God needed

With each awful act of gun violence, politicians roll out their talking points. One group says, America has too many guns; we need better gun control. The other group says, America has a mental health crisis; we need to provide more and better services. I find both answers unsatisfactory; both problems have been with us for a long time, but these attacks have not. The attackers do not value the lives of others because they do not value their own lives, and they usually die along with their victims. We have a values problem, which is another way of saying that we have a religious problem.

The traditional Christian worldview says that people are valuable because we are made in God’s image, for the purpose of relating to the God who is good. Christianity sees good and evil in all of us, but the evil in us can be forgiven and redeemed. However, as Christianity has been losing its appeal, it is being replaced by a secular worldview that is indebted to Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. In that view, life is inherently cruel, an endless battle for power between competing groups. Some people respond to this worldview by fighting for political power by whatever means necessary. Others respond by concluding that survival for its own sake is an insufficient purpose for living.

If we want a good society, we need to find God again. Easter is coming; it commemorates a God who is both just and merciful, and who sacrificed himself so that we might understand our own value and purpose. It is time to go to church.

— Doug Foster, Virginia Beach