"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

That phrase was written in Greek to a church in Italy by a Jewish tentmaker nearly 2,000 years ago, but perhaps it applies even more so to modern-day America.

A few days ago, YouTuber Logan Paul gave rise to massive controversy when he posted a video containing footage of a hanging dead man, which they found while filming a vlog in the Japanese suicide forest. The internet erupted in hatred and started slamming the 22-year old left and right, with politicians and celebrities alike condemning him for displaying “sociopathic qualities” and failing to “honor those who have committed suicide.” Within two days, Paul issued a public apology in which he admitted that his actions were wrong and went on to set aside “time to reflect” on his actions, yet people continue to blast him, continue to defame him, continue to tear him to shreds. Angsty internet users tell him to kill himself. A recent petition asking YouTube to terminate his account has reached over 200,000 signatures.

My question is this: Why?

Christ is enough for me…Christ is enough for me…Everything I need is in You…Everything I need…

What do we mean when we sing these words? Do we soak in their meaning and consider the weight of what they are saying, and then sing them out in humble admittance and glorious recognition? Or do we sing them merely because they are the words that are on the screen, and since the melody is familiar to us we find no fault in harmonizing?

Perhaps neither. Perhaps you find yourself somewhere in the middle. The words ring vaguely true in your head, but in reality you are focused on the errands you have to run after church or perhaps taking notice of the elegant pattern-work and stitching in the suit coat of the church member sitting in the pew ahead of you. Perhaps you know these words to be true, but you have heard them sung so often that they have lost their meaning.

59 dead. Over 500 injured. The deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

This is the news that we all woke up to on Monday morning as a result of the tragic events that took place in Las Vegas on Sunday night. A 64-year old man made his way up to the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and sent a hailstorm raining down on innocent concert-goers for Lord knows what reason, and now we wake up and fall to our knees as we ask God a short but extremely important question: “Why?”

What does this mean for all of us? What does it mean for Christians as people begin to accuse our God of malevolence or claim that this incomprehensible evil is proof of His inexistence? How are we supposed to live faithfully in a world where evil runs rampant and we are striving to live like Noah in a world that’s unaware of the Flood that’s coming? How do we respond to this pain, this suffering, this tragedy? What cold we possibly do to cope with the outbreaks of hatred and violence in the world that surrounds us?

I love Texas A&M.

I really do. I’ll admit that when I made my first college visit to the sprawling campus my junior year of high school I wasn’t the biggest fan (I didn’t grow up in an Aggie family, so I didn’t have the prior bias), but each and every day I’ve been here, the place has grown on me. I flash my thumb, I sing my “Howdy,” I shout my “Whoop!” I now love the campus, I love the atmosphere, and I love the people.

I even like the football too.

The thing is, I’m not one of those Aggies. You know what I’m talking about, one of those towel-wavin’, yell-shoutin’, ring-dunkin’, maroon-wearin’, horse-laughin’, hardcore Aggie elites clad in nothing but maroon and white day and night, caring so much for all things Aggieland that if there was a course offered called Aggie Traditions, they would come out with a 12.0 GPA. Here at A&M we call those people “Red A**” (I censor this because sadly we are not talking in terms of donkeys), and I’m simply not one of those. I am what people at A&M would call a “2 Perecenter,” which the Wikipedia page for Aggie Terms (yes, that’s a thing) defines as “Aggies who choose not to participate in Texas A&M traditions.” This isn’t to say that I despise all the Aggie traditions or that I hate the school (which I’ve already clarified), but simply that I came to the school purely because it was a good school to go to, and for some reason have never been able to truly grasp the whole Aggie tradition thing.

Just last night, I read the introduction to John Bevere’s Good or God?, a book that tackles the subject of how “good without God isn’t enough” – in other words, how doing good things does not necessarily mean that you are aligned with God’s will. I’ve been wanting to read this book for quite some time, but only recently did I find myself with the spare time to actually sit down and start reading.

However, as is the case with most books (and all other sources of entertainment, for that matter), I felt the need to go online and start reading reviews of the product prior to beginning it myself – I do this not so much to see whether or not I will enjoy it, but more so to see how well it holds up doctrinally and whether or not it is written to a standard that leaves people actually enveloped in what is being said, rather than bored to death due to lackluster insights and overall lack of passion by the creator of the piece. Good or God? received amazing reviews (4.52/5 stars on Goodreads), but there was a something I noticed: of the two “bad” reviews the book received, they both seem to address a particular touch subject…

Church, we’ve got a huge problem, and it has to do with our Gospel.

Maybe I should show you where I would like to place the emphasis here. You see, the problem doesn’t have do with our Gospel, but it has to do with our Gospel. We are the problem, not the Gospel itself, and this is what I mean: the way in which we present the Good News of Christ to every single lost soul we encounter on a day-to-day basis is flawed, rooted in something extremely unbiblical. The Gospel itself is something so beautiful and unique that only a church run by imperfect sinners could screw it up, but the sad thing is that, I hate to break it to you, but we are a group of imperfect sinners, and it’s negatively affected this group of people we call our Church.

We’ve screwed up the Gospel.