Confederate Flag Debate Is a Distraction

I hate the confederate flag.

That flag stands for so many things that are painful, divisive, racist, and I could continue my list of pejorative adjectives in relation to that rectangular representation of evils. But I won't because I don't want to get very deep into the current debate of the confederate flag. The flag controversy is a distraction from the real issues that need to discussed in relationship to the tragic massacre in Charleston.

Nine people have been so viciously removed from this life and we're talking about a piece of fabric. Rather that talk about the need to send that disgusting symbol to the history books, we should be talking about what leads someone to commit this sort of violence. Flags don't make people kill.

Sometimes I wonder if as a society we avoid difficult discussions because the truth may come too close to home.  What drives someone to do something like this? Evil in the human heart. However, if we acknowledge the evil in someone else's heart, we might start looking inward at what drives the wrong things that we do in our own lives. While the rest of us aren't guilty of this heinous crime, each of us is guilty of something. The universality of wrong-doing in the human race speaks to a universal problem. A universal heart problem.

The same Bible that was being studied when these events occurred teaches us that the heart of man is "desperately wicked".  Yet in the Charleston massacre, we have seen both extremes of what man is capable of. In the shooter, we saw man's heart in its natural state, evil. In the families of the victims, we see the near unbelievable, a willingness to forgive. A forgiveness that comes from first being forgiven. By offering forgiveness, these families have shown the world that Christianity is real. The Christian God who forgives is real and when you know His forgiveness, you are able to forgive when the world can't understand how. These families have shown us what it means to follow the One who prayed for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying Him.