Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Part I

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Heartbreak in Minneapolis: Horrific Tragedy as Shooter Takes the Lives of 2 Children and Injures 18 Other Children and 3 Adults at Catholic Church and School

America’s heart was broken yet again last week with a mass shooting that killed two elementary school children and injured 18 others, and beyond that, three adults. It took place at Annunciation Catholic School and Annunciation Catholic Church. You have to say both because the shooting actually took place while the children and their teachers were in the church for a mass to mark the beginning of the school year.

Two precious little children, an eight-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl were killed in the mass shooting. And then 18 were injured, at least some of them critically. Although at this point authorities in Minneapolis say they expect them to survive. But once again, we are looking at one of the most brutal crimes imaginable. And the premeditated nature of this crime underlines the fact that there is so much darkness in some human hearts. And some people, in biblical terms, simply give themselves over to sin. They dive into sin. They give themselves to sin. And that’s exactly what we see here.

And of course, as we came to know more about this particular tragedy, we also came to know more about the shooter. Given policy of trying not to identify shooters in order to give them publicity, I’m simply going to use first names. But I will tell you when the story broke, almost immediately, there was a great deal of confusion. The confusion came down to pronouns more than anything else. It was almost certain at the time that the news was really breaking last week, that the shooter was a twenty-three-year-old young man. And yet the pronouns got mixed almost immediately. NPR’s report said “he,” other major reports said “she.” We’re talking about one person, which is it? Well, this is a male.

The shooter in this case had the given name of Robert. Late in his teens, he changed the name, with the cooperation of his mother. whom authorities are seeking, his name was changed to Robin, thus embracing a transgender identity. The mother on one of the legal forms actually said that he considered himself a female. And so that explains the pronoun confusion, but it’s our task not to give ourselves to that confusion. So this is Robert. He committed the crime.

Now, there are so many things to take apart here. First of all, let’s just consider the fact that when the news broke, of course, the immediate response is save the children. The immediate response is heartbreak over the fact that there are two families of very young children who are now facing the unspeakable, the loss of these two children in an act of violence. These kinds of questions come immediately. They are what are often referred to as the repertorial questions. “Who, what, where, why, how?”

As reporters try to answer those questions, you understand we all have those questions. And in this case, it turned out that there was a premeditated nature to this crime that defies our human moral imagination. The premeditated nature of the crime has to do with the fact that this was, we now know, a shooter who as a boy had been student in the school. His mother had been an administrative assistant of some sort in the school. He knew the church building, he knew the school, he knew what was going on.

Furthermore, it becomes very clear that he had given himself over to fantasies about mass murder in general, but also about mass shootings in which the victims would be children. Hard as this is to imagine, this was a premeditated crime. It was a planned crime. And furthermore, he planned worse. He barricaded the doors of the church and then he had to shoot in from stained-glass windows, thus he wasn’t seeing the children he was hitting. And nonetheless, he was the agent of this mayhem.

What message was he sending? Well, the shooter himself tried in every way possible to say he wasn’t sending a message. Now, of course, that’s dishonest. It was sending a message. The question is, what is that message? Because the question “why?” immediately comes to mind. We as rational creatures, we want to have some kind of rational explanation. And that’s of course the way criminal investigations have to move forward.

They may have to face an irrational act of evil, but they have to use rational means to try to understand it, to investigate it, to assign blame and responsibility for it. But in this case, of course, there will be no trial for the killer killed himself. And that’s another act in which a mass murderer of this sort basically avoids any kind of interrogation about the meaning of these things.

But the thing that this particular shooter, like so many others, seems to have wanted is the publicity. And here’s where investigators, especially investigators at the federal and international level, are telling us something that is genuinely new. And it is new largely because of the development of the internet and the fact that so much information is available so fast and online communities of all sorts, including the darkest of sorts, can come about.

And so one of the things that has been clear is that federal law enforcement officials are telling us that there is a dark system on the web in which persons celebrate these kinds of crimes. They glorify these kinds of crimes, and some of them, overwhelmingly they tend to be young men, very troubled young men, but in most cases they are not persons who had been on some kind of watch list. But nonetheless, they give themselves to this sin, they premeditate it, they plot it, they glory in it, and then of course, carnage is the result.

Now, in a Christian perspective, here’s what’s really difficult. When you look at the problem of evil and suffering, the Scripture is so honest in affirming the reality of evil, but the reality of evil is in the context of a universe of moral accountability. And that is because the Creator himself, holy and righteous, made a cosmos that reflects his own character, and he made human beings on planet Earth, as the only creature made in his image, able to understand these things, able to glorify him consciously, able to know the difference between good and evil.

In Christian theology, one of the things we understand is what’s demonstrated in Romans 1, they gave themselves to this sin and then God gave them over to this sin. And that’s at least a part of divine judgment. You are what you glorify as sin. But one of the things we have to recognize is by common grace, most of the people we will meet, the vast majority of people we will meet, will not give themselves over to this particular kind of violent sin. They’re not going to give themselves over to this kind of horrible violent crime. As a matter of fact, most of us in our lifetimes will never meet a single person who has given himself or herself over to this kind of crime. 

Thankfully, it is rare, but it’s not rare the way it used to be. And at least a part of this, these national and international investigators are telling us, at least a part of it is because of this network, especially online, in which persons can join together in sharing plans and sharing details, in celebrating these crimes and glorying in them, and then eventually hoping to achieve some kind of lasting fame by being yet another one of these mass shooters with horrifying tragedy in his wake.

There are some other dimensions to this that came pretty quickly in the immediate aftermath there were some political leaders making statements, such as one attributed to the mayor there in Minneapolis, that what is needed is action, not platitudes of prayer. And this is where we need to recognize that prayer is the most profoundly powerful thing we can do. To pray is the most powerful thing we can do, not in the expense or in contrast to action. Clearly, if we can do anything individually to prevent this kind of crime, we should and we would and we must. If we can do something corporately to stop this kind of crime, we could and we should and we must. But that kind of statement against the dignity of prayer tells us a good deal of what’s going on here, at least in the minds of some in the political class. But then of course, the question is what exactly could we do? And of course at that point, you have some politicians who will immediately say the problem is the absence of gun control laws. That area, by the way, has at this point compared to other places in the nation, pretty restrictive laws concerning guns, pretty restrictive procedures. But this individual is able, nonetheless, legally, to obtain that kind of deadly force.

And I’m not saying that these issues are never of moral significance or political debate. I’m just saying that there is no easy answer to this. Because if there were an easy answer, that answer would’ve been put in place long ago. The reality is that the secular world doesn’t want to get to the heart of the problem. And you see that also in the fact that not only is the question of evil just acknowledged, but it is just too big for the secular system to handle, even to acknowledge. You also then, unless they’re going to do it, by the way, in terms of some kind of psychological or psychiatric pathology.

But it’s also very interesting, that almost immediately once the transgender question was raised, you had people come back to say, “Well, of course that doesn’t have anything to do with this. We know that doesn’t have anything to do with this.” Well, I don’t know any such thing. I will tell you, as you know, given other shootings in places like Tennessee, this is hardly unique. And I think at the very least, Christians would understand, “Okay, there are people saying this must be a deeply troubled individual.” And I think as Christians, we’d have to say, “Well, that transgender identity is a signal. This is a very deep problem, and it’s not just a violence, it’s also a basic problem of the understanding and acceptance of the self and of God’s design and of God’s gift of life and even of identity.”

You look at this and it’s a picture that unravels comprehensively, and that’s the way sin works. It unravels here, and then it unravels there, and then it unravels comprehensively, and then you end up with this kind of horrifying, indeed in its essence, an unspeakable tragedy. But unspeakable as the sin is, in biblical terms we still have to talk about it.

I said a few moments ago that I try to follow the policy of not saying names for people who want to be infamous. I mentioned the names Robert and Robin to make the point about the transgender identity. I also think it’s important we watch what goes on in the media in terms of the coverage, because even yesterday in the weekend newspapers, you had several newspapers using feminine pronouns, even though they know better.

And at least some law enforcement sources indicated that there were statements undermining the transgender identity even in some of the diaries that were uncovered. I have no access to those diaries, those are just in the reports. I found it very interesting along these lines that the headline in a New York Times article is, “What Motivated the Minneapolis Church Shooter?” And then the statement, “We May Never Know.”

So in that headline, the question is asked and then the statement comes back, “We may never know.” Well, we do know what this shooter has left in terms of these absolutely horrifying diaries. But when it comes to understanding the full darkness of an individual human heart, this is where it is beyond our human knowledge and diagnosis. But it is not beyond the perfect knowledge, nor the perfect justice of God.

Our hearts certainly go out to the families that are grieving and suffering, children who are traumatized, all of them in that room, and some who are healing and facing injuries from this savage attack. Our hearts do go out to them, and without apology, we pray for them. And we pray even so, Lord, come quickly.

Part II

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Beware the Definition: Hamas and Pro-Jihad Terrorist Groups are Funding Many of the ‘Journalists’ in Gaza

But next, as we’re speaking about big news, especially over the weekend, I want to go to an editorial board statement that was published in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times. Now remember, this is an editorial board statement. It’s an official statement from that board, not just an opinion piece in the newspaper. The headline is, “Israel’s Gaza Media Ban is indefensible.”

Now, why would this come about? Well, in general terms, there has been frustration building in the journalistic and media community as well as among political activists about Israel’s restrictive policy concerning media in Gaza. And of course, Israel is still undertaking military action in Gaza, renewed military action as a matter of fact. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that Israel is going to press forward in military force in order to gain control of all of Gaza in order to defeat Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that carried out the deadly October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel.

So this has been an ongoing situation. It is an unusually restrictive situation for war. But this is an unusual situation, for one thing, just in terms of the very small territory in terms of the landmass that is involved. This is not like most wars that have considerable territory and long borders. So this is a situation of concentrated military action, and Israel has been quite clear about limiting that access.

But it is also true that the immediate cause of this statement was an attack recently undertaken by Israeli forces, the IDF. And in a strike against Palestinian targets, at least 20 Palestinians were killed in one strike. And I’m reading here from the statement, including five journalists from the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and Middle East Eye. So those are media sources. And you can understand that as a media source, perhaps the world’s most influential media source, the New York Times Editorial Board felt they should make a statement. The statement they made is in judgment of Israel for its restrictive policies, but also for the harm that has come to journalists.

Now, there are some other big numbers thrown in this editorial statement. For instance, this is how it begins, “All wars are dangerous to cover, but Gaza holds a place of its own among modern conflicts for the peril faced by journalists.” Next sentence, “some 200 journalists have been among the estimated 63,000 people killed since the Gaza War began, and overwhelming majority killed by the Israeli military. These deaths have helped make the past two years the deadliest period for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit organization, started keeping records in 1992.”

All right, so here you have the word journalist used over and over and over again. And immediately you’re supposed to think of a news professional. And indeed, you’re supposed to think about a profession. But journalism is not like other professions. And when you’re looking at journalism, the credentials of a journalist traditionally have had everything to do with the media source that has commissioned the reporter and for whom the reporter, or the journalist, is working.

So first of all, this was the age of print. And so the New York Times has reporters that it sends out. They’re accredited by the New York Times, and they’re often recognized in law and in diplomacy as accredited journalists. In the expansion of media, the number of persons, the class of persons classified as journalists, continue to expand. And so you had radio news reporters, then you had television news reporters. The advent of cable news just expanded that. And then streaming media and the internet have exploded that. Okay, I just want to tell you right now, just about anyone with a smartphone can consider and call himself and claim to be, or she to be, a journalist.

Now, that’s a problem. Before you get to the war in Gaza, that’s just a problem because of the destabilizing of journalism, it’s also something that can be camouflaged. And this is one of the things that can frustrate just about everyone. A fake news site can look as professional as the most expensive journalistic outfit’s website. The New York Times website doesn’t look much better than what a 15-year-old could put together in his bedroom. It’s a completely new age, and things can look like media, when they’re not.

Now another story, this is not the equal of this in worldview significance, but it is interesting, is how many fake corporate sites are now showing up and bedeviling retailers for one thing online and in the store. But now we’re talking about journalists. Now the other thing is that during the 20th century, particularly the midpoint of this century through, say, the remainder of the 20th century, there was a real effort to try to credentialize journalism as a profession, as a profession. Like what? Well, like law or medicine. But law and medicine are very well understood.

You’re not a lawyer, at least you’re not able to claim one unless you’re a member of the bar, and that’s assigned by state. You’re not a physician unless, well, the state board says you are a physician, and that’s based upon an absolute credential graduating from a known medical school and having all the right credentials. You can’t claim to be a specialist in medicine without the accreditation and certification that comes with that.

And so we understand that, we count on it when we go to the hospital, we count on it when we hire a lawyer. But journalists, not the same thing. And I’ll say journalists tried in the 20th century to professionalize. The problem is you can’t just, well, start a hospital on your smartphone. You can’t start a courtroom on your smartphone. You can start a media site and claim to be a journalist with nothing but a smartphone. So I’m not even going to blame journalism. Yes, it’s overwhelmingly liberal, but in this respect, they got destabilized by technology. But now there is a moral dimension for which they are responsible.

They’re not responsible for the destabilization of the profession, they are responsible–The New York Times Editorial Board–is responsible for using the number 200 and the word journalist and using that word journalist very loosely. They’re using it in political terms. I’ll put it another way. I think it’s fair to say that most of the people who are working for many of these lesser known organizations wouldn’t actually be considered by the New York Times journalists as a journalist.

Now, there are moral responsibilities that fall upon Israel as well. I support Israel. I think we should support Israel in its effort to defeat Hamas. That requires military action, but like the United States of America and our military actions, like the military actions undertaken by any nation, those are subject to moral scrutiny and review. That’s true, as I say, of our own nation. It is true of Israel. But it is also true that Israel has to defend itself. And it is also true that Hamas is an implacable foe that refuses to surrender even at the cost of Palestinian lives, even at the cost of the lives and the well-being of the people there in Gaza. And Hamas is an Islamist extremist, murderous terrorist organization, and that also is a part of this story. 

More than a week before the attack that prompted that editorial board statement, and more than a week before that editorial statement came from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal ran a very important piece by James Kirchick. It was entitled, “Who Is A Journalist In Gaza?” This subheading in the article was this, “Press Freedom Groups Take up the Cause of Hamas Propagandists and Alleged Terrorists.”

Okay, so what point is James Kirchick making here? Well, and remember, this comes before this most recent event in Gaza. Well, he begins the article like this: “Al Jazeera employee, Anas Al Sharif, was killed in an Israeli airstrike this month. That focused attention on what international watchdog groups claim is the unprecedented number of journalists killed in the war between Israel and Hamas. Amnesty International, tweeted, ‘No conflict in modern history has seen a higher number of journalists killed.’ Reporters without Borders went on to say that, ‘Palestine has become the most dangerous state in the world for media professionals.’ The Committee to Protect Journalists put to the count of, ‘journalists and media workers killed in Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory plus Lebanon at 192 since October the 7th, 2023.'”

All right, so here’s where the important clarification comes in. “These assertions rely on an expansive definition of the word journalist.” Kirchick then tells us in 2023, that group known as Reporters Without Borders, “Ranked the Palestinian Territories 156 out of 180 countries in its annual world Press Freedom Index.” He goes on to say, “By amalgamating the West Bank with Gaza, the group’s ranking understates the degree of repression in the latter. That repression is the responsibility of Hamas, a totalitarian death cult, that eliminates any opposition.There is no independent media to speak of in Gaza, and journalists operate at either the direct command or the mercy of Hamas and other terrorist groups.”

Okay, Kirchick then goes on in detail documenting the fact that so many of the people who are considered journalists there in Gaza are actually connected to Hamas, under the influence of Hamas, controlled by Hamas, or at the very least permitted by Hamas, and that tells you a very great deal. The group known as the Committee to Protect Journalists, I said it has its own list. And then Kirchick writes, “Of the 192 putative journalists on the group’s list, 26 were employed by or freelanced for Al-Aqsa TV, which the committee generously describes as Hamas affiliated. 19 were employed by Al-Quds Ya’oum, which the State Department says is run by Islamic Jihad. Seven worked for Palestine Today, which the group itself calls pro-Islamic Jihad. Six works for other groups known to be affiliated with Hezbollah.”

We’re told, “Another 23 worked for outlets connected to terrorist groups, ranging from Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to the Houthis. Not counting those the IDF has accused of being terrorists themselves,” Kirchick says, and that includes Sharif, “Nearly half the people on the committee’s list worked for media owned by or affiliated with terrorist organizations.”

So in this case, we’re talking about terrorists with cell phones. By the way, Kirchick offers an important clarifying word about Al Jazeera. I’m just going to quote this from the article, “Whether Al Jazeera is a legitimate journalistic enterprise is debatable. It is funded by the government of Qatar, a theocratic monarchy that is Hamas’s main financial and diplomatic sponsor.” He also raises the question of, “How to categorize an employee of a radio station owned by Al-Azhar University, under which the Israeli defense forces discovered tunnels and explosives used by Hamas.” 

I’ll stop there because you get the point. And this does not absolve any nation of responsibility. It wouldn’t absolve the United States, it wouldn’t absolve Britain, it wouldn’t absolve any state, and that includes Israel, in terms of moral responsibility. But Israel is in the midst of war in a very tightly conscribed area. And there is no doubt that for accredited genuine journalists, it is a challenge to cover the story.

And a part of that is simply because of the very limited territory and the risk of violence in the area. But I think it’s really important in propaganda terms to understand what we are being fed when the word journalist is used so carelessly. I’m going to stipulate it’s hard at times carefully to know how to use the word. But in this case, these numbers are used irresponsibly and for political effect.

Part III

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There is Great Need for Reputable Journalism – And Christians Have a Great Responsibility to Engage Media Carefully

All right, leaving Gaza, just some final thoughts. When we look at news media as a whole, whether you’re holding a print newspaper in your hand, and if you are bless your heart, and my fingers get dirty from ink because I still use newspapers and newsprint. But whether you’re getting your news that way or we’re all actually getting a lot of our news from the online sources, and frankly sometimes major headlines break and the first reporting comes on social media. And sometimes it even comes from accredited journalistic sources just that way, because the immediacy of news is now so much a part of the picture.

But there’s gain, there has been gain for conservatives in this. There’s been gain for those whose voices have been neglected. And when you look at the mainstream media, it’s been overwhelmingly liberal for many, many decades because it is a part of the cultural elite. Those elites tend to be overwhelmingly liberal. And so it’s basically a gain in one sense that there’s been a destabilization of the media so that, frankly, there isn’t a stranglehold by the cultural elite and the powers that be on the media. There’s gain in that. I don’t want to nay say that at all.

There is also a leveling influence and a certain kind of accountability that now comes. Because whether they admit it or not, journalists watch and listen and read, when it comes to other journalists, other news sources. But at the same time, it has also allowed, the same destabilization has allowed authoritative news to be overwhelmed with less authoritative news. And by authoritative, I don’t mean that it comes in perfect fairness or anything else. I just mean they actually did have a reporter on the ground.

I hear Christians sometimes say, “Well, I don’t trust this news source or that news source. I saw this on the internet.” Well, the internet is often filled with the material written derivatively. That is to say the person writing that or the news source writing that didn’t necessarily have anyone on the ground anywhere near Gaza. And so there is something still to the fact that you have massive news organizations that do follow some kind of professional standards, and they do have accountability in terms of peers. That’s one of the reasons why I tell people, “If you’re going to read the New York Times, also read the Wall Street Journal. At least editorially, there’s a real check there.” And furthermore, even when it comes to competition over news stories, yeah, there’s a sense in which, trust me, they’re watching each other, they’re checking each other.

But it is our Christian responsibility to try to know what the facts really are. I’m not saying that’s always easy. I am saying as Christians understand, it’s always important.