An Immanent, and Imminent, Choice

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We pray for the victims of the school shooting in Nashville – three students and three teachers gunned down at a Christian school. Requiescant in pace. The female perpetrator – apparently a trans-activist ‘transitioning’ from her God-given sex to ‘male’ – was gunned down by police. Deus miserere nobis.

We know not the tragic depths of the motives of the murderer, whose soul has now had to face her Creator. She was a former student of the school, and had written a ‘manifesto’ – not being made public, as might be expected. But her actions may not be unconnected to the fact that Tennessee has just made illegal the Mengelian mutilation of minors in the name of ‘gender ideology’, and that ideology is after our children. Whatever prompted her rampage, it takes quite a bit of resolve in malice to gun down a child. But, then, so does lopping off their healthy body parts, or killing them in the womb, or supporting such grisly practices. Yet these people – including most of our political leaders – are deemed ‘normal’.

What we do know is that such malevolent mayhem has its remote, or even proximate, origins in Satan, the devil, a murderer from the beginning. He hates us humans, the innocent especially, and would devour us all, were he permitted; but since he’s on a tight leash, he uses what means he might, not least those who have given themselves to him.

There are any number of causes of evil, which has been with us since the rebellion in the Garden – but it now seems to be metastasizing. Are we witnessing a more explicit immanentiztion of the eschaton, as Eric Voeglin put it, with the spiritual battle between good and evil, heaven and hell entering more explicitly into time, as history moves inexorably towards its consummation? A perusal of the second chapter of the Book of Wisdom, verses 12-24, may be a propos. We all have to make a choice which side we are on. As Moses exhorts his – and God’s – people:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.

Whatever unfolds, stay faithful and courageous, dear reader, keeping your conscience as clean as you might, your eyes on eternity, and your soul on the side of goodness, truth and plain common-sensical sanity. God takes care of His own, and His Christ will bring victory in His own time.