Evil Will Find a Way

Athens is a cosmopolitan city of over five million people. About a million and a half of its inhabitants are foreigners. I met one at a café while we were there. He was a French tour guide, who spoke perfect English. Once he established my nationality, the Frenchman immediately criticized American gun laws. The Virginia Tech shootings were all over CNN, and the European bureau constantly criticized our Second Amendment and gun-happy culture. Indeed, when “Jean” (not his real name) and his wife heard I was from Texas, they made quick-draw motions with their hands to demonstrate to me that they understood all about Texas.
I politely informed them that none of the policemen I knew, one of whom was my son-in-law, had ever had to shoot anyone in the line of duty. They were not convinced, even when I pointed out how shootings sometimes happen in countries with the strictest of gun laws, such as Scotland, when a gunman killed several small children in a day care center in 1997.
Not willing to give ground to a Frenchman, I shared how I had been in Oklahoma City when Timothy McVeigh set off his truck bomb, and how I had interviewed many of the victims when they arrived at the hospital. “Evil will find a way,” I insisted. This madman killed 32 people with a handgun. These other madmen mixed harmless fertilizer and diesel fuel into a bomb which killed 168 people, including 19 small children.
No one likes to think of children being hurt or killed. It’s no easier when they are late adolescents, looking forward to bright futures. I’m shocked and horrified at the tragedy. “It’s a travesty against humanity,” insisted the Frenchman. I agree. Unfortunately, evil flourishes in our modern world. And, it will find a way to wreak death and destruction upon the innocent.
In retrospect, it has always been this way, although the scale of destruction seems to increase with the years. Jesus was likewise questioned about events that occurred in his day: “Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them-do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." --Luke 13:1-5.
We will pass laws and establish procedures to try and keep our kids safer while they are in school or university. But history says we won’t be able to thwart evil forever. It will find a way. Because that is the nature of life, Christ warns us to repent, and always keep ourselves in a state of watchful readiness, because we just never know. That’s life. And death, as it seems.