This terrible atrocity leaves everyone freaked out. Why would they do that? Then we hear they are radicalised Muslims and we immediately categorise them and think we have an explanation - but we don't, at least that's not it. But that is easy because then we have no responsibility ourselves.
It is what the murderer himself said that is more telling,
"I apologise that women had to witness this today, but in our land the women have to see the same".
This man is telling us something terrible about our world. He is telling us that this is exactly what happens in his land and many other lands too, and it is true. For example, wherever there is war of any kind this stuff happens. It sadly is not unusual - terrible yes, unusual - no - except visibly on our doorstep. This atrocity is not merely a blight on an otherwise civilised society, but is part of our society and a part of our world. The truth is, our so-called civilised society is not as civilised as we like to pretend. It may look like it, as long as we don't scratch beneath the surface.
The horrible truth is, what has been witnessed in London today is the visible outbreak of evil. it is the visibility of it that shocks us, not the fact it happened.
But even war where these atrocities are common is a visible symptom of a deeper evil. The real picture of the world is not a world with the odd blight, but a world that is rotten to the core, full of maggots, but has a thin skin that looks fine most of the time. Every now and then there is a kind of break in the skin and out pop the maggots! We hate it, we want to fix it as quickly as possible, it heals over and we are relived. But the maggots are there beneath the surface.
Here are some sad but startling stats that prove my point ...
13% of all children in our world aged 10-14 are forced into child labour. (International Labour Organisation; http://www.ilo.org ) that's an evil!
1 in 6 children in the UK experience sexual abuse (NSPCC http://www.nspcc.org.uk) that's an evil!
There are 116,000 requests for child porn every day (http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html) Again, more evil.
I won't bother giving stats for violent abuse toward children, the numbers of murders and rapes every day, emotional abuse, kidnapping and international trafficking of women, girls and boys, illegal drug industries and the list goes on and on.
What happened in Woolwich today was that we all saw the underlying sickness of our world surface for a moment.
So here's the question: We have, on the whole, chosen to eject God out of our lives. When will we realise that by denying, rejecting and turning our backs on God and Jesus, the rightful and only able ruler of us all, we have created a godless world. That is what we're seeing all the time, everytime we switch on the news - a godless world.
Many might say, "well what kind of God allows this to happen?
The answer is 'a God who gives you the choice to follow Him or go your own way'. If we are honest, the people who blame God are the very people who reject Him. In other words, we want a world without God, and that is what He gives us, and then we blame Him for the consequences of our decision. We blame God, we blame "others" but we fail to see it is allpart of the godless world we have chosen.
But we do have a choice. God calls us all to turn from being part of a world that rejects Him and enter now into His loving Kingdom and live in this world under His loving rule. The God-rejecting world is reaping what it has sown, it is corrupt and under judgement. As the Apostle Peter himself put it, "save yourselves from thos corrupt generation". Those who do so will continue to live under Jesus loving rule forever. Those who continue to reject His loving rule over their lives now, will have their rejection of him irreversibly confirmed in eternity.
This is a godless world, it is the world most people choose, and what we see are the consequences of that choice. Repent and turn to Jesus.
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