However, guns are not the problem any more than cars are responsible for traffic accidents, cheeseburgers are responsible for heart attacks, or drugs are responsible for overdoses. In our quest for satisfaction when bad things happen, we seek answers and someone to blame so that we can sleep better *incorrectly* believing that by placing blame somewhere we have addressed the root of the tragedy and done our small part to make the world a better place.

Well, the road straight to hell is paved with good intentions.

We are a society that has abandoned responsibility in virtually ALL of its forms. Responsibility for yourself, responsibility for your income, responsibility for your family, responsibility for your debts, responsibility for your attitude, responsibility for your health, responsibility for your education, responsibility for your safety… all of it. Abandoned.

Until our culture faces the truth, and starts looking in our hearts, and at “the man in the mirror” (or woman) nothing will get any better. In fact, this petulant insanity that the answer to society’s ills is to cede our remaining rights and freedoms to the government is not only misguided, it is suicidal. It will only make things vastly worse. The light and hope of our culture is not burning low, it is out and is all but a smolder.

Without fail, in society’s vacuum of responsibility, what we cannot elevate, we medicate, and when we cannot medicate we deviate and celebrate, and when we cannot medicate or deviate, we obfuscate and then denigrate.

And the devil laughs.

American life has become a haunted choir of irresponsibility and deviance on the gruesome altar of “progress.” A word that is never defined lest it eat itself, for to actually progress you must first state your intended destination. If you are not headed the correct way, the most progressive thing to do is an about face. Thus, our cultural destination is never defined, or we would recoil immediately.

Institutions both societal and religious that have been the cornerstone and bedrock of civilization are now deemed in public circles at least bad, if not fully evil. We have destroyed the very walls and structures that support and surround us as if they were a prison, when in fact they were a shield and bulwark against the evil that is ever pressing on the fallen hearts of mankind.

People are not basically good! People are basically base, and with each generation increasingly debased. Goodness is not innate, it must be defined clearly, taught repeatedly, reinforced, recognized and cherished.

So who will save us?

This nation already has a savior, arms wide, ready to forgive and heal and repair and rebuild. But like mankind millennia ago,

“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For the people’s hearts have become calloused;
they do not hear with their ears,
and they have shut their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.”

Matthew 13:15

I am thankful to be a founding partner here at Alaska Watchman.  It’s time someone spoke with an honest voice in the public square and, most importantly, in our local Alaska Culture where change is possible.