Television executives at Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC go into a private session and decide that censorship is the way to go. What they’re seeing privately is too horrible for the rest of us to see. They decide that we can see the burning car, but that’s all. Instead, they divert our attention, telling us about a missing teen in Wisconsin; they broadcast Senate hearings delving into September 11, 2001. “The Wall Street Journal” calls their decision, “unusual restraint.”

In Iraq, a mob has ambushed two sport utility vehicles carrying four American contractors who are there serving as security guards. They’re working under a U. S. government contract to protect food shipments into the area.

After the ambush, the mob surges toward the burning car, pulling one man out alive. The raging mob beats him to death. They surge forward again, pulling the charred bodies out of the car. They attach ropes and drag them through the streets and then to a bridge from which they suspend the mutilated remains and continue to beat them. With joy. With their children.

Television executives decide that what they’re seeing is too gory, too horrific, and so graphic, that if anyone in America sees any of this at all, they’ll see only a burning car, and if they see anything else, the executives will make sure the camera goes out of focus. It’s too much. We couldn’t take it.

What we have here in this meeting are executive human beings saying about the human race, “Who we are, what we are, and what we’re capable of doing is so horrible, we can’t bear to show it to you. We won’t show it to you.”

Such is an admission that-the human being, alone or in a group is capable of conceiving and birthing an evil so horrible that it shouldn’t be seen by other human beings. Their decision to censor speaks volumes about who we are and what we’re capable of doing.

Perhaps we should be glad for the censorship in this case. In and of itself, it does make a point. We really don’t want to see it; in fact, we want to be as far removed from such atrocities as possible. So, don’t put it on my television screen. It’s too upsetting. Their act of censorship is an admission-this planet is a sponge for evil. We’re awash in it and sometimes it breaks out and inundates our senses with its horror.

Two thousand years ago, the human race got hold of God. When the human race got hold of God, they spit on Him, ripped out His beard by the roots, slapped Him in the face, and shoved thorns down on His scalp. (We only thought we were getting hold of Him.)

When the human race got hold of God, they stripped Him, strung Him up on a cross, pounded rivets through His wrists, and shot dice for His clothes. The crowd roared its approval.

Amazing, isn’t it? We don’t want to see such evil from the Iraqi bridge, not even from a distance, yet God gets up close and personal with evil. He lived here, voluntarily! He died here, voluntarily! The Perfect One, the absolutely Holy One lived and moved among the human race with its unimprovable corrupt nature. His presence was the Light that exposed this sponge planet for what it was and is.

It’s upsetting, isn’t it? Our race is so evil that only God’s coming and dying for us can solve the problem of our evil.

There have been those who’ve tried to censor that story because it is so upsetting. They’ve tried to blur it, get it out of focus. Censors the world over have banned the Book that tells the story about how evil the race is, and about how Jesus’ death is the solution and payment for that evil.

But the story won’t stay down; censors have tried to blur it and burn it, but the story never stops. It’s a story, that, in its telling, makes its hearers do something-choose sides. Believe it or reject it, but the story is so constructed that it forces decision one way or the other.

It’s the story of God’s putting His sandal prints on this sponge planet that makes itself sick to its stomach with its evil, but can’t solve its own problem. It’s the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of God the Son who went to the cross for the joy of doing the will of His Father. It’s the story of the Substitute whose payment for our sin was so complete that Jesus says, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40).

When the human race got hold of God, God got hold of us.