| Tragic truth - Creation Magazine |
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Tragic truthPastor Gino Geraci at Columbine and Ground ZeroWhat do you say to help survivors of a horrific tragedy? Pastor Gino has recently faced this tough question, not once but twice. Gino Geraci, pastor of Calvary Chapel in South Denver, Colorado, USA, was serving as a local police chaplain in 1999 when two young men shot and killed twelve fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School, Denver, USA. Gino was later asked to minister at Ground Zero, New York City, in September 2001, after the Twin Towers were demolished by terrorist attack.
‘Most likely to go to hell’!Voted ‘most likely to go to hell’ in high school, Gino’s life was in a tailspin until God showed him that His Word is true from the very first verse. ‘In high school I was not just a pagan,’ he told Ken, ‘I was an antagonist of Christianity. I would find Christians and figure out ways to humiliate them because I was so anti-Christian.’ Gino explains that his ‘paganism’ grew out of the lack of belief in absolute truth: ‘When children are left on their own, if there are no rules, if anything goes, anything will go.’ At the root of his relativism was evolution. He says his indoctrination into evolution occurred at a very early age. His fourth-grade teacher took him to see the famous paleontologist Louis Leakey1 at a fossil dig in the nearby Mojave Desert. That was where Gino found his first fossil, an experience that began his ‘love affair with evolution’, reinforcing the idea that there is no God and you can do anything you want. ‘Natural Selection’—Columbine killer’s T-shirtGino’s church is about three blocks south of Columbine High School. He was serving as a chaplain at the county police department when the infamous shooting occurred. He arrived on the scene as events were unfolding. Not widely publicized, he says, is that one of the student killers was wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Natural Selection’. Based on the killers’ own Web site, Gino says we now know that they were deeply committed to evolution. They believed that if they shot or killed people, they would be simply scattering their molecules.
Taught to killWhen the superintendent came up to Gino later that day, weeping and asking why it had happened, Gino blurted out, ‘You have taught our children that they come from nowhere, and that is where they’re going, and that life is a point of pain in a meaningless existence. And they believed you.’ The superintendent’s response was shocked silence. Certainly the shooters were responsible for their own actions, but Gino says this generation must come to grips with the consequences of living in a Western culture that has adopted the philosophy that evolution is fact. When evolution is taught as ‘truth’ in schools, it has real consequences. Of course, students don’t suddenly wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, I’m a product of evolution, I think I’ll go and kill someone today.’ Evolution increasingly pervades the thinking of the society, from generation to generation. Eventually, young people no longer have any concept of Christian morality, of right and wrong; just doing what is ‘right in their own eyes’ (cf. Judges 17:6; 21:25).2 ‘The whole evolutionary mindset is breeding a militant atheism and an antagonism towards Christianity,’ Gino concludes, ‘where any talk about God in a public setting becomes unacceptable. I believe that we as Christians have to contend for the faith—firmly and forthrightly reminding people that there is a God. We must be salt and light in a decaying culture.’ Gino and his church have been actively showing people the clear connection between evolutionary assumptions and society’s decline. Pastor Gino has talked to many police officers who see this connection, as they fight evil ‘on the streets’. They recognize the need for trustworthy information that counters the so-called ‘facts of evolution’. Several police officers have come to Christ as a result of Gino’s ministry. Gino explains the biggest lesson from the Columbine tragedy, for him personally: ‘It’s given me a certain boldness and assertiveness, along with a sense of urgency—we can no longer be squeamish about presenting the truth of the Bible.’ Ground Zero—different tragedy, same questionsEvangelist Franklin Graham was with US President George Bush during the terrorist attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers, 11 September 2001. The President approved Graham’s request to bring a team of pastors to Ground Zero—and one of them was Gino. After hurrying to New York, and seeing first-hand the rubble 14 stories high, Gino was struck by the fact that something so big and expensive as the Twin Towers could become so worthless so quickly. There Gino saw a repeat of Columbine—shock and dismay, as the rescue workers went about the grim duty of trying to find people and recover bodies. People were asking, ‘Why?’ and ‘Is there a God?’ A recurring theme, as Gino walked through the rubble and met with officers and firefighters, was ‘What happens when you die? Where has my loved one gone?’ Although the circumstances of this tragedy were totally different from Columbine, there was a striking similarity. The tragic truth is that people were trying to understand the events through the filter of what they had been taught about evolution. If we evolved from bacteria, what hope do we have?
Hope for the hopeless, based on a literal GenesisGino said his understanding of a literal Genesis ‘definitely helped me’ in ministering to those people, because ‘the account of the literal Genesis points to a future Saviour who’s going to redeem us’. He often directed people to the counsel to Christians in 1 Thessalonians 4:13: ‘I don’t want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.’ What is the basis for this hope? Gino continued with these telling words: ‘I really believe that what people are looking for in the most tragic circumstances of life is an authoritative, credible source of information. That’s why the attack on the credible, authoritative information in the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis creates such problems in our culture and society. … ‘One of the things that I found in common with Columbine and Ground Zero is that people in crisis, people in the worst circumstances of their life, want to know: Is there something real? Is there something true? Is there something that they can hold onto that’s going to be true in every single circumstance?’ The answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ We can trust the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. This certainty allows us to speak with loving authority when ministering to people in crisis—a time when people really want more than ever to know the truth. Mike Matthews, M.Ed., is a writer and educator with extensive experience in Christian publishing. His writings include several yearbooks on current events and a geography textbook used in Christian schools. He now serves as a writer/editor at Answers in Genesis–USA.
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