"The Dictatorship of the 21st-Century American Mind"

It has not even been a week since the shootings at Newtown, CT that resulted in the deaths of twenty elementary school children dead and six adults. However, it seems like we have been dealing with this tragedy all year. Actually, we have...

February 22, 2012 — Five people in Norcross, GA were killed when a man opened fire inside a Korean health spa. Dometic issues are the suspected cause.

February 26, 2012 — One person was killed and twenty more injured when a man opened fire at a Jackson, TN nightblub.

February 27, 2012 — Three Chardon High School students (Ohio) were killed when a fellow classmate shot them.

March 8, 2012 — Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, by a gunman with two semiautomatic handguns.

March 31, 2012 — A gunman fired upon a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, FL funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.

April 2, 2012 — A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, CA, killed seven people “execution-style.”

April 6, 2012 — In Tulsa, Oklahoma, two white men randomly shot at several black men killing three and wounding two others.

May 29, 2012 — A Seattle, Washington man opened fire in a coffee shop, killing five people and then himself.

July 9, 2012 — At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, DE, three people were killed when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer.

July 20, 2012 — In a Denver suburb, James Holmes entered a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon killing twelve and wouding fifty-eight.

August 5, 2012 — A former Army veteran and white supremicist killed six people at a Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee before killing himself.

August 14, 2012 — Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage.

September 27, 2012 — A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis entered his former workplace and shot five people to death and wounded three others before killing himself.

October 21, 2012 — A 45-year-old man killed his wife and three others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

December 11, 2012 — A 22-year-old randomly killed two people at a mall near Portland, Oregon before killing himself.

December 14, 2012 — One man murdered  twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself. Earlier that day, he killed his mother by shooting her in the face.

This is not a blog about "gun control," but rather self-control. While I personally do not understand why any civilian "needs" a semi-automatic rifle with a thirty round clip, I also do not understand why men "need" $100,000 sports cars (Although, I'm guessing Freud would have a theory about it).

We live in a nation of three hundred and ten million people where it is legal to own a variety of weapons. By-and-large, the third of the nation who own firearms are law-abiding citizens who either participate in hunting and sporting activities, or desire more security for themselves and their families. That is why, like the vast majority of Americans, I am not in favor of banning firearms, even though I do not understand the need for most of them. What I am in favor of is self-control. Something that the perpetrators of the murders in the list I gave did not have.

While it is true that if guns are outlawed people will find other ways to kill each other, it is unique to contemporary history the amount of civilians killing others in presumably safe, public places. A careful study of United States history will reveal that apart from times of war, we are living in the most violent time in our nation's history.

I am proposing that what we are seeing in our country is the "dictatorship of the 21st-century American mind." Since the time of our nation's founding, the rugged individualist has been valued, and recently, the post-modern emphasis on personal morality has been promoted. If a person was raised with the philosophy that their truth is the only one that matters, should it be surprising that so many, without provocation, are randomly killing people they do not know? This is what dictators of countries do: kill innocent people in order to increase their power and expand their kingdoms. The dictators of world history have not only gone to war against soldiers, but also civilians. Dictators are bullies with armies; mass murderers are bullies with access to sophisticated weapons that can kill a lot of people quickly.

There is a lot of justification that comes from taking somoene else's life. Usually, it results out of a sense of self-defense/protection, enacting justice, or revenge. Either way, there are standards people use to justify killing another human being. What we are seeing today with mass murderers is that they have processed in their depraved hearts and deranged minds that they are the arbiters of justice and truth. Whatever personal problems, pain or psychosis they are dealing with, they have come to the conclusion they have the right to kill other people because their truth is the final word.

Unfortunately, because mass shootings are happening so frequently we are becoming immune to it. However, this past Friday, December 14th, our national conscious was jolted awake because twenty of the twenty-six victims were ages six and seven. Should this matter? Do those lives count more than the twelve high school students killed at Columbine High School in 1999, or the thirty-two students and faculty at Virginia Tech in 2007? The answer is "no." What makes the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting more shocking is the amount of small children who had no way at all to defend themselves. They were not big enough to fight back,  or mature enough to form a plan to overpower their attacker. They were among the most vulnerable victims of violence (other than those aborted from wombs, but that's another blog) and I believe this may be the tipping point in what our national conscious will allow.

Throughout history, nations have revolted against dictators. Even in our own country, we fought against the oppression of a monarchy, the institution of slavery, and racial segregation. We have sacrificed the lives of our soldiers in foreign countries to free others from the likes of Hitler and Saddam Hussein. All dictators began with being lords of the kingdom of their own minds, and today, that is the battle we must win in order to eliminate more tragedies like this past Friday. It appears that the mind of a generation, who believe they are all that matters, is being lost to the dictatorship of their own minds, and we must defeat this dictator, or we risk losing a lot more lives.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I believe the only battle plan to overcoming this current dictator is doing what the Apostle Paul urged in Romans 12:2: be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This means relinquishing control of what we personally believe matters, and give ourselves over to the leadership and authority of King Jesus and his Kingdom. Whether a person is a mass-murderer or a law-abiding citizen, when we decide what is morally right and wrong, we have made ourselves the dictators of our own minds, which will eventually lead to the destruction of our kingdoms.