Though no form of mass murder is less ghastly than any other, there is always an eerie, unsettling feeling associated with attacks like the one recently perpetrated in Manhattan. Though obviously premeditated, the 345 Park Avenue massacre seems so erratic, capricious, and indiscriminate:
Why that building?
Why that time of day?
Why the woman behind the pillar but not the woman getting off the elevator?
None of it makes sense. None of it will ever make sense. At least not for those of us in the age of an outrage industrial complex, where politicians grandstand, activists agitate, and the media amplifies the mayhem for ratings - each end of this triangle of tumult feeding one another, all while the truth starves.
For those chasing clarity amid confusion, those pursuing meaning in the madness, I cannot emphasize enough that it will never be found in the sensational, fear-mongering carnival that surrounds us. There's no help or hope here. No answers or absolution. All this current age offers is a spectacle of emotional manipulation dressed in a cheap suit of urgency.
But we can do better if we will simply choose to remove the cloak of cynicism we wear and trade the front page for the sacred page of Christian scripture.
There we are taught that the human heart is capable of unthinkable evil (Jeremiah 17:9), that it is "desperately wicked" apart from a total rebirth. While our society goes on desperately searching for external causes - political, psychological, or social - the truth is that the root of violence is always internal. The reason our perpetual proposals of punishment and external reform have proven futile is because Scripture insists mankind's only deliverance can come through internal rebirth (John 3:3).
Apart from that redemptive work, security is ultimately an illusion. Everyone who went to work at 345 Park Avenue or who visited the sprawling complex that day, likely knew it was, according to a CNN report, among the most "highly secured" buildings in New York. Yet calamity breached its walls, underscoring this sobering reality: no human enterprise, no matter how well fortified and protected, offers absolute safety. The Bible's largest book bears this prescient warning: "Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain" (Psalm 127:1). It's why Christians are told never to trust in gates or guards, in garrisons or governments, but instead to put our souls in the hands of God who alone is our refuge (Psalm 46:1). Only fools overlook or ignore the fragility of life here on earth, assuming tragedies like this only happen to other people in other places.
And yet, even as we face the darkness in human hearts and the fragility of worldly security, Scripture offers one final, anchoring hope: That justice will not escape the gaze of God. One of the most common refrains among those commenting on social media about the Manhattan murderer has been lamenting his decision to take the cowardly way out through suicide. It seems to so many that justice cannot be done.
But here's the truth that Christianity offers to the world:
While human courts may never even get the chance to adjudicate, God sees, remembers, and will judge.
While we are left to speculate on motive, God knows the heart.
While we struggle to imagine what it must have been like inside that building, everything that happened was witnessed by the One who promises to bring perfect, righteous, and final judgement (Romans 2:6-8).
Self-inflicted gunshots may help you elude the NYPD, but your soul will stand before the throne of the Almighty and give an account, and justice will prevail.
On Monday evening, the world once again trembled under the weight of evil. It is rational and reasonable that we should grieve at yet another tragic proof that our world is not as it should be; not as it was intended to be. But the truth of Christianity helps us avoid grieving as those without hope.
The cross of Jesus and His empty tomb remind us that death will not win, justice will not be mocked, and hope is not in vain.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
