Last night, a gunman shot and killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colorado.

And already Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries is out with a piece blaming it on the fact that Americans have no fear of God or of going to Hell:

I can’t help but feel that to some extent, we’re reaping what we’ve been sowing as a society. We said to God, “Get out of the public arena.” Lawsuit after lawsuit, often by misguided “civil libertarians,” have chased away any fear of God in the land — at least in the hearts of millions.

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Recently, I wrote on the subject of Hell and how our society has generally lost its cognizance of it.

We’ve lost this cognizance to the point that a recent bestseller was a book by an “evangelical pastor,” who for all practical purposes denied Hell (or the import of it). (It exists, but don’t worry — supposedly nobody’s going there.) When the book was first published 16 months ago, it made the cover of TIME magazine. This month it was republished as a paperback.

This makes me think. “Wow, what the heck happened to Hell?” What — was there some new revelation that changed what the Lord warned about? To me, what He said 2,000 years ago is still worth heeding: What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?

Tens of millions of young people in this culture seem to have no fear of God. It’s becoming too commonplace that some frustrated person will go on a killing spree of random people. If they kill themselves, they think it’s all over. But that’s like going from the frying pan into the fire. Where’s the fear of God in our society? I don’t think people would do those sorts of things if they truly understood the reality of Hell.