April 15th. Taxes are due.

But evil has his own plans to tax us with death.

In a span of 10 seconds the two blasts culminated what was months, perhaps years of premeditated mass murder.  Blood was splattered, lives were lost, and amputees will now have a daily reminder of this evil.

I am not necessarily interested in the political or religious reasons for this heinous act.  To give an ear to the perpetrator’s pretexts for doing this is to appease him.

There is only one reason for this: humanity has lost its… humanity.

To understand this we must go way back to the beginning.  Humanity was created in the image of God, and the image of God is perfect.  But one act of disobedience on behalf of Adam made world wars, 9/11, and now the Boston Marathon bombing inevitable.

They came to Jesus in Luke 13 to tell Him about an act of terror.  They told Him that Pilate had murdered a group of Jews as they were worshipping.  Think of it as a bomb going off in a public place like the Boston Marathon finish line.

Jesus’s response was frank and unanesthetized:  “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?” Luke 13:2

He is in fact saying that such hate and violence is here to stay because of sin, and anyone of us could have been a victim!  He follows with the command to repent of sin.

Humanity will always be broken because we lost the initial image that God bestowed on us.

Political and religious motives for this crime are secondary as long as the evil impulse in the hearts of men remains unquenched.  There will always be a cause, a revolution, a motive, an impetus to rebel and kill.

The only solution is repentance of the broken humanity that is in us.

That is where salvation by faith in God begins.