The Real Problem with Gun Violence

Eighteen years ago, on April 20, 1999, our nation changed. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered into Columbine High School, killed fifteen individuals (including themselves), and injured twenty-four. It wasn’t the first school shooting, but at the time it was the most memorable. The Columbine massacre had a strong effect on me personally. I was a sophomore in high school when the event occurred, but the discussion of the motives of Harris and Klebold included bullying. My own mind went back to when I was personally bullied during the previous year, as a freshman. I vividly remember weeping through tears as I told of my own bullying to my parents. And I remember feeling a desire for revenge against those who tormented me.

This year, on Valentine’s Day, we witnessed another, similar act of evil. A lone gunman killed seventeen people in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Despite the claims of some, the recent plethora of school shootings do not demonstrate that guns are the problem. Guns are a tool to be used for good or for evil. The problem is much darker. The problem is the human heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) When I desired revenge, I was demonstrating a sick, dark heart. That heart, if we are honest with God and with ourselves, exists in all of us. The propensity to do evil is there, whether we admit it or not.

My parents were wise and loving, and responded to me with something like, “You are a Christian, and because of the work of Christ, you wouldn’t hurt people.” My parents, in their wisdom, weren’t looking to lock up the kitchen knives to keep me from physically hurting someone. They were not dealing with the symptom of the problem or the tools of the problem, but the solution. The problem with humanity – the problem with school shootings – is that darkness in the heart is natural, and light in the heart is supernatural. Since the Fall of humanity, we live in a world that is governed by evil and chaos.

Christ’s work in bringing order to the chaos, in solving the problem of humanity’s evil, is through the work of redemption – man receives a “new heart” and a “new spirit.” For a time, while we remain on this earth, we still struggle with the existence and the presence of evil. But if you have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, you have a God-given ability and possibility to live in a manner that is pleasing to God and to demonstrate a hatred for evil. For those reading who are Christian, “We do not grieve as those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). For Christ himself will one day return to right all wrongs, to end injustice, war, violence, and hatred, and to bring peace to the earth. “Therefore, encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18)

The solution to the problems of school shootings, violence, and evil is not more laws, or even Law itself. The solution to the problem of evil is Grace, and Grace comes in the form of a Cross.

Christopher Watson is the Pastor of First Baptist Church of Parkers Prairie, Minnesota.