Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series exploring the need for America to transform from a culture of brokenness to a culture of life.

With every massacre by a lone gunman, leftist media and politicians begin an unrelenting rant against guns.

As they grandstand and insist that violence would somehow cease if law-abiding citizens owned fewer guns, they fail to see the real problem: America is no longer a culture that promotes the beauty and value of human life.

It’s quite curious that leftists beat their drum only when the violence erupts in an unexpected place like a school, church, or concert.

Why don’t they use their platforms to try to end the dozens of murders that occur in cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles nearly every weekend? Why don’t they speak up about the thousands of people each year who kill themselves? Or try to curb the rampant drug abuse that claims lives and destroys the families and futures of the addicts who survive?

Why? Because leftists care more about power and control than they do about protecting life.

Yes, there are good people who foolishly seek to curtail Second Amendment rights, but sometimes even good people fail to stop and consider what is really happening.

Oftentimes people with good hearts are the most easily manipulated, especially by a news media that relishes the opportunity to use a tragedy to promote a godless agenda. And that is exactly what leftists seek: a godless culture. Their goal is to set themselves up as gods and to grant god-like powers to people of their choosing.

When people and governments think of themselves as gods, the value of human life becomes arbitrary, based on the whims of the ruling class. The sanctity of life varies from one person to the next, with the protection of the vulnerable subject to the desires of the stronger.

Consider: America is now a nation where more than 55 million preborn children have been legally killed since 1973. Leftist Supreme Court justices told women that they could be like gods, bestowing protection on their preborn or disposing of them at will.

We are now a land obsessed with consuming violence in movies, television shows, and electronic games. Americans bought the Hollywood lie that we have godlike powers to virtually participate in endless hours of depravity and violence without it affecting our attitudes.

Ours is now a country where millions of adults regularly consume hardcore pornography that debases women and celebrates abusers; pornography that says relationships are fleeting and disposable.

When we became so arrogant that we determined it is we, not God, who defines sexuality, we created a pit of death that destroys families, creates sex addicts, and even says it’s normal for people to desire to amputate their own sex organs.

The United States is now a nation where the number of suicides each year is double the number of murders. We would rather shrug our shoulders, thinking that people have a divine right to kill themselves, than do the hard work to help them.

America today is a place where the mentally ill increasingly end up homeless, especially in large leftist cities like San Francisco and Honolulu. Once again, we turn a blind eye to their helplessness, comforting only ourselves with the lies that they, like gods, have made their choices, instead of finding ways to treat the ill and offer comfort.

Why don’t we hear the leftist media and politicians speak up for any of the dying and dead mentioned above? Who among them dares to consider that it is a godless ideology that fuels personal depravity, hopelessness, violence, and senseless death?

The only way to combat gun violence, or victimization from pornography, or the despair that often leads to drug abuse and suicide is to begin fostering a culture that promotes the infinite value and limitless potential of every human life. Such innate value and potential is non-negotiable, because God says it is so.

Have Republicans, Christians, and Jews missed the mark too? In some areas, yes. But it is mostly churches that voluntarily feed the homeless millions of meals each year. It is conservatives who have fought valiantly and unceasingly for the protection of the preborn.

It is President Trump who has done more to curtail the opioid crisis than any other president since drugs started becoming a blight on our country in the 1960s. He’s also done more to protect the lives of the preborn than any president since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton ushered in the massacre.

Most importantly, President Trump is restoring religious liberty, once again allowing Americans to freely practice their faith in God.

When God is widely welcomed in a culture, the culture more closely reflects His value of life.

This is how we foster life and charity. This is how we thrive.

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Next week: The quest for liberty; in pursuit of happiness.

Rebecca Hagelin can be reached at [email protected].