What About YOUR Private Life?
What about YOUR heart and mind? Do you "fly off the handle" easily? Do You become ENRAGED at someone over racial, religious, political issues? Do YOU become SO ANGRY, SO MAD, SO CONSUMED with inflamed passion that you would literally resort to VIOLENCE? Millions do! Millions HAVE!
And why? The answer is simple. It's like a recipe for an evil concoction. Just take human nature. Sprinkle in a few situations; add a lot of entertainment pressures, such as TV violence, radio jazz and noise, movie-land make-believe, newspaper sensationalism. Especially lurid accounts of RACIAL outbursts here and there — add some paper-backed perversity and sex; stir well — and VIOLENCE will erupt!
It's been said, "You are what you eat." And your MIND is what you THINK! And if YOUR STEADY DIET IS ONE OF VIOLENCE — then you could become a VIOLENT person very easily!
Will you be one who will be filled with RAGE because of your spouse's religious beliefs? Will You become brutally VIOLENT because of RACIAL prejudices and hatreds? Will You ever be one who will PERSECUTE someone else for his religious, racial, political or personal beliefs?
Probably not, you may think — but, THINK AGAIN! Unless you're CHANGED, unless your very NATURE has been altered from a violent nature to a peaceful one — you MAY!
It's a SICK, SICK, SICK WORLD!
Look around you. Unless you are careful, YOU could become one of the rioting, looting-crazed individuals preying on a sick society! Most people today are PASSIVE about the crime and violence in our midst.
Law enforcement officials decry the near obsession of the modern courts with insuring the protection of the CRIMINAL and his "rights," instead of strengthening the laws prohibiting and punishing criminal acts.
It is a great SIN to harbor race hatreds in your heart. It is an equal sin to take the LAW into your own hands. Vengeance belongs to GOD — and that is a LAW of God that He fully intends to ENFORCE! He will do the punishing for the massive crimes and sins of humanity. It is up to the constituted authorities God allows to exist (there is NO authority God does not permit to exist — or it would NOT EXIST!) and to God Himself.
Forming HABITS of Violence
Probably, you feel depraved acts of wanton destruction and violence are committed by a certain type of person. But you're wrong.
It is this very enigmatic problem that worries modern-day law enforcement officers. They see horrible acts of murderous violence being committed more and more by the "average" person. They prove conclusively that crime is not limited to those who have grown up in slum or underprivileged areas; that all criminals are not demented, or retarded. They shake their heads in disbelief at bestial atrocities committed by "good" people in society!
Why does it happen? Why do members of a family fly into a sudden fit of rage, grab a gun, and MURDER in cold blood, other members of the same family?
They probably just witnessed a dozen murders on television and in the movies, and read of more violence in the news! They had probably been feeding and gorging their minds on some murder mystery thriller, in almost every leisure moment!
Is it any wonder, when tempers flare, and a person reacts almost AUTOMATICALLY according to HABIT?
If you're not extremely careful what you SEE, how you THINK, what you HEAR, what you READ — YOU MAY BE ESTABLISHING THE SAME PATTERN OF VIOLENCE in your own life!
SO THINK about it. INVESTIGATE your life. Be willing to be honest with yourself about yourself! God says, "WOE unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope . . . WOE unto them that call evil good, [that was sure a "good" movie, you might have said!] and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter"! (Isa. 5:18-20)
A New Kind of "Justice"
In the immediate aftermath of the April riots, many leading news magazines told of the new policies of some big-city police departments to "contain" a "riot area" rather than using FORCE to stop looting and arson.
Some leaders attacked this policy — saying it was tantamount to POLICE GIVING PERMISSION to riot. Others attacked those who attacked the policy. Mayors attacked mayors, and police chiefs disagreed with each other.
One advocated shooting arsonists to kill, and looters to cripple; another said he would not resort to use of "unprincipled" force. (Which makes one wonder what series of acts, deeds, or crimes would finally make the use of force "principled"?)
But what a seeming CONTRADICTION! It was as if the rioters could have called the police station in ADVANCE.
They could have, presumably, told police they had decided to "riot" in this and the other given area. The police, under this new policy, would presumably then be honor bound to SEAL OFF this area, and to insist NO ONE INTERFERED with the rioters while they rioted to their hearts' content.
Shockingly, several eyewitness reports emerged from the riots which told of police helping distribute bottles of liquor from smashed stores, and, in one case, stoop to retrieve a dropped article a looter had stolen, and hand it back to him!
Yes, what a seeming CONTRADICTION!
In Vietnam, the United States has fully committed, apparently, the last American military or financial effort to STOP Communism. In Vietnam, America did not let the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese simply "stake out a claim" about which parts of the country they wanted to take over, and then stand aside. Yet, in the pursuit of the policy that human life is more PRECIOUS when it comes to civil criminals than international ones, people caught up in frenzied thievery and bloodlust in the streets of our cities are now given notice they are SAFE from any physical harm.
It was not always this way.
I grew up in a society where I literally was taught to FEAR punishment for an unlawful act.
I KNEW the police would ARREST me, and probably put me in JAIL if I stole, or burned, or injured or killed!
But TIMES HAVE CHANGED.
Today, a potential destroyer of property or life HAS NO SUCH THREAT OF JUSTICE HANGING OVER him!
And your Bible prophesied this will all GET MUCH, MUCH WORSE before it gets any better!
This society, and the WHOLE WORLD, is in the throes of a worldwide CATACLYSM that is going to usher in the prophesied END OF AN AGE!
You are now LIVING in the very moments of history foretold by Jesus Christ of Nazareth in Matthew the 24th chapter! You are now LIVING in the midst of a SICK world.
Check up on yourself! Be willing to call a spade a spade! Label things what they really are! And then, with the help of Almighty God, ROOT out of your life the hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and murderous violence of this violent world!
Coming — a Better World Tomorrow
Perhaps most of all, you need to investigate your own RACIAL feelings.
Do you truly have love for members of all races? Can you see each person as PRECIOUS in the sight of God, and see him for his POTENTIAL, in spite of his present criminal state?
Can you search your heart, and ask God to look down inside your innermost feelings, and ROOT OUT prejudice, inferiority, suspicion, resentment, and all hostile, carnal, human feelings toward members of another race?
Can you Negro people realize that many whites tend to "overreact" to you — being even overly friendly, perhaps because they are ashamed of their racism of the past, and trying to ride over it, and make up for it?
Can you white people realize, DEEPLY, what it must be like to see all life through a black face, and have people treat you as less than human, turn you from public facilities, tell jokes behind your back? Can you, really? Can your heart go out to members of another race, and can you ASK GOD's FORGIVENESS FOR RACISM?
If all our whole NATION could do this — all our race problems would be over.
You can do it — sure you can. But only YOU can do it for You. You cannot expect what you do for yourself to help someone else automatically overcome his racial feelings. But you can pray for him. You can put your own life in the hands of God, and wait for HIS KINGDOM to bring true racial equality at last!