Peter Evans | January 10, 2011 | Peter and Helen Evans: On Politics and Prayer<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Everybody has something to say about the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where a 22-year-old man killed six people and wounded at least twice as many more at a political event on Saturday. Among those he killed are a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. Among the (critically) injured is the Congressional representative for the district where the shooting took place. Because so little is known about the shooter, and because he is not \u201ccooperating\u201d with police, much of the commentary is devoted to speculation about his motivation for doing the deed.
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\nBut, what can we conclude from this? Logically, nothing \u2018follows\u2019 from these observations. Andrew Klavan put it well at City Journal when speaking of the shooter, \u201cBy all appearances, his mind was ruined by madness and his soul by evil.\u201d Yet many are saying that he was \u2018motivated\u2019 or \u2018inspired\u2019 or \u2018triggered\u2019 by one or another political figure or movement in the culture. Basically, they are indirectly blaming their own political enemies or cultural opponents for this tragedy. This is the effect of the \u201ctherapeutic\u201d culture that is so influential in American society. According to this system of belief, nothing is anyone\u2019s fault; a person\u2019s behavior is always \u201cbecause of\u201d something else.<\/p>\n

Christians accept responsibility for their own actions, and believe that others are accountable for their actions. We acknowledge that this is a fallen world and filled with temptations that would lead us into \u201cdoing things that we shouldn\u2019t do.\u201d (Christian shorthand: \u201csin\u201d) The \u201ctherapeutics\u201d would use government power to remove or outlaw temptations (guns, freedom of speech and movement), but Christians work to strengthen our character so that we can resist the temptations that will constantly beset us all. You can\u2019t outlaw human nature, but you can exercise self control.<\/p>\n

What can we do? Pray. Pray. Pray some more. For the victims and their families and for the tormented soul who pulled that trigger 30 times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Evans | January 10, 2011 | Peter and Helen Evans: On Politics and Prayer Everybody has something to say about the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where a 22-year-old man killed six people and wounded at least twice as many more at a political event on Saturday. Among those he killed are a federal judge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[11,1159],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8717,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8714\/revisions\/8717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}