I am writing this post on the eve of the tragic and horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. As the nation mourns over this small town, we all ask ourselves over and over again, “why?”. As we grapple with our emotions, the numbness of this senseless act, and how these families, classmates, teachers, and how this community will ever pick up the pieces, flood our minds.
For those of us with a firm belief in Jesus Christ, He is our source, our strength, and our stronghold during times like this. Those without Christ must turn to another method to cope and sort out the human emotions and the mental anguish that affects both believers and non-believers. As a believer, I honestly do not know how someone without a strong faith navigates the process of grieving, dealing with a serious illness or accident, or even walking through the aftermath of a divorce or relationship break-up.
Having been through each of these situations on a personal level, my faith has grounded me in a way that nothing else could have done. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t hurt badly, wasn’t scared, angry, frustrated, or depressed. What it did mean, is that walking through every situation in life with my trusted Savior, I knew He was there, He is never-changing, and He understands my heart.
As we walk through another horrific school shooting, I once again question the “why”, and ask the questions you are most likely asking. The bottom line is this sort of incident reflects actions by those who are lost, without hope, and most likely without Christ. Often we learn of deep depression, drug abuse, mental health issues, and child abuse as underlying issues for the perpetrator.
Sadly, we are witnessing the demise of the family unit. As the divorce rate escalates and the moral fabric of our society continues to crumble, we have seen a rise in these mass-murder incidents. It is heartbreaking and causes us all to turn to our Father for answers and comfort.
As a former high school teacher, I know first-hand what a classroom environment is like, how close you get to your students, and how much you truly care about each and every one of those precious lives. Teachers don’t just teach a subject. Teachers grieve when their students are hurt. They celebrate their successes. And, they provide the stability that many students don’t have at home.
In this post, I am not suggesting that every teacher must be a devout Christian. What I am going to say is that we need sound, Biblical, principles as the backbone of our schools regardless if they are public or private institutions. Here is why I say this:
- STABILITY – We all need to have some stability in our lives. Christ and His Word are the ONLY 100% stable forces we can ever count on in this life. When we are grounded in Christian principles such as love, kindness, grace, healing, forgiveness, self-control, faithfulness, joy, peace, goodness, gentleness, and respect. All of these fruits of the Spirit are character traits everyone needs more of. And in reality, none of these characteristics in any way would be traits anyone would not want to be taught in school. Each of these God-directed traits provides us with the basis for good, solid behavior.
- VALUES – When the common values that are grounded in Christian principles are lost, the fabric of a society becomes more and more of a slippery slope of anything goes. We are certainly seeing this play out right now. When we have children questioning basic logic such as the definition of a male or female, this is the epitome of confusion in the young minds in our society. As a basic, God-taught value of marriage between a male and a female, becomes a taboo subject, once again, children have no stable value foundation upon which to build any sort of solid foundation.
- HUMAN RESPECT – As we fall away from biblical principles, we are witnessing the de-valuing of humans in general. In fact, there are more commercials about the abuse of animals than of the abuse of children or of the ongoing, ever-increasing child trafficking situation. Now don’t get me wrong, I love animals. However, they do not hold higher regard than human life. We should all be filled with grief and concern for the loss of life through drugs, abortion, child abuse, and trafficking. When we teach our children to respect human life over everything else, we help them understand the importance of life. God created life and when we hold life dear, this principle goes very far. Additionally, when we have human respect, we also respect our own God-given lives. When we recognize who we are in Christ, we don’t doubt our own identity. God does not make mistakes. (Psalm 139:14)
- LOVE – We all know the word love has been overused big time. We “love” a movie, food, etc. The love I am talking about is the love of Christ that only He can offer. Jesus told us to ‘love one another as He loved us.” (John 13:34) When we understand what this really means, we treat people differently. Christ loved us so much that He gave His life for us in order for us to be with Him someday in heaven. Love heals and love guides us in how we are to live our lives. True love that only comes from Him, is the answer. His love is missing in our schools because we allowed our governing bodies to remove God. His absence is missing and it needs to be placed back in our schools.
Many people will take this post and try to use it against me that I hate certain groups of people. This is NOT true. Just because I disagree with the slippery slope of anything outside of God’s guidelines, does not mean that I hate those who choose to ignore His principles. I pray for those who don’t know the love of Christ. Their souls are lost and they are doomed to eternal life without Him. That is the biblical truth that provides me with the security of eternal life with Him.
We must bring God-fearing, solid teachings back into our school. We desperately need prayer back in our classrooms and we need to be teaching biblical character traits. We cannot indoctrinate our students with the illogical garbage of gender “confusion”, the misuse of pronouns, and the blatant disrespect for human life. The ONLY way we will take our schools back is to bring God back into our schools. He belongs there and He will bring the stability, the values, the respect, and the love that we all desperately need.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Dr. Paula McDonald
Featured Image by lorimalhiot from Pixabay
