June 18

In the light of the atrocity that occurred last week on June 18 I have found myself and those around me asking the same obvious question - "Why?". But today I asked a different question. Today, thinking back over the evil that horrified this community and this nation, I realized that this is not the right question.

We tend to think that people are generally good. We think that terrible things such as rape and murder are only carried out by the evil and possibly insane. We think this because these acts are so rare and we have therefore accepted that normal human beings are incapable of acting this way. But perhaps we are? Perhaps thoughts of lust do naturally empower acts of rape. Perhaps thoughts of anger do naturally empower acts of murder. Perhaps the evil that we accept in our minds is not incapable of becoming evil that we do with our hands, but perhaps we are being restrained.

I have come to believe that God is not evil for allowing something like this to happen, He is incomprehensibly good for holding back the evil for which the average human being is capable. Our natural tendency is to dismiss this idea on the thought, "I would never do something like that," but maybe apart from the grace of God you would surprise yourself.