{"id":1317,"date":"2013-01-07T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/2013\/01\/07\/evil\/"},"modified":"2013-01-07T16:42:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T16:42:00","slug":"evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-vF4jCPb4zbA\/UOr548KlcXI\/AAAAAAAAAI8\/0MRbVdMSjXE\/s1600\/Prayers+for+Newtown.jpg\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\" rel=\"prettyPhoto[gallery-tVFn]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"219\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-vF4jCPb4zbA\/UOr548KlcXI\/AAAAAAAAAI8\/0MRbVdMSjXE\/s320\/Prayers+for+Newtown.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<p><i>Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good<\/i>. (Romans 12:21 ESV)<\/p>\n<p>As I write this, only a few days have passed since Adam Lanza killed 26 people in<br \/>Connecticut.<\/p>\n<p>One thing needs to be made very clear:<\/p>\n<p>This was NOT the work of God.<\/p>\n<p>The motives for this young man\u2019s actions are not known at this time, but consider this<br \/>from \u201cThe Psychology of Terrorism,\u201d by Clark McCauley, Professor of Psychology, Bryn<\/p>\n<p>Mawr College<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTerrorism inflicts immediate damage in destroying lives and material, but terrorists hope<br \/>that the long-term costs will be much greater. They want to create fear and uncertainty<br \/>far beyond the victims and those close to them. They want the enemy to spend time and<br \/>money on security. In effect the terrorists aim to lay an enormous tax on every aspect of the<br \/>enemy&#8217;s society, a tax that transfers resources from productive purposes to anti-productive<br \/>security measures.\u201d (Emphasis added.)<\/p>\n<p>I am not saying that Lanza\u2019s motives were a well-thought out strategy as described in the<br \/>paragraph above. At this point, we don\u2019t know that.<\/p>\n<p>I am saying those are the motives of our larger adversary.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus told us the devil seeks to kill and steal and destroy.<\/p>\n<p>Actions like Lanza\u2019s do all of those things. We see those 20 innocent lives senselessly<br \/>snuffed out and we want to give up. The situation appears hopeless. We are afraid. We<br \/>want increased security measures. Our peace and our joy are stolen from us. We want to<br \/>give up and crawl into safe little cocoons where nothing can harm us.<\/p>\n<p>And once inside those cocoons, our enemy knows our witness for the love of Jesus Christ<br \/>and the power of the cross will be destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>But God has given us a battle plan\u2014and it is so God-like in that it is the complete opposite<br \/>of everything we would do if left to our own devices. Instead of seeking revenge and<br \/>lashing out in anger and fear and resentment we are told to love.<\/p>\n<p><i>There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with<\/i><br \/><i>punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first<\/i><br \/><i>loved us<\/i>. (1 John 4:18-19 ESV)<\/p>\n<p>Much has been said about what could have prevented this, but I am absolutely certain of<br \/>this&#8211;If Adam Lanza had truly known the love of Jesus Christ in his heart and in his soul, he<br \/>could have never done this.<\/p>\n<p>So, don\u2019t we need to speak that truth in love, without fear or holding back, to as many<br \/>people as possible until the love of Jesus Christ fills our land from sea to sea?<\/p>\n<p><b>Today\u2019s Praise<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i>Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is<\/i><br \/><i>greater than he who is in the world<\/i>. (1 John 4:4 ESV)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21 ESV) As I write this, only a few days have passed since Adam Lanza killed 26 people&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 04:36:04","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}