Newtown Tragedy: We Need Revival

The unthinkable has happened, again. A crazed or angry young man has targeted innocent children in their school. “Why?” we ask.


Donald Trump said, after the election, that we need “a revolution.” He is wrong. The nation needs revival. We need another Great Awakening.

Just this past week, a six-hour concert for Sandy Relief was held. Many of the greatest rock-and-roll artists of our times joined together to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy so they could rebuild their homes and put their lives back together. The musicians put aside any of their differences or competitiveness for a good cause.

We need the great ministers, priests and rabbis to come together for “Newtown Relief.” Our nation needs their help to rebuild our spiritual lives and recalibrate our moral compass, if we truly want to stop tragedies like the Newtown killings.

Our founding fathers were godly men. They founded this nation on the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian tradition, particularly the Ten Commandments. The nation’s first colonial constitution was written in 1639 for Connecticut. In this document, "The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut," it proclaims:

"We came to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess as also the disciples of the churches, which according to the truth of the said gospel, is now practiced among us."

We are no longer the godly nation our founding fathers envisioned and assumed we would be. The Apostle Paul warned in Romans 1:18-32 what would happen to a people who turned its back on God and mocked His moral law.

Instead of protecting them, God would give them over to “corrupted minds (1:28).” Among the consequences of abandoning godly knowledge would be “all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed, and vice (1:29),” including murder and malice. We would, Paul prophesized, end up with people who “have no conscience…no kindness or pity for others (1:31).”

Already today, the gun banners are rallying to use this tragedy for their political purposes. Soledad O’Brien lost all her reporting objectivity and had an emotional meltdown this morning on CNN over gun control.

Would someone please tell O’Brien and other reporters that Connecticut has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws? The state requires registration of all guns. It bans so-called assault rifles, although some were grandfathered in if purchased before the ban. Law enforcement is still investigating, but it appears that the guns used in this tragedy were legally owned and registered by the killer’s mother.

More gun laws would not have stopped yesterday’s gunman. He would have either stolen other guns or used another means to kill. Just yesterday, a villager attacked children with a knife outside a primary school in China, injuring 22. According to the New York Daily News, China, where privately owned guns are outlawed, has had numerous deadly school attacks in recent years. Others have used bombs, box cutters, automobiles, and toxic chemicals to perpetrate mass murder and mayhem in this country.

The innocent children and educators of Newtown who lost their lives yesterday were victims of a corrupted mind. The killer, obviously, had no conscience. He had neither kindness nor pity for others. He was a psychopath or a sociopath. The guns are not to blame. The perpetrator is.

What can we do to prevent future tragedies like Newtown, Columbine, Portland, and Aurora? A spiritual renewal is absolutely essential. The Bible in Second Chronicles 7:14 points the way:

"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."