Why do 'people act like animals'?

Society teaches God doesn’t exist, an eagle’s egg is more important that a human child, sexual perversions are “normal” and marriage is whatever people want it to be, notes a lawman, pastor and author.

So why should anyone be surprised when people adopt violence as a mode of behavior, asks Carl Gallups, a former Florida lawman, a 26-year senior pastor of a large Gulf Coast church, a veteran host of conservative talk radio and a coast-to-coast radio talk show guest commentator.

Gallups also is the bestselling author of the recent Christian apologetics hit “The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending The Christian Faith.”

The book has been near the top on Amazon’s list of Science and Religion bestsellers and has been called a “must read book” by a Washington Times columnist.

In a recent interview on KLDC radio, which covers Aurora, Colo., he explained what the nation needs to do to battle episodes of evil like last week’s theater shooting there in which 58 were injured and 12 killed.

“Our culture,” Gallups said, “is spiritually starving and quickly becoming spiritually and biblically bankrupt. We often wonder and analyze what it is that we are doing. I am convinced the problem is what most of us are not doing.”

“Here is the crux of the matter,” Gallups said. “We decided, a couple of generations ago, that God didn’t exist. We convinced ourselves that ‘science’ has explained away the need for an intelligent designer. From there, it has been a downward spiral into an abyss of despair and violence. We now place more value upon the protection of a turtle egg or an eagle’s egg than upon that of a human child with a functioning brain, heartbeat and the ability to feel – in the its mother’s womb. We don’t know the definition of marriage anymore. Practically every sexual perversion and physiologically illogical sexual arrangement that man can envision is now called normal.”

He continued: “We freak out if the Ten Commandments are displayed on the walls of our school buildings. Then we teach our children that they are merely an accidental conjoining of chemicals from a magical pool of muck. We make certain that they are taught that there is no intelligent designer, thus there is no accountability to our creator, and that moral absolutes do not exist. Yet we wring our hands in despair when these same people act like the animals, with no moral foundation, that we told them they were.”

Gallups told WND: “America wants to know ‘what is wrong with us?’ How can a young man, enrolled in a PhD program, walk into a packed out theater with the desire to randomly destroy as many lives as possible and then booby trap his apartment in the hopes of destroying even more lives in the aftermath? The media reporters, politicians, media opiners, and social engineers, are all looking for that magical ‘problem’ so that another law can be passed, another regulation enacted, another drug invented or another public service announcement can be aired. Our microwave culture of instant solutions desperately wants to ‘fix’ this problem. They want to know ‘what was it that was in his life that caused him to do such an unthinkable thing?’”

Gallups continued: “And so, the talking heads line up night after night to debate gun control, bullying, public security, video game violence, and mental illnesses. They talk and reflect around the clock in the 24/7 news cycle – hoping that someone, somehow, somewhere will say the ‘magic words.’

“The problem,” Gallups said, “is that they are not asking the right questions. They are not talking about the core of the problem. They are painfully avoiding the presenting issue.”

He said he comes to the issue with a biblical worldview.

“The presenting issue is the crux of the message of my entire book as well as the Bible itself. The message is that we are not a mere animal with purely instinctive responses to life and our surrounding environment. Humans are created in the image of God. We have the ability to think, create, invent, communicate, write books, build computers and Internet systems, and land on the moon. Chimps do what chimps have always done – they eat bananas and swing in trees. Humans are emotional, social, psychological, physical, and spiritual beings. We are amazingly complex creations. We might spend a lifetime analyzing what ‘was in’ the Aurora killer’s life that caused him to step over the line of common morality, but the real issue is what was ‘not in’ his life.”

“Because,” Gallups said, “it is a certain fact that had this disturbed young man had a contextual biblical worldview – if he had a living relationship with God, his creator, through Jesus Christ – if the young man walked in the love and teachings of Jesus Christ and genuine Biblical faith, I am convinced that this horror would have never happened. You notice that I use the words, ‘genuine and contextual.’ Certainly there have been atrocities committed in the name of Christ – but those actions are not based upon a contextual understanding of the Word of God or a genuine walk with God through Jesus Christ.”

He said some gun regulations are just fine: “We don’t allow people to do any and everything they want with an automobile, for example. However, we do have a God-given right, as individuals, to defend and protect ourselves. We have a constitutional right to do so as well. I defend that right wholeheartedly. I am strong and active proponent of Second Amendment freedoms. No – stricter gun control is not the answer to what happened in Aurora.

“Logical reasoning answers that question for us. All one has to do is ask a few basic, rational questions, such as: If the killer had no access to guns would it have stopped him from killing people in the theater? Absolutely not. He used incendiary devices as well as guns. He certainly would have devised another way to commit mass murder and mayhem. If the killer knew for a fact that everyone in the theater was carrying a firearm that night in the theater – would he have entered and opened fire as he did? More than likely not. Is there any gun law that man can devise that would have stopped this deranged killer from inflicting terror upon that crowd that night, or gaining access to an illegal weapon if he so desired? I cannot imagine that there is one.”

He went on: “You must remember, it is being widely reported that the Aurora theater was a strict gun-free zone. That is, legal patrons of the theater were not allowed by law to carry a weapon, concealed or otherwise, into the theater. I cannot imagine that the killer did not know this. He picked the easiest target. I know the cliché is well worn, but it is nonetheless true; it is the deranged mind that kills people, not the gun. To further restrict, or even ban, guns in America because a deranged killer decided to use a gun to destroy lives is as illogical as saying that we must ban all automobiles, or baseball bats, or knives, or rocks – because, after all, these are used all the time as weapons of destruction and death.

“The answer, in my biblical opinion, is more heart-control. I am striving to turn America’s heart back to God, His Word, and the understanding that we are created in His image and we are eternally accountable for our lives and our actions,” he said.

His comments echoed those of several other experts and WND columnists. WND columnist Erik Rush, who is based in the nearby city of Fort Collins, earlier said the blame need to be placed on the shooter.

“While the actions of the shooter here were abhorrent and atrocious, we have to remember that this was a lone, disturbed individual. Armed Colorado residents have actually saved more lives than were lost in Aurora, and it bears mentioning that one armed patron could have taken this guy out easily,” Rush said. “If anything, it’s a good argument for looser gun laws, not stricter ones.”

He continued: “The anti-gun zealots trying to make political hay out of this while the bodies are still being counted is reprehensible, but reprehensible is standard operating procedure for the political left. The left is fighting for its life right now, because a lot more Americans have gotten wise to their compulsion to control us. This is illustrated quite handily in their ongoing determination to abolish or subvert the Second Amendment.”

One of those activists, CNN’s Piers Morgan, had tweeted: “Horrendous details from this Colorado cinema shooting. America has got to do something about its gun laws. Now is the time.”

Rush pointed out that the media tried to use the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last year to increase gun control and immediately tried to connect the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, to the tea party or conservative politics.

The same thing happened in Aurora, when ABC News linked the suspect to the tea party, then quickly withdrew the claim.

“With absolutely no evidence, the media narrative for the Loughner shooting last year became an example of ‘right-wing extremism’ though no link was ever found,” Rush said.

Ted Baehr of Movieguide said the Second Amendment will be just one of the attack targets because of the shooting.

“The shooting at the midnight showing of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ will be blamed on many things,” he said. “One reporter who called me this morning blamed it on violence in movies. Certainly, violence in movies, television, and video games has had a tremendous impact on society. Over 500,000 studies, capped by the latest Dartmouth University study, show that violence in the media influences susceptible youths to commit violence. That said, most people are not susceptible. Most are just desensitized or scared.

“Another reporter blamed it specifically on the Batman movies. Yet, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is nowhere near as violent as the last Batman one, and Batman himself tells Catwoman not to kill. The message of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is justice and self-sacrifice. The villains and the killers in the movie are the socialist left-wing Occupy Wall Street power to the people villain Bane and his compatriots, who are clearly shown to be wrong, evil, and bad, and who get their comeuppance. It would have been almost impossible for this killer in Colorado to have even seen the new Batman movie before the 12:30 screening,” Baehr continued.

“Some people will blame it on guns, although countries that have tried hard to crack down on guns, like England, are now finding that knives and head-butting are out of control. Thus, it isn’t the head-butting or the knives, but the fact that people, who, as the Bible says, don’t know the loving God who gave us a way of salvation through Jesus Christ, are stewing in the juice of their own wickedness,” the leader in Hollywood family fare continued.

“Some people will blame poverty, or a lack of education. But James Holmes, the alleged killer, is getting his doctorate in neuroscience and came from an upper middle class family!”

“Every possible reason” will be explored, including “maybe the fact that Holmes was a Democrat and hated the anti-socialist message of the movie,” Baehr said.

But he said the incident simply is attributable to evil.

“This is an evil act committed by an evil person, who did not know the truth of Jesus Christ that would set him free from such wickedness. The answer is not more laws, the answer is not to banish movies, nor neuroscience programs, nor weapons that can be used to protect, but rather to get the Word of God out. Because ‘faith comes through hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ (Romans 10:17).’”

Read more at WorldNetDaily News