Responding to evil

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SomeChristians have responded to the Newtown massacre by invoking collective guiltor spiritual self-examination:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/12/14/a-day-for-hatred/
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/a-lesson-for-all-from-newtown
Although there’s something to be said for that, it doesn’treally fit the situation. Christians didn’t murder his mother. Christiansdidn’t murder the school children. We didn’t murder our own mothers. We didn’tmurder anyone. So the comparison is simply false.
Moreover, given who you and I are, most of us are simplyincapable of doing what Adam Lanza did. Let’s be honest. Let’s be realistic.It’s inconceivable that most of you would murder your own mother, shoot her inthe face, then walk into an elementary school, look trusting young boys andgirls in the face, then shoot them dead.
Turning the crime back on ourselves fosters a deceptivemoral equivalence that dilutes righteous condemnation. A cheap pietism.
The “we are sinners, miserable sinners all” refrain is tooeasy and too inaccurate. It doesn't come to grips with the real situation. There’s a better way of making the point that someChristians are trying to make.
I suspect that most of us have the same potential for evil,although that’s contingent on how early in the process God might act. Thedegree to which that potential is developed depends on special grace and commongrace.
Given the social conditioning that God gave me, I’m notcapable of doing what Lanza did. But, counterfactually speaking, if I’d beenbrought up as an Aztec, Spartan, Assyrian, Samurai, or something along thoselines, then I might well be capable of doing what he did. I might do thatwithout blinking an eye. I might relish it.
My social conditioning wouldn’t make me evil; rather, itwould cultivate my innate propensity for evil. By the same token, socialconditioning can restrain evil. My moral formation may be such that, given myformative experience, I am now no longer capable of committing certainaggravated evils. There was an earlier stage in the process where I could havegone one way or another, but at this point my character has set, like drycement.
God uses our circumstances to make us what we are. Indeed,God creates our circumstances.
So instead of beating our breast when we see a horrificstory like the Newtown massacre, we should thank God that he spared us fromdeveloping our propensity for evil to that degree, or anything close to that. We shouldthank God for whatever goodness we have.