TRITE BUT TRUE

BUDDY AT THE BEACH

Sunday, 8:45 AM.  73 degrees F, wind W, dead calm.  The sky is virtually  cloudless, the humidity 65%.  The barometer is trending down, but it has been a gorgeous morning at the beach.  The day will be hot by noon but not oppressive.
    Anything I say about the horrific events in Colorado will undoubtedly sound sophomoric and trite, but since everything I have heard said about it thus far by pundits and talking heads also sounds sophomoric and trite, I shall have my say. 
    Like the psychologist who said that as we know more about the perpetrator’s youth and upbringing we will come to understand what caused him to go astray.  Really?  Some small and random, hitherto  insignificant events created a monster out of a nice kid?
    Then there are the many commentators who keep using the word “evil” as though it is some sort of random occurrence, like a lightening strike or something.  Not very enlightening.
    That true evil exists and occurs is pretty evident if one considers even  just  recent history, from Hitler and Nazi Germany to Uncle Joe Stalin on through Lt. Calley and My Lai, Pol Pot, and Islamic terrorism.  Not to mention the University of Texas bell tower shootings and all the homegrown mass murders and serial killings since, up to last Friday (everywhere all around the world, by the way).,
    But why does evil exist, and how does it strike?  Mostly we choose to ignore what the prophets have been saying for at least the last five thousand years and probably many thousands of years before; that the human race, and every human being, contains a deadly flaw, pure evil, the opposite of good.  Some say we are a fallen race; others say we have not yet evolved sufficiently to rid us of the flaw.  Either way, the flaw exists, and any one of us is subject to it and cannot resist it by ourselves. And it certainly does not help when our modern world presents every possible crime and moral degradation to us and our young in graphic and alluring detail, and that even the ancient and universal Ten Commandments are no longer welcome in the courtroom or the classroom. For without external help and guidance we loose the moral, and mortal, struggle between good and evil.  Looking into the eyes of the mass murderer of Colorado  we see our own reflection. 
    My best advice, trite though it may be, is to pray for ourselves, our loved ones, and our race, that God may be give each of us the grace to win the perennial struggle between good and evil in our own hearts.