The Newtown, Conn., murders of 20 school children and more is of course a tragedy of gruesome proportions. The question to discuss and answer is not how Adam Lanza killed the children, his mother and school personnel, but why? What is in anyone's heart that would drive them to such action? Whether it is Adam Lanza killing school children, or the live-in boyfriend of the mother whose baby he beat to death, or the person who kidnapped and abused the young girl before strangulation, and so on. In the Bible, Jeremiah, Chapter 17:9, God states that, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." In other words, you will reap what you sow. And again in the Bible, Jesus said in Mark, Chapter 7:21, "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders." All these evil things come from within the heart. So the real issue is a moral one and not the means of how the wickedness was carried out. Such is the reward for a nation who has turned its back on God, turned away from the light and become the blind leading the blind. No amount of legislation will cure a man's soul. No wonder the TV shows such as "The Walking Dead" are so popular. Empty soles, empty hearts.

Brent Rains

Collinsville