I live less than 30 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was quite a shock when we heard about the tragedy. To have something that gruesome happen was extremely upsetting, and will be for a long time. It was even more so as it occurred so close to home. My friends and coworkers were devastated with each new report we received as the news story unfolded. Each bit of news, some very erroneous, sent waves of amazement and dismay throughout the room. One thing caught my attention numerous times: the expression, how could God allow this to happen.

At first I was at a loss as to how I should answer that. The whole tragedy was somewhat mind-numbing to begin, but as I had time to reflect on the matter, the answer became evident. It has to do with our free will versus God’s control. If we were completely under God’s control, then this event would not have occurred. As a matter of fact, this would be a perfect world, as nothing bad would be allowed to take place.

We are, however, under free will, which allows us to make choices; some good, and some bad. Ultimately, God is in control of how all things will turn out in the end, but allows us to make our decisions. How we interact with God has much to do with how events unfold. The closer one is to God, the more like Him they will be. The further away from God a person gets the opposite holds true.

We, as a nation have been moving away from God at an alarming rate. There have always those who rejected Him and did things their way, but in the last fifty years there have been one rejection after another. It began with prayer banned in schools, which is more crucial than many would imagine. It opened the floodgate to allow those who do not want God in their lives to start stripping away as much of His presence as possible.

In the name of tolerance, we have allowed many other religions to practice in our schools and public place, but if you use the name of Jesus, then you will be shut down quickly. I am not against other religions having freedom to practice, as this was the intent of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” This doesn’t mean the church has to stay out of the affairs of government, but that government has to stay out of the affairs of the church. The intent was to disallow government from controlling religion with a state church. Early in our history, many states even made it a requirement that you had to be born again to hold many of the political offices, so it was deemed necessary for godly men to make proper decisions in the political realm.

Has God moved? Never! He is always there wanting us to come to him. I am reminded of the story of a pastor and a barber walking down the street. The pastor was trying to lead the man to Christ, but the barber just couldn’t get past the problem of the unfairness of life. He kept asking, “Why does God allow it?”

The pastor finally spotted an unruly and scruffy looking young man that has a shaggy beard and long matted hair. He looked at the barber and asked, “How could you let that young man walk around town is such a deplorable state? He looks terrible.”

In amazement, the barber exclaimed, “Me! It is not my fault. If he would come to me, then I could clean him up.”

“Exactly,” stated the pastor. “If people came to God, he would straighten them out too.”

When Jesus began His ministry, He preformed miracle after miracle. He raised the dead and healed the sick, but there were limitations to His power. In Matthew 13:58 it states “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” So, we see that unbelief can limit what God can do for us.

The real problem is that more and more people are in that category today. They really do not want God interfering in their affairs, just like the leaders of Israel were with Jesus. They did not want Him to mess up the system they had.

So where does this leave us? We have pushed God away from us and limited His ability to work by unbelief. By pushing Him out, we are left with the equation:

When God isn’t around, then evil will abound.

People that do these abhorrent acts of violence are not right. To take the lives of innocent children and then others, including himself, is sick and evil. These events have always been around, but not to the magnitude of what we now see. Evil is on the rise, and if people turn away from God, then they are prime targets to become evil.

The answer is for people to turn back to God. He is the only way we can overcome the present onrush of evil.

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