Increasing violence — decreasing respect for life
OVERALL crime figures in the UK are down. In Strathclyde they have fallen for four successive years. This is a welcome development, but it is disturbing to find that crimes of violence continue on an upward trend, 10% higher in 1995 in Strathclyde than in the previous year. And the increase in the murder rate was even greater.
This reflects the decreasing respect for human life which confronts us at almost every turn. When large numbers of abortions take place every year and when support is increasing, even within the medical profession, for the killing of the terminally ill – so-called euthanasia (literally, but falsely, a good death) it need not surprise us that the number of murders continues to increase.
Because to take away human life unlawfully is a unique crime, one is also disturbed at Government proposals to introduce a life sentence for repeated crimes of violence. It may indeed be necessary to increase sentences for particular crimes, but in the regrettable absence of the scriptural punishment for murder, that is, the death penalty, the life sentence should be reserved for murder, to indicate that murder deserves a specially severe punishment. The fact that the term life sentence is a misnomer – it almost always means something very much less than life – already reduces the distinction between murder and other crimes.
It is long past time that the UK and other nations recognised the importance of recovering a biblical outlook on life and death. KDM
No-hope addicts in the “no-hope nineties”
IT is said sometimes that while the nation has greatly declined morally, it has not sunk to the depths of decadence which began in, say, the 1660s. Be that as it may, there is a section of the rising generation which is living in the squalor, hopelessness and wretchedness of a bygone age.
The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, who is also a national spokesman on drug abuse, says that numerous young people, because of their drug abuse, are living in what he calls the “no-hope nineties”, and in the “Dickensian conditions” of poverty, crime and degradation associated with Victorian times. Many of them, he said, are taking heroin as their first drug, and the number of addicts is increasing. “They live in misery,” he continued. “They live, many of them, in filth. They live in a dream, in a world that is perhaps unacceptable and unimaginable to us, a world of petty crime, of prostitution, of violence, of fear, of threats, of no hope.”
While something can be done in a very limited measure to relieve the misery of some of these poor young people and lead them back to normality, there is nothing that will help and heal them so much as the gospel, which is “the power of God unto salvation”. We believe that the day will come, and perhaps sooner rather than later, when the Lord will visit our land in mercy and gather multitudes, including the abandoned wrecks of society, to follow and serve Him. For this we are to pray and work. Previous awakenings and revivals have resulted in numerous hopeless and helpless misfits being transformed and becoming holy, happy and useful members of their community. Is anything too hard for the Lord? “It is nothing with thee to help,” King Asa said to God. May we go to the throne of grace in the same trusting spirit.