My head is ringing today. I can’t imagine what it is like for the people in Connecticut right now. The parents... I hear my own babies playing and laughing, fighting with each other over the Buzz Lightyear toy... They go on, just having a normal day, blissfully unaware that 20 kids their own age were recently murdered. Our tree is up and presents have started collecting underneath it and I can hardly imagine being one of those parents who will have to deal with unopened gifts. Its just too much. I can’t imagine it and I don’t want to. But, I feel like I need to do something. I need to hug my babies. I need to tell them I love them. I need to reevaluate priorities. And, I need to resolve some things.

In just this last year I have heard so many horrific things. I have heard a protester screaming about the “parasitic” nature of humanity infecting the earth. I have heard well known atheist scholars talk about how we are all the product of a cataclysmic accident and that to pretend there is purpose in life is to delude oneself. I have heard so many say that there is no such thing as “truth”; that morality is subjective. I read just recently in Margaret Sanger’s book, Woman and the New Race, how the most civil of the world’s uncivilized societies are the ones that practice infanticide... Interesting that these ideas are silenced on this awful day, how they slink to the background as every sane human being is horrified and stunned. 

We teach our kids that life has no purpose, they are an ugly infestation on a beautiful planet, that there is no real thing as good and evil, there is no God and therefore no ultimate consequence for action. Life is not sacred and valuable... We tell them these things and then stand back in terrified disbelief when someone acts out the full extent of these beliefs.  Why? Because, we know it is so very very wrong. We know it in a place that is too deep to disregard - in a part of ourselves we cannot turn off. Every day in the animal world predators pick off the sick and young and helpless and we think nothing of it. But, when a group of 20 kindergardeners is gunned down, everything inside of us twists and groans in disgust and horror. Because, we know, at least for this one moment, that LIFE is VALUABLE and PRECIOUS. We feel deeply, all of a sudden, that we were created with purpose and there is, very definitely,  “right” and “wrong”.  Our gut should not tell us these things if they weren’t true. As CS Lewis said, “Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.” If there was really no point and no such thing as morality, how differently would we all be responding to this day? 

Go ahead and call me deluded, but this is my resolve today: I will teach my kids that they are valuable and they do have a purpose. I will teach them that humanity is NOT just a parasite that needs to be eradicated. I will tell them that life is precious and should be protected. It is from God and it “IS”. Life does not “become” because someone chooses to allow it. There will always be people who think that they get to define what life is and what it is not. They falsely elevate themselves when they presume they have the authority to choose which life is worth preserving and protecting and which they can snuff out because they don’t personally value it. We have their examples all around us. But, they are wrong. I will tell my kids that these people are wrong. God created life. He gives it meaning. I will tell them that there is truth, there is right and wrong... And, they will not be confused when their gut involuntarily reacts to pure evil as ours did today. They will know that their sense of justice is rooted in reality. Hopefully they will teach their kids the same.