Op-ed: The aspect of most recent assassination effort that almost no one will discuss

The shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was not just another headline - it was a sobering reminder of how quickly violence can erupt in places we assume are secure.

Cole Allen, the man accused of carrying out the mass assassination attempt, wasn't someone cut off from opportunity or understanding. He had access to education, training, and resources. By many of the standards our culture values most, he was exactly the kind of person we tend to trust, exactly the kind of person who should have known better.

That's what makes this so unsettling.

We have been conditioned to believe that if you just give people enough information, enough education, enough exposure to the right ideas, they will become better people. Knowledge, we're told, produces virtue and wisdom. That understanding leads to moral restraint - the lifeblood of any free society.

But, if we're paying attention, moments like this expose the tragic flaw in that thinking.

The problem is not that people don't know enough.

We know that violence is wrong. We know that hatred destroys. We know the difference between right and wrong at a basic, communal level. And yet, time and again, people act in ways that contradict what they know to be true.

Why?

Because as much as it makes the purely rationalist crowd uncomfortable, the issue is not primarily intellectual. It's spiritual.

Scripture has been clear about this all along. The human heart is not naturally inclined toward good, waiting only for the right data to calibrate it appropriately. In fact, it's not even neutral. It is bent, disordered, capable of justifying unspeakable things. For instance...

History demonstrates that as much as we want to believe otherwise, no amount of education fixes that.

That doesn't mean information is bad or that knowledge isn't valuable. But it does mean that those things alone are not transformative. A mind can be informed and vibrant, while the heart remains calloused and cold.

And when the heart is dark, a sharp intellect can be twisted in dangerous ways.

The Christian understands that God does not simply want us to become more educated devils. Jesus did not come simply to give better information or clearer teaching. He came to do what we cannot do for ourselves - change us from the inside out. To "remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh."

Where that transformation has not taken place, labels and knowledge don't mean anything.

Where Christ truly takes hold of a person, transformation by His Spirit is inevitable - not perfectly or instantaneously, but through the grinding, grueling work of sanctification. As a life is reoriented and desires are reordered, what once seemed acceptable no longer aligns with the renewed heart.

Allen referenced a church in his manifesto. His father, Thomas Allen, is an elder at Grace United Reformed Church in Torrance, California.

One can claim Christianity and still be driven by pride, anger, and hatred. One can speak the language without ever being changed by the truth behind it. That has always been the case. One can hold on to the teachings of Christ while injecting them with all sorts of satanic doctrines, like Allen's oppressed-oppressor framework used in liberation theology and other Marxist ideologies.

The church elder's kid who went to CalTech and then tried to kill the president should show us that the solution to what is broken in the world is not simply more science experiments, more books, more theories, more programs, or more access to knowledge. Those things have their place, but they must be oriented correctly.

We need changed hearts, and that is something only Christ can give.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.