It is simple: good people don’t commit murder. Murderers do!  Multiple mass shootings over the last few years, and especially recently, have caused a great sense of frustration among citizens, yet the only message coming from some politicians is about reducing the number of guns in society. They never address the fundamental issue which is that guns in the hands of good people never cause a problem, and in fact often save lives. Yet law abiding citizens are always the target of Leftists’ gun control laws.

Americans have always had an abundance of firearms. Guns are not the problem. People willing to commit violent crimes is! The problem of mass shootings in America will not be corrected with changes in the laws, but rather with changes in hearts.

The multiple shootings of young people which have occurred over the last few years are worse than tragic. But sadly, they are the logical consequence of a society in denial regarding mankind’s sinfulness and in rejection of God’s authority. From the first murder recorded in Genesis 4 to the recent rampage on the campus of Michigan State University, every one of these killings is a direct assault upon God the Creator and a rejection of His command not to commit murder.

It is irrational to think that we can pick and choose which of God’s commandments we obey and which we flout.  Why would we expect young people to selectively obey God’s 6th commandment when we collectively scorn them all?  Why should young people listen to anything our leaders say when those leaders lie, cheat, steal, and advocate for the killing of the unborn and euthanasia for the elderly? The left has ridiculed America’s founders, the Bible, God, and everyone who promotes historic Judeo-Christian virtues. They then wring their hands in faux dismay when people violate those same virtues. C.S. Lewis got it right when he wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

We could expand on his point: We deny truth exists yet get angry when people lie. We mock integrity and are overwhelmed by crime. We say “follow your heart” but are then appalled by people’s selfishness. We scorn God and are surprised by the violence and chaos of a godless society.

Do the Leftists who promote expanded drug use, defunding the police, removing God and the Bible from culture, who trash America’s history and replace science with woke nonsense, not understand what they are doing? Are they well-intentioned but mistaken? Sadly, no!  They know exactly what they are doing and why! Their goal is not a better culture with healthier, happier citizens but rather a godless society that becomes so chaotic the citizens plead with them to take control and bring order even if it means totalitarianism.

But we know better because we know God, we love the truth, and we understand how it all ends! Psalm 2 addresses leaders and citizens who think they can free themselves from God’s principles and cast off his sovereign lordship, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. . . .” And ultimately, He will “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

We who love God do not fight this battle with the weapons of men, but with truth. While battles rage on, the ultimate victory has already been won. Jesus Christ won it over 2000 years ago with his death on the cross, and His resurrection!

It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so ironic, to witness Leftists, who hold such power in American culture, pose as martyrs claiming to “speak truth to power!”  No, at the moment it is Christians, who are the butt of comedians’ late-night jokes, who are mocked and scorned on every hand, who are sued for living their convictions, who are speaking “truth to power.”  Every forum of public discourse and power is dominated by the left.  Government, education, the Media, Arts, Hollywood, Big Tech, business associations and more are firmly controlled by Leftists.  It is a testimony to the power of truth that these Leftist powerbrokers are doing everything they can to silence the few dissenting voices that remain, even as those voices have virtually no cultural power!  It may also be evidence that these Leftists know, in spite of their protestations otherwise, that truth is not on their side!

What are we who love and proclaim truth to do?  We must not yield an inch.  We must make no apology for the truth.  We must shun the methods of the Left.  We must live and act with grace. Scriptures are not merely poetic when they proclaim, “the righteous are bold as a lion,” but “the wicked flee when no one pursues,” (Prov. 28:1).

Jesus Christ told His disciples that they are “the salt of the earth.”  Salt has many beneficial uses, one of which is to inhibit decay.  No one can deny that America is in the state of moral decay pushed by the Left.  However, because of our resistance to this decay, we are hated.  Our presence, words, and actions are irritants and even obstacles to the decadence being promoted by influential God-hating Americans.  In contrast to the “men without chests” being created by the Left, Christians reflect the eternal principles and authority of the God who has redeemed us.  So, if we are to inhibit the decay of our culture, in practical terms, how are we to do that?  We cannot change people’s hearts.  God, alone, does that work.  But we can and must proclaim the message of the Gospel and live so as to represent Christ well.  The Apostle Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, to “. . .reprove, rebuke and exhort. . . .” all who would hear him.  These things do not make a person popular, but they do make him faithful and most effective in confronting the decay that is the ongoing result of Adam’s sin.

If you are a born-again Christian, you, too are “the salt of the earth” and have the grave responsibility to oppose the direction of our culture.  You cannot shrug it off as belonging to someone else.  The immorality, violence, and victimization of children we are witnessing is not an accident but the intentional repudiation of God, the Bible, and righteousness, and God has called no one to be spectators of the conflict!  We all have a high calling on our life!  You can’t afford to sit this out.

The confused and addicted all around us do not need “support” or agreement from us to be happy. They will only be happy when they come to agreement with God, repent of their sin, and trust His grace and forgiveness.

This is truly the message of hope every person on earth needs!

This article has been updated to correct errors and add additional information.

Full-Term, Preborn Babies Can Be Killed For Virtually Any Reason

Why, I kept asking myself last week, are so many Americans so livid about Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signing into law a bill passed jubilantly by the state legislature that makes it possible for women to abort full-term babies. Sure, the bill is morally repugnant and the jubilant applause by the legislature was grotesque, but 19 other states—including Illinois—allow full-term babies to be killed and for the same reasons. Seven other states and the District of Columbia allow full-term babies to be killed for any or no reason. Two other states allow full-term, healthy babies to be aborted if they were conceived during rape or through incest.

Toward the end of last week, just as outraged pro-life voices were dying down, it came to light that a new bill was proposed in Vermont which many mistakenly believe would legalize unrestricted abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. They were mistaken in that unrestricted access to abortion through the entire nine months of pregnancy has been legal in Vermont since 2014. The bill proposed in Vermont merely enshrines in state law the existing legal right as a “fundamental right.” Pro-baby-killing advocates are preparing for the day Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Late-term abortions are banned in 20 states except if the mother’s “health” is deemed at risk by allowing the baby to grow to term. But here’s the catch: “health” includes any physical, emotional, psychological, or familial factors that affect “well-being.” With that ambiguous and wildly broad definition, virtually any woman can have her baby killed at any point in her pregnancy.

Two states allow healthy babies to be killed in the womb in the 9th month if they were conceived in rape or through incest (AR, UT). Killing full-term babies is no less barbaric because they were created via criminal acts of someone else’s doing.

Seven states allow full-term babies to be killed if the babies have “lethal” abnormalities, which is de facto infanticide.

Take a gander at the chart provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation which lists the 20 states that allow late-term abortions for “health” reasons and the 7 that allow it for any or no other reason.

Also, take note of Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Those places are virtual killing fields. They don’t even require the pretense of a “health” reason for women to abort their full-term babies. In those 7 states, there are no bans on abortion at any stage. It’s open season on babies who, through no fault of their own, have the misfortune of being conceived in the wrong womb.

Since all 50 states and D.C. allow late-term abortions that threaten a mother’s life—as distinct from her “health”—it’s important to understand the inconvenient truth “progressives” don’t want Americans to think about: There is no life-threatening condition that would ever necessitate the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby in the womb. There are relatively rare occasions in which continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, but ending a pregnancy does not require the direct, intentional, active killing of a baby.

Doctors can induce delivery or perform a C-section to save a woman’s life in a life-threatening or emergency situation without dismembering, crushing, burning, or chemically inducing cardiac arrest in a baby. In some induced deliveries or C-sections, babies will not survive, but that is wholly different from intentionally killing them. Obstetrician-gynecologist and former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains:

Let me illustrate with a real-life case that I managed while at the Albany Medical Center. A patient arrived one night at 28 weeks gestation with severe pre-eclampsia or toxemia. Her blood pressure on admission was 220/160. A normal blood pressure is approximately 120/80. This patient’s pregnancy was a threat to her life and the life of her unborn child. She could very well be minutes or hours away from a major stroke.

This case was managed successfully by rapidly stabilizing the patient’s blood pressure and “terminating” her pregnancy by Cesarean section. She and her baby did well.

This is a typical case in the world of high-risk obstetrics. In most such cases, any attempt to perform an abortion “to save the mother’s life” would entail undue and dangerous delay in providing appropriate, truly life-saving care. During my time at Albany Medical Center I managed hundreds of such cases by “terminating” pregnancies to save mother’s lives. In all those cases, the number of unborn children that I had to deliberately kill was zero.

GET WOKE, AMERICANS! Full-term babies can be legally exterminated in the womb for virtually any reason or no reason in most states in the U.S. Take your righteous anger at this barbarism and do something useful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Cuomo-Re-Recording-3.mp3

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The massacre of seventeen students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the latest in what seems like an accelerating manifestation of school shootings. Parents, students, citizens, activists and law makers are justifiably angry.

Demands to “do something” are loud and urgent, driven by a dread that the next shooting will be at my child’s school. Even some staunch defenders of the Second Amendment are shaken, agreeing that “it’s time for a national conversation about the Second Amendment, gun violence, gun safety, protecting our children and self-defense.”

There is a problem—and it’s getting worse. “During the 1950s, there were 17 school shootings. In the 1960s, 18. In the 1970s, 30. In the 1980s, 39. In the 1990s, 62. In the first decade of this century (2000-2009), 60 school shootings. From 2010-2018, 153.”

In the search for a solution, tension inevitably develops between protecting our constitutional right to “keep and bear arms,” and preventing the horrific acts committed by people with guns who are bent on murder and mayhem. On the extremities, one side advocates for an all-out ban on guns, while the other fends off any attempt to diminish the weight of the Second Amendment. Between the two are myriad proposals for restricting everything from what type of guns can be bought to how they can be purchased to how many can be owned to what accessories are permitted.

If there is one point of agreement, it is that any kind of mass slaughter, whether in Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando or Richmond, is unacceptable. “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) is a universally recognized human ideal.

A gun ban is unconstitutional and impractical

We can rule out a ban on all guns for at least two reasons. First, American citizens have the legal, unassailable right to possess and carry firearms. Ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment was a prescient measure put in place by our Founders specifically as a counterweight to the centralized power of the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right as recently as 2008 (District of Columbia v. Heller) and 2010 (McDonald v. City of Chicago).

Second, while estimates vary, there are probably more than 300 million guns in the U.S., which has the highest gun ownership rate in the world at 88 guns per 100 citizens. Nine million Americans pack a loaded handgun monthly and three million carry daily. It is impossible to imagine confiscating or running a gun buy-back program for that number of weapons. Guns are here to stay.

Some restrictions are allowable

We can also rule out unrestricted access to any and all kinds of guns at any age that the constitutional purist may want. Political historian and pundit, Jay Cost, writes that a proper understanding of the Second Amendment recognizes that it “establishes an individual right for a public purpose — and it therefore follows that the people, acting through their representatives, can properly set the terms of how that right will be enjoyed.”

In other words, we have the individual right to keep and bear arms for the specific purpose of defending ourselves and our neighbors, and the weapons we bear should reflect that purpose. That gives us all some latitude to debate proper restrictions. For example, machine guns were banned from private ownership during the Reagan administration, a law that is still in effect today. Certain semi-automatic rifles defined as “assault weapons” were outlawed for ten years during the Clinton administration (though with little effect).

Laws like those prove that there are reasonable limits the public is willing to have imposed. Keep in mind, however, that “firearms are the most-regulated common consumer product in the United States.” It could be argued that our legal framework surrounding guns is in “infringement” territory already.

Some practical things to do instead

As we consider where to (re)draw the lines on the continuum between unrestricted access and sensible limits to gun ownership, there are other things we can do to reduce the risks of school shootings.

Train and arm teachers. Force must be met with force and the sooner during an incident, the better. After a 1974 attack at a school in Israel, the country “passed a law mandating armed security in schools, provided weapons training to teachers and today runs frequent active shooter drills. There have been only two school shootings since then, and both have ended with teachers killing the terrorists.” It’s already being tried in Colorado, where teachers “are being trained to carry guns in classrooms” in order to respond quickly to attacks.

Hire armed guards. Closely associated with arming teachers is the idea of employing security guards at public schools. We already have a pool of qualified candidates: many of America’s veterans are unemployed, yet are trained to use deadly force. We might also hire retired police officers. Having armed guards on location makes them first responders who can eliminate the unprotected gap between when an attack starts and law enforcement arrives.

Use gun-violence restraining orders. Writing in National Review, David French promotes the idea of Gun-Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs). As he explains, a GVRO is “an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns,” and that the “concept of the GVRO is simple, not substantially different from the restraining orders that are common in family law, and far easier to explain to the public than our nation’s mental-health adjudications.” Such an approach addresses an individual rather than an entire category.

Home school your kids. The Columbine massacre was a watershed moment for the country. It was also a watershed moment in our decision to home school our children. While it has its challenges, home schooling not only keeps your children physically safe, but you are the primary influence on their intellectual, emotional and spiritual development. If home schooling isn’t for you, consider a private Christian school. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

It’s not the guns: it’s us

Whatever we decide to do in response to this latest horror, one fact is inescapable: we are no longer a virtuous society that can be categorically trusted with firearms. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It is getting harder and harder for us to claim to be “a moral and religious people.” At one time we could plausibly make that claim, but not anymore. We are more like the nation of Israel during the time of the judges: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 17:6).

The issue is the human heart soaked in a secular culture that devalues human life, despises authority, promotes victimhood, mocks religion, glories in debauchery, embraces radical autonomy and rages at the slightest offense.

The breakdown of the family has led to a quarter of our children living in fatherless homes.  Psychotropic drugs are prescribed to more than 8 million children, some as young as 18 months, to control depression, anxiety, and a lack of focus. Ten percent of our children are addicted to video games, many of which are violent. Add a steady diet of movies, music and media that glorify unrestrained sex, violence and drug use, and we’ve got a volatile cocktail of generational depravity that would make Caligula blush.

It all started when we began to systematically remove God from the public square. C.S. Lewis summed up our situation in his work, The Abolition of Man:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

By all means, let’s adopt additional measures for the safety and security of our children. But let’s also be clear that until we regain our virtue, new policies, laws and strategies won’t put an end to the violence. They never have.

RESCHEDULED: IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!