Greetings and salutations. This is Kevin DeYoung, and you are listening to Life and Books and Everything. Good to have you with us. I am going solo today. Colin and Justin are not here, but our faithful sponsor

Crossway is grateful for them sponsoring today's episode and want to mention in particular Sam Crabtree's

new book, Practicing Thankfulness, Cultivating a Grateful Heart in All Circ in all circumstances. Certainly a timely word.

We all need reminders to practice thankfulness, especially when it seems as if there are so

many reasons to struggle and to forget thankfulness.

And so check out Sam's new books.

Thank to Crossway. Well, I want to talk mainly about

the tragic events of last week, the shootings that took place in Atlanta. Let me make a few preliminary comments

and then spend most of our time ruminating

about culpability and how to think through

the moral ethical implications of who, what,

why we should blame when tragic things like this happen.

So first, some preliminary comments.

Number one, of course, should be most obvious, but we do need to say it and mean it,

and that is to pray for victims. Hopefully, that's not just a Christian expression,

or even a non-Christian expression, thoughts and prayers, but we really do mean it. We throw around the

word tragic too easily, probably, and devastating and trauma and these words can lose their meaning,

but they do have times when they're necessary, and this is one of them, to have a shooter

and a lead shooter. Take the lives of so many people is a tragedy, and so we express the utmost grief and sympathy for victims for their

families. So that's the first preliminary comment and that's maybe most important. Second,

right on the heels of that, we need to say that what took place and everyone is due their day in court, but it certainly seems to be the case and by his own admission that this young 21-year-old man took the lives of these innocent people.

And to do so is an act of extreme wickedness.

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