Once again, we weep over a mass shooting, this one in the town of Roseburg, Oregon, an attack that left at least ten people dead.  And as we grieve, we wonder:  why?  Why here, why now, why must this happen?  What is it about this person's life experience, shaped as it was by the culture swirling around him, that led him to do this thing?
     Though we do not yet know the full extent of what drove the shooter to do his his deed, we do know that in one of his recent posts on the internet he remarked that, "The material world is a lie."  Without knowing precisely why he came to this conclusion, I can of course only speculate about the thought underlying it.  Yet in a nation in which material acquisition is so strongly stressed, in a country in which personal success is too often measured in terms of wealth and property, it's not difficult to see how those who do not possess such things might consider them to be a sham.
     If we consider this world to be the sum of all meaning, then, yes, it's easy to see why one might decide that it is a lie.  As we all know, this life, and the world in which it is lived, are frightfully fleeting; they are good and grand, but they do not last.  For beings who are naturally bent to look beyond materiality for ultimate meaning, this prospect can be enormously frustrating.
     Whatever else we might take away from this horrible event, we can at least consider that if we look only to this world for hope, that is, lasting hope, whether we are inclined to shoot people or not, we will never be satisfied.
     We want there to be more.  And there is.  As Paul remarks in the first chapter of Philippians, "To live is Christ, to die is gain."