British prime minister Tony Blair has announced the end of what he is calling “the 1960s liberal consensus” on law and order. No wonder! Crime figures are still rising, up by 1% over the past year in England and Wales according to police figures, while violent crimes soared by 12% – although the results of the British Crime Survey show a drop of 5% for general crime. At the same time, the fear of crime has become a big political issue. Yet Mr Blair’s rejection of the legacy of the sixties seems to be strictly limited. There is no evidence that he wishes to turn the clock back on issues such as abortion, which was legalised during that decade. (Indeed the most recent Government guidelines confirm that parents need not be told when under-16s request an abortion.) It was a time when, perhaps more than at any other in this country’s history, our Christian heritage was determinedly jettisoned. Yes, there have been major departures since then, but the departures of the sixties laid the foundation for those that followed.
Now Mr Blair and his ministerial team have at last recognised that the more liberal attitude to crime fostered during the sixties – with its emphasis on offenders’ rights and preventing miscarriages of justice – has not worked. Yet the focus is on crime as public nuisance; there is no concern about crime as sin, no concern about crimes as offences against God. In fact, life since the sixties can be seen as one prolonged experiment in trying to exist without God. No contemporary politicians in the UK, with the exception of a few from Northern Ireland, could conceivably allow themselves to be seen taking the Bible as their authority in reacting to proposed legislation. God is ignored, and people wonder at the consequences when God leaves us to reap what we have sown – in the area of crime as much as in any other.
The American writer Ravi Zacharias has noted: “Of the 21 civilisations that [twentieth-century historian Arnold] Toynbee mentioned in his history, ours is the first that does not enjoin a moral law or educate our young in moral instruction”.1 This statement arises particularly out of the situation on the other side of the Atlantic, but it is almost equally relevant in Britain.
1A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism, p 49.
Here politicians get worked up about increasing rates of teenage pregnancy and the burgeoning incidence of sexually transmitted diseases; they turn to education as the remedy; but what is to be taught? The Seventh Commandment? That would be to transgress the sixties morality, which has been summarised as “personal freedom and self-fulfilment – doing one’s own thing”. It is a generation when the philosophy of doing what is right in one’s own eyes has acquired almost universal legitimacy. And the result? The problem of teenage promiscuity gets worse and worse – although concern is only expressed about the consequences of that promiscuity. In any case, one need not be surprised that the Seventh Commandment is neglected in today’s schools when many who should be teaching morals are themselves guilty of immorality and could not be comfortable putting forward a code of conduct which they do not themselves keep to.
Mr Blair reasonably enough criticises “a society of different lifestyles [which has] spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others”. But why is this so? No doubt, the economic and social changes of the sixties, which the Prime Minister points to, had a great deal of influence; yet behind it all lies the fact that during the sixties – as well as in the decades before then, and since – people generally have been losing their sense of the authority of God. Our responsibility to and for others will only be exercised in a consistent way if we have a strong sense that we are ultimately responsible to God in all that we do. And there is a further factor: we must all, including those who have unthinkingly accepted the legacy of the sixties, appear at last before the judgement seat of Christ to receive, unless we repent, the consequences of our sins. And those are particularly guilty who were foremost in promoting the liberal, God-rejecting attitudes of the sixties.
“Here, now, today, people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus,” adds the Prime Minister. But it is irresponsible for him to try to isolate this one aspect of the 1960s consensus and try to hold on to the larger part of it. If only he and other government ministers would see that Britain’s problems today are due to the fact that the nation is adrift on a sea of godlessness and irreligion, the situation would be more hopeful. Some years ago, he promoted his party with the slogan: “Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. And what is the ultimate cause of crime? The fact of the fall of the whole human race in Adam. Obviously, not every fallen human being leads a life of crime. And we should acknowledge God’s restraining grace in preventing sinners from being worse than they are. But it is out of the heart, as the Saviour made plain, that every sin comes – including crime of every kind. And, ultimately, it is only by curing the individual’s fallen heart that criminality can be cured.
Clearly no government can be expected to cure human corruption. And no one would wish to belittle the government’s plans to ameliorate the situation, plans which include a clampdown on anti-social behaviour and the use of satellite technology to track the country’s most persistent criminals. Yet government ministers should set an example to the nation by acknowledging God in all that they do, especially by moulding their legislation by the teaching of Scripture.
But there is a remedy which they, and the vast majority of opinion-formers in the country, are unanimous in ignoring: the power of Scripture truth, when applied by the Holy Spirit, to change the human heart. And where there is a change of heart, there is a turning away from outward sin. What cured Zacchaeus’ tendency to take money “by false accusation”? It was the saving power that went along with Christ’s call to him. So also, when the Lord brought His truth to bear on the heart of Manasseh in Babylon, there was no longer any danger of the streets of Jerusalem running red with the blood of the saints. The heart of that perpetrator of monstrous wickedness was changed, and the lion was at once changed into a lamb. That same saving power, which accompanies the call of Christ in the gospel, has the same effect today. And when, in times of revival, many hearts have been changed, the crime rate has dwindled away to almost zero. So it is clearly in the interest of governments everywhere to encourage the preaching of the pure gospel, for that gospel is, as Paul expressed it, “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth”.
Britain once prized a different legacy from that of the sixties, one that flowed from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Had this country – and the Protestant churches in particular – continued to prize our Reformation legacy, those who promoted the ideas of the 1960s would never have acquired any influence. What this nation needs is not a return to, say, the standards of the 1950s, although it would certainly lead to reduced crime levels; what we need is a return to the Bible and to the standards of the Bible. This country – and it is just as true of other nations – needs the pure gospel to be preached everywhere. But how can that be unless the great God of heaven will grant us preachers taught and called by Himself? And how can their preaching be profitable unless He will pour out His Spirit in abundant measure? How necessary then, although such wonderful blessings are completely undeserved, for the people of God to pray for them! “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” (Luke 11:13).