“It happens in Chicago every day.” President Obama wiped a tear away with this aside during an apparently heartfelt address to the nation endorsing tighter measures on acquiring handguns and military style weapons. (Jan 6, 2016)
Chicago is the most dangerous big city in the nation when it comes to firearms. We have more fatalities per year from the use of guns than L.A. or New York City. Just watch the evening news on TV and listen to local news reporters interviewing survivors of family members who have been killed. Distressed fathers and mothers talk about the painful loss of daughters and son to street violence. And still, Mayor Emmanuel and the other city movers and shakers are impotent to do anything to reduce lethal violence. But, the inability to act doesn’t stop with civil authorities, the rest of us shake our heads and get on with our lives hoping that no one jumps in front of our car at a stop sign brandishing a weapon and demanding money “or I’ll blow your f….g head off.”
Chicago is dying. It is dying of pain and hopelessness. Detroit’s inner city died of corruption and abandonment. Chicago has a similar cancer and we are, with great concern, watching the patient die. It is us.
Chicagoans won’t kill one another off through murders but our citizenry will die just the same. We will die from broken hearts, and stomped-on dreams. Even that doesn’t get at the heart of our sickness. We need to name the enemy and it is not just some of our people. The name of our enemy is sin. Traditionally, sin is described as pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth. So, our enemy is ourselves and we are unrepentant and locked into the misery of our own resistance to face evil in our hearts.
Can you imagine the ridicule Obama would face if he just shut-up and knelt down before the nation to pray? Powerless in the face of evil, we all should get down on our knees and have a come-to-Jesus moment. Christianity is revolutionary when it starts with the human heart. Resurrection is only possible when sin and its effects dies.