The Tyranny of “Do-Somethingism”

As we celebrate—really celebrate is not the correct word—commemorate Memorial Day, our nation finds itself having memorials of an entirely different type.

New York, New York–On April 12, Frank James (62), after posting violent and racist messages on Youtube and Facebook (which were not censored), set out to kill as many people as possible on a New York City subway. The attack left 10 people shot and 29 injured.

Buffalo, New York–Then on May 14, Payton Gendron (18), in another racist, hate-filled attack in Buffalo shot and killed 10 innocent people who were shopping at a supermarket.

Laguna Hills, California–On Sunday, May 16, David Chou (68), opened fire on a group of elderly worshipers at the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Hills, California, killing one and wounding five.

I was going to make some comments about these, but then this week, another tragedy occurred in Texas.

Uvalde, Texas–Tuesday, Salvador Ramos (18), entered the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas, and killed 19 innocent children and two teachers before being shot and killed by law enforcement.

These memorials are memorials of hate, anger, bitterness, selfishness, and senseless tragedy. They are the polar opposite of the Memorials of those young men and women (many of whom were 18-year-olds like the shooters in two of these cases) who laid down their lives on behalf of others.

Memorial Day is about selflessness and self-sacrifice, these tragedies are about selfishness, anger, and deep-seated bitterness.

The perpetrators in these four stories are different, one was black, one white, one Asian, and one Hispanic. We seem to have equal opportunity among mass murderers in this melting pot of a nation.

One was motivated by hatred against white people, one by hatred against black people, and two killed people primarily of their own race. Two were young, and two were old. All were men. Yet, they all had one more thing in common. They were filled, even overcome, by hate.

There will be inevitable discussions about guns and assault weapons. There are fewer households with guns now than at any time in our nation’s history, yet hate and killing are increasing. While legislators would like to outlaw assault weapons, anyone who owns a gun knows that the assaults could have been carried out with a 22-caliber squirrel gun and been almost equally deadly. In all these situations the perpetrators had no interest in obeying whatever laws might be on the books. Laws make no difference to the lawless, especially if there is no will to enforce them.

This isn’t an article about gun control. I am a preacher and the Bible doesn’t really say much directly about our right to bear arms. The point I want to make is that the gun discussion, the anti-depressant discussion, or whatever blame is dished out is a distraction from the real problem.

Everyone wants to do something. The tyranny of do-somethingism is that it is usually poorly thought out, almost always the wrong response, and often used by dishonest people to distract from the real problem.

The real problem is that we have become a selfish, angry, and hate-filled culture. The ideas of love and self-sacrifice that characterize this Memorial Day holiday, have been erased from our national psyche and replaced with you deserve better.

Jesus said this,

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. (John 15:13)

We have now spent the greater part of a century removing God and Jesus from the national public square. Jesus Christ has been despised and denigrated and replaced with the notion that humanity is no better than any animal. While I do not deny that atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, those are corruptions of the true teaching of Christ. Anger and hatred in the name of Christ are not Christian.

Jesus taught that we ought to love one another enough to lay down our lives for one another, and then He did it Himself, not just as an example, but in order to secure the blessings of forgiveness and redemption for individuals who will turn to Him in true faith.

We have sown a disregard for human life. We abort our children by the millions and then wonder how the few that remain will care for us in our old age. Hollywood and the entertainment media, with astounding hypocrisy, decry the hatred and violence in our society while feeding our culture a steady stream of the most horrible and graphic portrayals of it in the name of entertainment.

We have deprived our children of grounded families. The Texas shooter grew up with drug-addicted parents who were constantly in and out of prison. The Satanic attack on marriage (and the family) has produced a mentally and emotionally damaged generation that does not know what the loving environment of a solid home feels like.

Our political leaders foment hatred between various groups of people in the name of political power.

This is all evil.

While every individual must be held responsible for his own behavior, the culture that has rejected the values that made this nation great is presently now reaping the harvest of its rejection of God Himself.

It is time to repent and return to your Creator, America. If you do not, you will continue to sink into the cesspool of hate, anger, and selfishness. You will continue to self-destruct.

There is another way.  Will you seek Him?