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Essay by David C. Grabbe on the Brookfield,
Wisconsin shooting
Essay: March 12, 2005: One Year Later
Last Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of the horrific church shooting in
Brookfield, Wisconsin. On that momentous day, Terry Ratzmann entered the rented,
hotel meeting room and opened fire with a semiautomatic pistol. A minute later,
22 rounds had been fired, four people were wounded, and eight lay dead—including
the shooter.
Even though this singular event directly affected only one church organization,
impacting another in a minor way, it produced a shockwave that rippled through
the entire Body of Christ. Where one member suffers, we all suffer (1
Corinthians 12:26). Church members everywhere were deeply sobered, and as the
news settled in, it caused much reflection and searching contemplation.
Hundreds—thousands—of whys were asked, but few answers were received.
As with many events in life, the answers to these questions probably will not be
answered anytime soon—if they are answered at all. God's thoughts are infinitely
higher than ours, and He does not always reveal to us His reasons for doing
things (Isaiah 55:8-9). But there are some essential principles and patterns
that God reveals in the Bible that can help us sort through calamities such as
Brookfield.
During Jesus’ ministry, He was asked why a tragedy occurred, and His answer is
revealing:
There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose
blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to
them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other
Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you
repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in
Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all
other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will
all likewise perish." (Luke 13:1-5)
Jesus perceived their thoughts, and even though they did not directly ask a
question, Luke says He "answered them." It suggests that He took their unstated
assertion—that those who died must have been particularly sinful—and countered
it with the truth. In both of His examples, Christ plainly says that those who
died were not worse sinners. In both of the examples, He also redirects the
focus back to the individual and the individual's relationship with God and away
from the speculation about why it happened to those specific people.
This is easily applied to the shootings of last year. Were those who were killed
or wounded worse sinners than the rest of us in the church? Did the Brookfield
congregation experience this calamity because it is somehow more sinful than
other congregations? We have not been given any indication that is so.
Notice that Christ does not deny that sin was involved in some way. In fact, He
clearly implies that sin was involved in the examples He gave, because both
times He said to repent. Repentance is only necessary when there is sin. Again,
we can apply this to the current church situation. Proverbs 26:2 says that the
"curse causeless does not come." God had a cause, a reason, for what He allowed.
It is safe to say that the basic reason for what He allowed was sin—somewhere.
But we need to be careful about deciding which sin or whose sin was the cause.
In Luke 13, Christ's response was to get his listeners’ focus off the details of
the immediate calamity and on to each listener's personal standing with God. The
details that we should be concerned with are those of our own walk with God.
Mankind has a tremendous propensity to resolve problems in his mind by assigning
blame. Once we have placed the blame, we can go about our lives without having
to delve any deeper. However, because of our inclination toward
self-centeredness, we frequently focus on the wrong things. As an example, if
one were to ask the average man on the street about the causes of September 11,
2001, the answer would probably be about Osama bin Laden, al Qaida, and/or
Islamic terrorism. We have placed those events in a box and labeled it, "Not our
fault." Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson found out quickly that America does not
want to contemplate its own culpability, or its own sinfulness, as the reason
God allowed that calamity. It is far easier to place the blame on terrorism than
to think that God may have been displeased with us and the rampant immorality in
this "Christian" nation.
If we took a poll of church members regarding why the church
is in a scattered condition, the responses would be more varied. But how many
would answer that God's pattern is to scatter His people because of sin, and
that each member bears a measure of responsibility? How many would answer that
the scattering happened because of complacency in our relationship with God? Our
human nature shies away from accepting blame. It is easier to wrap our minds
around cataclysmic events if we can assign the blame far from ourselves.
Christ's response in Luke 13 teaches us not to get caught up in the sordid
details of the tragedy, but to look to our own houses and our own standing
before God. Just as September 11 should have been a wake-up call for the nation
to check itself, any calamity—especially one that impacts the church so
strongly—should cause us to evaluate our own ways. Given that these events were
allowed by God to get our attention, the conclusion is that our attention has
been on the wrong things. Our attention has been drawn away from God, and so God
allowed this jolt so that we might consider our ways and make sure we are, in
fact, following Him.
Calamities, if properly responded to, should initiate an examination of our
relationship with God. It should prompt us to gauge how clearly we see Him and
help us to identify where we are falling short. Our response should not be one
of finger-pointing or presuming that we know the sum of God’s thoughts and have
searched out all of His ways. Our response should be to evaluate our own houses
and consider our own ways. It is only when we recognize our spiritual needs that
we will take steps to have them filled (Matthew 5:6).
- David C. Grabbe
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