“God didn’t stop the shooting in Las Vegas because there is no God.” I heard that on Facebook the other day. I’ll bet you did, too.

And that is one possibility, I suppose. The other one is more ominous. There is a God, and He’s letting us have our way on earth, for now at least. In that case, the shooting tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does about God. Romans 1:18-32 spells out how God “gives us over” to the natural consequences of our sin. Psalm 9:15 says, “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught.”

It isn’t the victims’ own sin, certainly; Jesus made that clear in Luke 13:1-5, speaking of victims of both murder and natural disasters. “Do you think these people were worse sinners than others?” He asked. “No,” He answered Himself. “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Lovelessness in America

Repent of what, you ask? I’m not absolving Paddock of his horrendous crime; rather I’m trying to understand it in context of God’s work among us. If there’s something for the rest of us to repent of (and there is), most fundamentally, it’s our turn away from God. Next to that I’d say it’s our national sin of gross lovelessness.

You might have been expecting me to mention sins like abortion or homosexuality. But they’re actually symptoms of our national self-centeredness — and they’re not the only symptoms.

Every culture has its characteristic strengths. Every strength has its corresponding weakness.

Every culture has its characteristic strengths. Every strength has its corresponding weakness. America was famously built on “rugged individualism;” it’s been one of our strengths. But it’s a strength that can go to seed, in the form of rank self-interest and self-focus. Which is what has now happened.

Why is there abortion, after all? It’s because we’ve stripped all love out of sex: both the love that unites partners in lifelong commitment, and the love that overflows into love for children. That’s why these children are “unwanted.”

Not Just “Sinners” But All of Us

But this isn’t just about “sinners;” it’s all of us. The signs are everywhere, starting right at your own front door. When I was growing up in the 1960s, my parents let my brother and me roam our whole 20-acre neighborhood, long after dark. They knew the neighbors were watching out for us and our friends.

Try to get to know your neighbor today, though, and they’ll think you’re weird. Try to love your neighbor in the pure and giving way Jesus commanded (Matthew 22:39) and they’ll bar the doors on you.

Or at least we expect that’s what they’ll do. We expect them to be just as cocooned as we are, everyone tucking themselves in at home, pretending we aren’t lonely there. Cocooning was a fast-growing trend as early as 1981, when the term was coined — long before Netflix, which certainly hasn’t helped.

Is This “Just the Way Things Are Today?”

We could dismiss this as “the way things are today,” but that would be ducking the issue. Yes, it is the way we are, but the rest of the story is this: We are a self-oriented, self-centered culture, a culture that has no idea how to love its neighbor.

You can see the fragmentation everywhere: during NFL pre-games, on the streets following a police shooting, in the polls and the election booths. Where you don’t actually see it — but it’s very, very real — is in your social media feed, which insulates you from people different from yourself.

Even In Church

Love is lacking even in our churches. Sunday morning friendliness is too often “pseudocommunity,” defined as people acting friendly, but with no depth of interaction. Of course it’s hard to have deep conversations in the hallway outside the worship center; it has to happen somewhere else. But even that’s rare.

Several years ago when we lived in Orlando, one of the elders of our church invited my wife and me, along with two other couples, to dinner at the fanciest French restaurant in town. He didn’t explain why he’d invited us until dessert was being served. He said, “The reason you’re here and I’m paying for this is because in all the years I’ve been in this church, you’re the only ones who have ever had me over for dinner.”

I wish I could say Sara and I were always having people over, but as I said, the problem isn’t just about “sinners.” It’s us. Even in our churches we’re missing out on real community — real Christian love. Sure, we do loving outreaches, sending missionaries to other lands, giving our time sacrificially to help with disaster recovery, and more. But we’re doing it too often as pseudocommunities.

Finding Ways To Make a Difference

I can’t do much about this problem, but I’m committed to doing what I can. We’re having friends over this weekend. I’ve resolved to do at least one other-centered act for someone every day, whether it’s a phone call, a hand-written note, or something else that shows someone I care — someone outside my own family, I mean.

As resolutions go, this might be the hardest of them all. It means turning away from my own self-centeredness. It isn’t just about “sinners,” after all. It’s about me.