Dear Doves,

      Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.(Jeremiah 17:7-10)

      Why is it that an entire chapter of the Bible is dedicated to the story of Cain, the first recorded will worshipper and murderer? >From the very beginning God wanted us to be aware of the consequences of the fall of man. We who were made “in the Image of God” are now fallen, our natures are corrupted, we now “know good and evil” but from the vantage point of evil.

Imagine Adam and Eve’s horror at what their sin had wrought, as they beheld the lifeless body of their son Abel, and listened to the self-serving rationalizations of Cain. They had brought this about. This new, insecure, deadly world of strife and murder they now lived in, came about as a direct result of their sin, and they well knew it.

      I have had occasion to ponder similar thoughts in view of the horrifying assault on a kindergarten in Connecticut which claimed the lives of 28 people, most of them under six years old! What is this violent, godless, strange new world that we have wrought in America and the west over the past 60 years?

America has always had guns, but we have not always been this wantonly violent. The media opinion shapers and politicians are already scrambling to use this murder as an occasion to enact heavier regulation of gun control, and to treat innocent civilian gun owners as if they were all murderers in the making. Their knee jerk response is aways more Government control, because to the godless, Government is god!

But they would never dream of connecting the murderers with the widespread acceptance of abortion, (which cheapens all life), and with the Nihilistic cultural shift which accompanied the sexual and atheistic revolutions of the fifties and sixties. Once a culture buys into the idea of disposable life, in the womb, as an expression of personal autonomy, why be surprised by other forms of murder?

We as a society once knew better. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been hostile to the nativity scenes, or to the display of the Ten commandments and to public expressions of the fear of the Judeo Christian God which once graced our American life!

Could the steady dismantlement of anti pornography laws and statutes, or the public and political assault on the stability of marriage have anything to do with our new plague of wanton violence? Would the deliberate confusing of the God assigned sexual roles, in kindergarten and elementary schools have led to our plague of homicidal madness?

Or could it have something to do with our school’s recent dependence upon drugs, legal or illegal? Hundreds of thousands of our school children have since their youth, been put on Ritalin or other behaviour modifying drugs, (as of they were machines, or animals!). And we wonder that we have a drug problem?

The public schools have created this mess, ironically since the early sixties ( around the time God and prayer were expelled from our once enviably successful school systems). They liberated our schools from the stifling constraints of any acknowledgment of our Judeo Christian heritage. We no longer begin the day with a prayer.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.( 2 Timothy 3:1-5)

We used to know that man was fallen, and that no one is very far from murder, adultery, or any other defection from righteousness. We once knew that we desperately needed God, and that checks and balances on human nature were needful, that man should not be encouraged to “live unto himself”, or to be totally autonomous in his self-expression and development.

But we have jettisoned all of that, to create this “brave new world” of sexual confusion, drug induced behaviour modification, fixation on loyalty to self above all else, total freedom without restraint… and this nihilism is especially is preached in our public schools!

The hostility to any kind of discrimination taught in our schools and academies has something also to do with this madness. There really is good and evil. Evil Exists. Not all cultures, civilisations or “lifestyle choices” are equally valid. It is madness to really try to believe otherwise.

Ironically this unrepressed, drugged, pierced and tattooed generation we have produced, is led to believe they are freer than any generation that ever preceded them! They have been liberated from respect for life, the sanctity of marriage and sex, reverence, loyalty to any but self, and of course from true religion.

Theirs is the freedom of the astronaut who was floating in space, but bothered by the fact that he was still tethered from the lifeline that attached him to the space capsule. He wasn’t totally free yet was he? So he cut the line…in the name of total freedom, and found out too late that all he had freed himself from, was oxygen, and the opportunity to get back into the ship.

What we once knew, and I hope that even in the face of horrors such as this, we can yet recover, is that man os fallen, he is lost and needs God, his Word, His Law and His Salvation. It is not too late to repent!