July 23, 2012

Ephesians 2:1,2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. (NIV bible)

I read Dante’s Inferno this past spring simply because I never had. It is filled with gruesome descriptions of demons and devils as they were pictured in medieval times (Dante lived from 1265-1321). You can recognize that much of our modern characterizations of these beings go all the way back to these descriptions of horned creatures with hooved feet. Dante was dead serious. We kind of snicker or laugh at such things. And then last Thursday night in Aurora, Colorado evil walked into a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises dressed in a Joker tee shirt and a gas mask and opened fire.  I don’t claim to know all the reasons God would send his son to die on a cross. Part of the reason may be because evil is deadly, as the verse above indicates, and touches all our lives, inside and out. Perhaps the most horrifying part of this tragedy was that we all recognized it as one in a continuing series; Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora. I read an article this past week claiming that 5.4 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been killed during the violence in that country in the past 15 years (http://www.pcusa.org/resource/advocacy-discipleship-summer-2012/). Evil is part of the fabric of our world; It is part of the fabric of our humanity, each individual. Do you think we can educate our way out of it? Or do you think we need a Savior? I wonder what the folks in Aurora would say.

Don