Who was Fred Winters and why does he deserve getting a full blog entry from me?
This morning (Sunday) during the 8:15 worship service at his 1200-member church, First Baptist Church of Maryville, IL, Fred Winters, the well-loved pastor stood to preach when a 27-year-old gunman armed with a .45 calibre pistol burst into the church sanctuary and shot five times, three of which the pastor was able to deflect with his Bible shattering into the air like confetti, but his leather-bound Bible didn't work well as a shield, he stumbled and fell. The gunman's pistol jammed so he took a knife from his pocket and ran towards the platform but two members of the church tackled. Illinois Police is still trying to investigate the motive for the shooting.
Pastor Fred Winters died leaving behind a wife and two young daughters.
Some weeks ago, a gunman came and open fired in a Unitarian Church in Tennessee. While just last month I think, a man shot himself in front of the cross inside the world-renown Crystal Cathedral.
Evil seems to have made a bit of a comeback; into the common parlance of pundits discussing events like 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Columbine school massacre.
Through much of the 20th century, western culture tended towards a scientific hypothesis of human behavior, relying on biological, sociological and medical models to describe the human moral situation. But a few things have seemed to defy sterile scientific categories, like the holocaust, for instance. Evil could still be used in reference to that horror, but most other sorts of human fallenness were assigned to social or medical categories.
Do you believe in evil? is a question directed to me from time to time. My answer goes something like this: “Well, if by ‘believing in’ you mean, ‘believe it exists, that it is a something’, my answer is, yes.” It was C. S. Lewis, writing at the time of the Second World War, who said the first agenda of Satan is to convince us he does not exist. We demur about the personification of some sort of demonic essence, but the larger issue, that of the reality of evil, which was Lewis’ fundamental point, is actually not up for debate from the normative Christian perspective.
When Jesus began his public ministry he’s challenged by this noisy man who says, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Its an initiation of sorts; Jesus is set to contend with the world’s corrupting powers and principalities. Jesus will stand over and against all that opposes God’s graceful intentions. Love will be his counterintuitive means of engagement.
Friends, here’s what I’ve been thinking about this week. I want to be part of a church in which the family members are on a journey of discovering the real stakes in living moral, grace-filled lives. People who have made a sincere claim to work against the evil powers of this world, humbly starting with the content of their own lives. Loving the evil powers within and around with the strength of the Lord, and until it loses it power and control over myself and yours and change it by His grace.
We live in serious times that require a serious response from people who are yearning to grow up regardless of their age. I want to continue to evolve spiritually and personally, gaining in my capacity to stand firm with Christ confronting the powers and principalities aligned against life and love, powers that coercively work on my soul and blind my eyes from seeing the actual truth of my situation.
-----------------------------------
Readings: - Yahoonews - CNN News - Stephen Bauman, Deliver us from Evil, CCUMC-NYC - M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 11.
No comments:
Post a Comment