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As I remember the events of a year ago, I have to
ask myself "Why?". Why is there so much violence around us?
What are some of the factors contributing to the increasing violence
around us? As I meditated on these questions, it occurred to me that
there are several factors that contribute to the increasing violence
around us.
Loss Of Identity. Two hundred years ago a person’s
identity was more closely tied to family, community, and God. More people
worked their own farms, ran their own businesses, and carried on their
own trades. More laborers had personal relationships with their employers.
In contrast, people today are strangers without identities.
Loss Of Healthy Family Relationships. Healthy family
relationships are foundational to social stability. Yet in 1998, one in
every three births in the US was out of wedlock. And today those figures
are even higher! According to a recent British study of the relationship
between family structure and child abuse, child abuse is:
Six times higher in a family where a divorced mother
has remarried. Fourteen times higher for children living alone with their
biological mother. Twenty times higher for children living alone with
their biological father. Twenty times higher for children living with
cohabiting but unmarried biological parents. Thirty-three times higher
for children living with a biological mother who is cohabiting with a man
who isn’t their father.
These statistics apply to a broad cross-section of
society. They don’t say what will happen in all single-parent and blended
families. They do, however, show trends that need to be counteracted by
conscious parental care and consideration.
Research shows that abuse is less likely to occur in
healthy home environments. But the pattern is reversed when children are
denied the model of a loving mom and dad. Nationally, 70 percent of young
people held in state reform institutions are from one-parent or no-parent
homes. The FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
concludes that "the three most frequent factors in the history of a
killer are physical or sexual abuse, a failure in emotional attachment to
the mother, and a failure to use parents as role models."
Trends for the future are not good. Criminologists
predict a wave of "super-criminals" who are raised without
positive male role models, proper guidance, or affection.
Loss Of Innocence. Proverbs 22:6 declares,
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he
will not depart from it." The experiences of infancy and childhood
have great influence on adult behavior. In her 1981 book Children Without
Childhood, author Marie Winn describes how our culture has changed from
nurturing children to providing them with early exposure to adult
experience in the hope of preparing them for the challenges of life. This
cultural shift has brought a relentless assault on children’s innocence
by the media. Popular musicians and movie stars model increasingly
violent and promiscuous behavior before ever-younger audiences.
Research from the 1970s to the present consistently
demonstrates a connection between media sex and violence and the
self-destructive behavior of young people. In their book Saving
Childhood, Michael and Diane Medved report:
A September 1997 Los Angeles Times poll found that
87 percent of respondents agree that "TV has more sex and violence
than 10 years ago," and 71 percent say shows depicting nudity or sex
encourage immorality. A survey of 570 Hollywood elite found that even
within the industry itself, half "said that TV had a negative impact
on the country, and strong majorities said TV only did a fair or poor job
in encouraging such things as lawful behavior, sexual abstinence, and
respect for police" (p.26).
In spite of overwhelming agreement about the causal
factors, we seem to lack the collective will to do anything about it. Even
though the danger is self-evident, we seem too often to be guided by the
lowest common moral denominator of our culture.
Loss Of Community. The Bible emphasizes our
responsibility to neighbors (Ex. 20:16-17; Mt. 22:38-39). This isn’t
surprising. It is in the context of relationships with neighbors—people
we know well—that good character is nurtured. American culture, like
other modern cultures, has taken a decidedly un-neighborly turn. Fewer
Americans are living in the same place for more than a few years. Most
move hundreds or thousands of miles from their childhood community to get
employment. In fact, few people today seem to consider established
friendships a factor when given an opportunity to move to a new house in
a nicer community.
Yet having roots in community is civilizing. One is
less likely to steal from a neighbor if he is a friend. One is less
likely to cheat a customer or a businessman if he is someone you see on a
weekly basis. A husband is less likely to be an adulterer if everyone he knows
will be indignant at the harm he has done to his wife and family. That’s
the way it used to be. Now, however, in an impersonal culture, sin is
anonymous. Our loss of social moral restraints leads to antisocial
attitudes and an illusion of independence from moral law.
Ironically, feelings of resentment and entitlement
grow stronger as a sense of personal and community responsibility
diminish. It is easier to feel resentment and hatred in isolation. If we
don’t know or care about our neighbor, it is easier to covet his house,
his wife, and his possessions. It is far easier to act violently toward
those we don’t know—and don’t want to know.
Loss Of Satisfaction. Historically, most people were
too occupied with the struggle to survive to even compare themselves with
the wealthy. Today food, clothing, and shelter are a birthright. Those
who have less have the leisure to resent those who have more. Adding to
the passion of their envy, our culture offers people the demoralizing
values of crass materialism and consumerism (Prov. 27:20; Eccl. 5:10-13).
Loss Of Responsibility. Not too long ago, a driver
with a gun was cut off in traffic. He began a wild chase that ended when
he shot the other driver. As he waited for the police to arrive, he asked
onlookers, "Did you see what he did?"
People today often feel they aren’t responsible for
what they do, that they are victims of circumstances or
"irresistible impulses." This mindset often results in
violence. Job 5:2 declares, "Wrath kills a foolish man, and envy
slays a simple one."
Loss Of Authority. Many of our universities have
reinforced the cynicism and despair that are at the core of modern
values. Teaching that there is no absolute truth or reliable authority,
they maintain that what is important is political power.
When all spiritual and moral authority is denied,
important social restraints are lost. Truth is replaced by
"spin," and "spin" is condemned only if it doesn’t
work. If it continues, this denial of objective truth will produce
disunity, hatred, and violence.
Loss Of Control. Some of us are deeply disturbed by
these dangerous cultural trends. Knowing that our freedom depends on
personal responsibility, we view our society’s drift with alarm. We find
ourselves acting contrary to our deepest convictions, and sometimes may
even respond violently. But violent reactions only lead to more violence.
These losses and others contribute to the violent
spirit of the age. However, they are just symptoms of a more profound
underlying problem. The most important explanation for violence is found
in a loss of peace at the deepest levels of our existence.
Loss Of Relationship With God. In the beginning,
there was peace. According to the Bible, our first parents lived in a
perfect world. They were innocent, with nothing to hide (Gen. 2:25). They
walked and talked with God when He appeared in the garden of Eden
(3:8-9). As long as they enjoyed peace with Him, they had peace with each
other and everything they needed.
In the beginning, life had the peaceful
characteristics that, according to the Bible, will once again
characterize the earth in the last days. The prophet Isaiah said of this
future messianic kingdom: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young
lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them"
(Isa. 11:6).
The Hebrew word for such peace is shalom. Shalom is
more than the mere absence of violence—it pictures life in harmony with
God, the presence of spiritual well-being, material provision,
righteousness, wholeness, and victory over evil.
But early in the earth’s history, something sinister
broke the peace, something that wanted to establish its own authority
against God, something that would soon shatter the garden’s peace. This
evil spirit, later identified as Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2), commandeered
the body of a garden animal described in the Bible as "the
serpent." Speaking through the mouth of the serpent, the rebel
spirit told our first parents that their Creator could not be trusted. He
said the Creator was holding out on the couple by denying them access to
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17;
3:1-6).
Using a venomous half-truth, the serpent told them
that only by eating of the forbidden tree could they become like God,
knowing good and evil. He denied what God had said—that this act would
kill them (Gen. 3:1-4).
When the man and woman trusted the rebel rather than
God, they got what they wanted—and more. With a firsthand taste of the
difference between good and evil, our first parents experienced the death
of their innocence. Their thoughts would never again be the same. From
then on they would experience anxiety, anger, pride, and lust. Something
within them became disconnected from God. Their peace with their Creator
was shattered, and they were infected with the germ of violence and
death.
After confronting the couple with what they had
done, God turned to the serpent who had introduced them to evil and said:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall
bruise His heel (Gen. 3:15).
History has become a commentary on this prediction.
Here was a promise not only of the violent conflict of the ages to come,
but also a veiled anticipation of a child of the woman who would
ultimately defeat the rebel and restore peace to the world.
As the New Testament later revealed, the descendant
of the woman would be the God-man, Jesus. Satan would "bruise His
heel" by inflicting suffering and death. But on the cross of His own
undeserved execution, Jesus would destroy Satan’s power over death (Heb.
2:14). By the wisdom of God that outmaneuvered the strategies of the
enemy, Jesus used the cross to give heaven the legal right to rescue
millions who had been taken hostage by the rebel. It was on the cross
that Jesus took our place, carried out our rescue, and secured a plan
that will eventually lock Satan away forever at the end of the age (Rev.
20:2-10).
Although the Creator patiently offered to restore
His relationship with a fallen Adam and Eve, He didn’t exempt them from
the consequences of their distrust. So our first parents were exiled from
Eden (Gen. 3:22-24) into a violence-prone world. Evicted from the garden,
Adam and Eve immediately began experiencing the painful consequences of
their bad choices. Life became a struggle (3:16-19). In the growing
darkness of sin outside the garden, the first couple came face to face
with the forces of the violence they had unleashed. In a fallen world of
their own choosing, Adam and Eve discovered that the enemy had won a
large part of their own hearts.
This violent world may seem beyond hope—but so did a
lifeless little girl (Lk. 8:49-50). The Lord didn’t call us to be
spectators of the world’s self-destruction. He gave us the task to carry
on His work of healing and redemption. We are the heirs of His kingdom.
The darker the world, the more powerful and penetrating the kingdom’s
light. Jesus said:
You are the light of the world. . . . Let your light
so shine before men, that they may . . . glorify your Father in heaven
(Mt. 5:14-16). The following prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
(1181-1226), eloquently expresses the light that is needed in a violent
world:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where
there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where
there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is
darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that
I may not so much
seek to be consoled as to console; To be understood
as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we
receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying that we
are born again to eternal life.
This is the kind of attitude that can be expressed
by those who have the security of knowing that they are loved and
provided for by God. Out of the overflow of their lives they can seek the
good of others.
Curtis
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