Inside the Heart of Darkness

No offense to Joseph Conrad, but we don't need to travel to the dark reaches of the globe anymore to find the evil that is in man's heart.  We were shown it once again this week with the cold-blooded murders of American soldiers at Ft. Hood by one of their own comrades.  The news media and investigators will be obsessed in the coming days with answering the question of "Why?"  Why would someone snap and go on a murderous rampage.  The same question was asked after the Virginia Tech killings, the same question after Columbine.  Culprits will be found who "missed the signs" and scapegoats will be blamed (as they were after the others).  But what was the real cause of this inhumanity?  Rebellion against God.  Rejection of the Truth that all men are brothers because we have the same father.  The placing of selfish motives or ideals above regard for the lives of others.
This is a familiar path, we've been down it so many times before.  The heart of mankind is dark.  In this darkness, even the basic notion that the lives of others are to be respected can be, and is, lost.  It should only takes another father beating his child to convince us of this Truth, and it should only take glance at a Hitler or a Mao to convince us that we will never fix this problem on our own.
The heart of man is dark; self-help is not the answer; Hinduism is not the answer; Scientology is not the answer; Buddhism is not the answer; Islam is not the answer; materialism is not the answer; secularism is not the answer...
There is an answer, there is a Gospel, there is salvation from our sin through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Every other solution, every other cure, is a fraud. 
Our prayers go out to the men and women of the Army who have bravely defended the freedom that Americans enjoy each day.  God bless you all.