10
A
local newspaper recently
reported that President Anthony
Carmona, speaking at the Specialist
Learning Centre Thanksgiving Service
and Celebration Recognising 20 Years
of Excellence, quite rightly asked
“How can a man decapitate another
human being and leave his head
on the roadway, or on a counter, or
in desert sand and feel no sense of
remorse ?” And no doubt many are
asking the same question. The report
further added, “Carmona also said
crime in TT was rampant because
persons were lacking moral values. He
said persons do not develop a deep
sense of morality “at the end game” or
university, but in the formative years
when the mind was uncorrupted —
that is in primary school.”
On Friday May 25, 2001 responding
to the continuing national lawlessness
one of our newspapers “confessed
ignorance of the genesis of this ethos of
lawlessness, violence and immorality.
It is difficult to say what has brought
this to pass … Changing that ethos may
well be our society’s most difficult and
most important challenge.”
Without a biblical understanding of
man as a fallen creature, in need of
God’s grace, one would not be able
to understand human nature or to
comprehensively treat with the crime
situation. The clear biblical declaration
is that God did not create the world
from generation to generation shaming
and corrupting all of mankind. Crime
and criminal action therefore will not
cease, cannot cease, but will worsen
in the course of time. Things are not
going to get better. Today is better than
tomorrow and yesterday is better than
today. And the day after tomorrow
will see a level of evil never previously
experienced in the history of man.
This diabolical evil condition, which
generates all manner of crime and
criminal action, cannot be neutralized
by psychology or sociology, or other
human action.”
The view that things are not going
to get better has been corroborated
by the biblical view of the future,
“ evildoers and impostors will go
from bad to worse, deceiving and
being deceived (2 Timothy 2: 13)
.
“There will be terrible times in the
last days. People will be lovers of
themselves, lovers of money, boastful,
proud, abusive, disobedient to their
parents, ungrateful, unholy, without
love, unforgiving, slanderous, without
self-control, brutal, not lovers of the
good, treacherous, rash, conceited,
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
God— having a form of godliness but
denying its power. Have nothing to do
with such people. (2 Timothy 3: 1 – 5)
A 1926 Minnesota Commission on
Crime clearly understood the Biblical
declarations concerning human nature
when it stated inter alia that “Every
baby starts life as a little savage.
He is completely selfish and self-
centered. He wants what he wants
when he wants it -- his bottle, his
mother’s attention, his playmate’s
toy, his uncle’s watch. Deny him
Treating With The Prevailing
Lawlessness In Trinbago -
An Awesome Task For Any
Government
as it now exists. Indeed, our Creator
was well pleased with the world in its
original condition
In creating man in His own image and
likeness God gave to him the awesome
gift of choice — the ability to decide
on his own options, even to the extent
of rebellion against the sovereign
authority of Divine Law. Subsequent to
his creation man disobeyed God and
experienced a radical change of his
nature. He became ungodly, captive to
a sinful and rebellious disposition.
The Bible states that man’s rebellion so
fundamentally affected all aspects of his
being and existence that man’s nature
was described as being “ deceitful
above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:
9) Further, Psalm 51: 5 declared that
man “was sinful at birth, sinful from the
time (his) mother conceived (him).” In
other words man is possessed with an
inherent, evil, rebellious nature. This
is the condition of all human beings
at birth. Confirming these declarations
regarding the inherent and innate
evil within mankind our Lord Jesus
Christ declared, “from within, out
of a person’s heart, … evil thoughts
come—sexual immorality, theft,
murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and
folly. All these evils come from inside
and defile a person.” (Mark 7: 20 – 23)
Man himself recognizes this indwelling
evil disposition - “Deep within the
human psyche is an inherent evil
malignant disposition which has
pervaded all of man’s being and has
corrupted all of his world. In reality
it is a bondage to an evil disposition
from which deliverance is impossible
through human initiatives and effort.
It is a malevolence which rolls over
Continue on page 13
by Pastor Junior Yuille
