There were two items I read that connected in my mind and heart this week. They put together what I have had challenging my heart from NT Wright’s statements on the purpose of Romans 8.

The deepest part of who I am exists for the world. This is the purpose of Christ’s salvation. I am not saved so I know I am going to heaven. I am saved for the sake of the world. I am to be a part of God’s reclamation project of the earth. What a calling!

Part of that calling is to carry the needs of the world in lament. Creation groans, Pauls says in Romans 8. We are groaning in intercession as well. It is not for us but for the world! This is part of a grief I have carried this week.

The first thing I saw was a quote from Miroslav Wolf, a theologian from Croatia who teaches at Yale:

There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.

My heart was stirred with that quote in light of what we are learning about the gunman in Maine. There were laws in place that could allow law enforcement to step in and at least temporarily take firearms away from a person and have them submitted for mental evaluation. Law enforcement had been warned about this shooter and their follow up was … well, weak… to put it lightly.

The Army Reserve and a Maine sheriff’s department were aware of a reservist’s deteriorating mental health more than five months before he killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, according to records released on Monday. Just six weeks ago, the records show, he had grown increasingly paranoid, punched a friend and said he was going to carry out a shooting spree.

But there is no indication in the documents that any law enforcement officials ever made contact with the reservist, Robert R. Card II, 40, who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in America this year and set off a two-day manhunt before he was found dead.

This is the normal opportunity in our raging social media world to be mad on at least two counts:

1. Why did law enforcement not follow up?
2. That’s in infringement on the man’s second amendment rights! (Someone is out there at least thinking it.)

I don’t want to rage on either of those two issues. My grief comes from a different place. It is our lack of care as a culture.

When it comes to this particular issue of a gunman being set loose on a crowd and dozens are killed, we immediately jump into our ideological bunkers and lob political grenades about the Second Amendment, or “it’s a mental health issue”, or “we need to ban assault weapons.”

My grief this time is about the gunman himself. Laws are absolutely no good if we are not willing to enforce them! And what would it REALLY have taken to enforce this law this time?

Law enforcement would have needed to CARE.

They needed to care about a man who could easily commit suicide with firearms. They needed to care about a wider community who could possibly be in danger. It wasn’t enough to have a law to compel law enforcement to make a visit to the man. They needed to CARE, not about the law, but the person.

This is what challenges me about Wolf’s quote. Politicians will trot out their “thoughts and prayers” mantras. Others will yell about banning assault weapons.

But this was a case when something could have been prevented if people had just cared about a person.

We need to be willing to work to resolve an issue like high rates of suicides. We can’t just pound the mantra, “It’s about mental health” and then not help fund mental health!

We can’t just pound the mantra, “Ban assault weapons!” quite frankly. In all honesty, a law won’t work! Not if care is still missing in how we implement those laws!

“Simple” solutions are not easy. Caring is not easy.

In this case, care could have saved the lives of 18 other people, sure. But it would have done the huge favor to save one man’s life first.

Dear Lord… help me to care!