of God, including our salvation. Maybe we need a lesson in humility, because God hates PRIDE more than all the other sins combined.

Final thoughts…
I am deeply-saddened by what happened, and I join in mourning those who lost their lives, and you should too.

In Christ,
Steve