The heart of the matter by Gary Rose

Over the weekend, there were more mass shootings, with over 20 people being killed. This is absolutely terrible. Today, I saw on the Internet that someone in Germany hacked a person to death in broad daylight with a sword (some reports say a Japanese one). And of course, there are the periodic stabbings in England. Each and every one of these acts are displays of barbarism and should be condemned by every human being on the planet.

While thinking about these things, I recalled what the Germans did to the Jews in the second world war and downloaded the picture above of a German soldier killing the last Jew in Vinica, Ukraine from a site dedicated to remembering the holocast. The Nazis killed Jews with Guns, by hanging and of course with Poison gas. Then there were the Japanese, who tortured many prisoners to death in the most horrific ways imaginable. When the Japanese were finally defeated, every one of them was forced to surrender their swords by General MacArthur (and the piles of them were enormous). What did they use those swords for - killing of course. I remember reading somewhere that 60+ million people died in the second world war; to me that number is unimaginable in its scope of evil. How could all the thing above be true? The heart of the matter is revealed in the passage below…

Genesis 4 ( World English Bible )

 ¹ The man knew Eve his wife. She conceived, and gave birth to Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man with Yahweh’s help.”  ² Again she gave birth, to Cain’s brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.  ³ As time passed, Cain brought an offering to Yahweh from the fruit of the ground. ⁴ Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. Yahweh respected Abel and his offering, ⁵ but he didn’t respect Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell. ⁶ Yahweh said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why has the expression of your face fallen?  ⁷ If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it.”  ⁸ Cain said to Abel, his brother, “Let’s go into the field.” While they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

  ⁹  Yahweh said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” 

He said, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 
  ¹⁰  Yahweh said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground. ¹¹ Now you are cursed because of the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  ¹² From now on, when you till the ground, it won’t yield its strength to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.” 

The Genesis passage does not say how the murder was committed, but it certainly was NOT WITH A GUN. Cain could have killed Abel with a rock or some other object or even choked him to death (Choking seems to me to be the most likely, given the Cain’s anger).

In all of the murders mentioned there was a conscious decision to kill another human being (s). The instruments that were used to take life were not the problem, the heart was. Germans classified Jews as sub-humans and not genuine people, so they could be eliminated (nice word for murdered). In America, many in our society classify the unborn as fetal tissue and therefore justify abortion. Some say that they have a right to do whatever they wish with their own body, but this is ridiculous, for the DNA of the child is a combination of the mother AND the father and therefore not just the body of the mother.

So, what was going through the mind of those sick people who committed mass murder this weekend? Know one will ever know (unless they left some sort of communication telling us why). What I do know is that unless a person has been taught right from wrong and the genuine value of the life of every human being, this sort of action is possible. Godly instruction begins in the home and should continue in our educational system until adulthood. Where should this instruction be drawn from? The Holy Bible of course.