Why it's a tragedy.

               I’m about three-quarters done with my first pleasure read of the winter break (The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse) and it brings out some really important ideas about how public conversation dances around the idea of God, without ever bringing Him into the discussion in a meaningful way.

               Everyone acknowledges that Sandy Hook is a national tragedy. The murder of innocent children is perhaps the most heinous, vicious and unforgivable act any person could ever do. Language stretches to encompass our pain and sadness; we all weep for the living faced with the sudden absence of their loved ones. While everyone acknowledges the wrongness of the murder of innocents, very few discuss why it’s such a crime.

               Every worldview has to give reasons for moral prescriptions. You may not steal. But… why? The modern secular conception of ethics relies on community standards or a vague notion of harm. It is wrong to harm another person. But what does harm mean? How is the harm principle applied? How can you define wrong in an ethical situation without recourse to God? These are important and difficult questions. It is wrong to steal from another person because it harms them, and harming another person is wrong. But what about usurious interest rates; isn’t that harmful? Or what about punitive taxation? We can readily agree that theft is wrong, but start poking at the rules and you need something bigger. The Christian worldview asserts that God sets the moral standards for humanity, and that the foundation for moral prescriptions is based on a fundamental fact of human creation: God created man in His image. Thus the violation of that image by theft, or even worse, by murder is a crime against man and against God.

               Look again at the tragedy of Sandy Hook. From a secular perspective, the crime is against humanity: we, the human race agree that the murder of innocents is wrong. From a theistic perspective, it’s a whole different situation: the murder of those innocent children is a crime against God Himself, because He made mankind in His image and He prohibits the violation of His image by illicit life-taking. This doesn’t diminish man, but raises him up to a level of honor and respect. It helps us define the tragedy of the murder of those innocent children, but it also helps us define the tragic lack of care for the killer, because he, too, is created in God’s image. Even though his acts were heinous, society has a responsibility to properly deal with people who are a danger to themselves or others because they are created in God’s image. This applies whether he was mentally ill and thus in need of treatment, or morally depraved and thus should be handled by incarceration or some combination of the two. We fall short as a society precisely because we have excluded God from our discussion of what’s wrong with our country, and, more importantly, why it’s wrong.