The truth about what really happened in Newtown Connecticut is hard. To be completely honest I don't really think most of our country is really ready or willing to hear it, let alone accept it. It is easier to just advocate gun control or blame video games then to face the truth. Regardless, I want to share with you the truth about the cause of the Newtown shooting, the truth about Christmas, and the truth about the human soul.
One of the most surprising things about the Newtown shooting is how everyone seems so shocked that it actually happened. How could someone do such a terrible and cruel thing? For the love of all that is holy, they were just little kids. They had their entire lives ahead of them, but those lives, hopes, dreams, and everything else were snuffed out in an instant by some sick killer who just didn't care. Here is what else was strangely absent from the outraged news reports that came crashing in around the world during the hour of terror at Sandy Brook Elementary, the other 137 children who died. Do you know what the difference between the children at Sandy Brook Elementary School and the other 137 is? One word, wanted. Nobody wanted the other 137, so it was ok to let a killer loose on them in some back alley abortion clinic. Nobody wanted them, so their parents were encouraged to have them killed instead of putting them up for adoption. It tears my heart out and makes we want to scream I LOVE YOU!!! from the mountain tops, because those babies ARE wanted. I think the problem actually lies even deeper than the murder of innocent children. I think the problem lies in the fact that our society has forgotten how to truly love and instead just treats other human beings like they are just some kind of cheap imported commodity. If you are not wanted, go away and die. When we protect this insensitive attitude and try to make it look hip and cool by calling it the right to choose, we have failed our families, our country, and ultimately our God.
This idea of no one caring because you aren’t wanted isn’t just an abortion issue either. How many young people were killed as a result of Gang violence in the streets of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles? Was our nation outraged over their deaths or did we some how believe that they deserved to die because of the choices they made? Did they deserve to die because they weren’t like us? Do they deserve to die because they are not wanted in our society?
How about the young children (and adults) who die out in the desert trying to sneak across the border and build a better life for their families? When they die from lack of food or water do they deserve it? Do they deserve to be packed like sheep into the back of a truck with no sanitation and smuggled across the border? When we hear about these things do we feel outrage, or do we treat them like they deserve it because they too are unwanted?
That’s the funny thing about human dignity, we don’t really get to pick who has it and who doesn’t. It is a gift given by God based on who we are, not what we have done. It doesn't matter one bit what you can give to society. In the eyes of God and His Church, you are a human person and that is all that matters. You are wanted. Sometimes it is easy to forget that we don’t get to pick and choose who is wanted and who isn’t in the eyes of God. I think the Catechism put it best when it said in paragraph 457-458,
"Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?
The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” ”
When Christ took on our human nature, a lot of people thought he didn’t really have anything to offer either. In fact, when it came to not being wanted He led the pack. They even crucified Him because He wasn’t wanted by certain parts of society. The Truth is, God wants us. Not just some of us, but everyone single one of us.
This is the truth about Newtown. This is the truth about human dignity. This is the Truth about Christmas.
