The worm is slowly turning.

It seems as if the Texas shooting has rescued us from the violent seas of emotion, and sent us back to the safe shores of reason. Like the prophet Jonah we have been spit out of the belly of the whale, and returned to human habitation. And like the demoniac in Mark chapter 5 we are once again clothed and in our right minds. 

Many flags are flying at half mast. Evil has gone too far! It has invaded what is sacred. Even many progresssive thinkers can't escape that nagging feeling. What the Las Vegas massacre, and the NYC terrorist attacks could not do, this one has done. It has shaken us awake from our cultural coma.

To be sure there are still plenty of talking heads who have not yet exited the echo chamber, but there is a strong contrary current changing the course of our national thinking. As much as they don't want to deny the cultural catechism, many are coming to understand that such acts as this have nothing to do with mental illness, or guns, or legislation. All those things were accounted for and in place, but they did not prevent this mass murder. It has given us a good corporate fright. It makes us all feel vulnerable, and unmoored. It tells us, at a sub basement level, that social doctrine is wrong.

Now what?

Like St. Dismas, the thief on the cross, we can still return at the 11th hour to the shores of divine sanity. Nearly empty churches still stand, held together by a tiny remnant. Jesus is still in them inviting people: Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

The echo chamber has finally reached its limits. It is not only irrelevant, but a contra-indicator of what is and isn't true, right, good and salutary. In the Book of Judges we hear over and over that Israel sinned, and suffered for 40 years because of it. Then they called on the name of the Lord, and he rescued them. Our 40 years has been more like 60, that's when sanity began to be rejected on a societal level. But I hope and pray that this long night of national disgrace and discontent is over.

Neither mental illness, nor guns are the problem. Before 1968 you could buy a gun in a retail store with no questions asked. But there was no wholesale murder. The thing that changed is the moral temperature. It dropped. What St. Paul wrote 2,000 years ago has, like a prophecy, come true. "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

But fear, if not plain weariness, is now causing us to collectively doubt our so-called progressive thinking. The price is too high. But behind all of this is the mercy of God in Christ, who cleanses and purifies us with the redeeming blood of Christ. As we sing in one of our Advent hymns, "He comes, from thickest films of vice, to clear the mental ray. And on the eyeballs of the blind, to pour celestial day." (TLH #66)

O God of mercy and love, clear our mental rays from the thick films of vice that have accummulated, and show us celestial Day. Amen.