It has now been 10 years since the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. Since then, there have been more than two dozen such shootings in schools around the United States and the inevitable fallout discussions about a lack of God in people’s lives. There have been many who are quick to blame the inherent separation of church and state embedded in the Constitution for things done by those who don’t play with a full deck but the truth is that living is, itself, more an act of faith than anything else and whether even avowed athiests realize it, hoping is the same as praying, worrying is a form of negative prayer, and we all do it. A lot.
All of this, then, reminded me of this piece.
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
that word is love.”
(Sophocles)
Dear God,
Why do you let children die in their schools?
Signed,
a Concerned Student
——
Dear Concerned Student,
There are some who will say it is because I am not allowed in your schools any more. But the truth is that this is the hard-lesson result of the diseases of apathy, greed, and lack of personal responsibility that pervade your society.
I surely love you and I always will, but I gave your parents the job of caring for you properly and teaching you right from wrong and the coping skills needed to get along with others and to succeed in life. And I am afraid that most of them are just not doing their job. They are handing you over to underpaid and overworked teachers who love you, too, but are not allowed to even speak out when you treat them with the same disrespect you show your parents. Your parents allow you to spend far too many hours in front of the television, whose programmers don’t love you; they only love the companies who buy their advertising time so as to encourage your parents to neglect you further in the quest to have even more…”stuff”.
Hardly anyone exercises their right to vote so your elected officials just follow the whims of their supporting lobbies, and I can assure you that those special interest groups don’t love you at all.
Now understand, my dear child, I am always, now and forever, everywhere and as long as schools have tests, there will be prayer in schools. But you would do well to take the time to sit down with your parents and ask them why some parents fail to love their children enough to give them what they really need – love, respect, and discipline – instead of the inadequate substitute of material things.
Blessings,
God
P.S. One more word about my gift to you of Free Will. There are some souls who, no matter how hard their parents try, turn away from the light, turn away from goodness, and choose to do bad things. Their parents weep, as do I, but we do not stop loving them.
Copyright 2007 PJ. Garner, used with permission.