Dear Editor,
I recently read an article titled, "We are a nation of copycats". The author was concerned primarily with the spate of beheadings taking place across the island. He suggested that most of these crimes were the work of copycats.
I had watched an interview on local television, some time in 2011, in which a popular female gospel artiste was asked to explain some of the things that she was involved in before conversion to Christianity. She admitted to have done things she considered to be sinful; however, she went on to say that whatever she did was not strange, because as a sinner she sinned. "Sinners sin," she remarked.
So, whether or not we receive a statement from the prime minister, the minister of security, or the minister of youth and culture condemning crime and violence in general, or murder in particular, that will not stop sinners from sinning. Why? Sinners sin.
The people carrying out acts of violence and crime against children, women, the elderly, and the rest of us are sinners, as described by our Creator. And, as sinners, they sin.
To sin, by the way, is to miss the mark. So, when one person commits a gruesome act of beheading another person for whatever reason, he/she has missed the mark of standing against murder, manslaughter, violence, and brutality in every shape or form. Romans 7 describes for us the debacle in which mankind has been trapped since the beginning of time: "... it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me... For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it" (NIV).
C Aloysius Johnson
caj_hellshire@yahoo.com
Sin on the loose
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I recently read an article titled, "We are a nation of copycats". The author was concerned primarily with the spate of beheadings taking place across the island. He suggested that most of these crimes were the work of copycats.
I had watched an interview on local television, some time in 2011, in which a popular female gospel artiste was asked to explain some of the things that she was involved in before conversion to Christianity. She admitted to have done things she considered to be sinful; however, she went on to say that whatever she did was not strange, because as a sinner she sinned. "Sinners sin," she remarked.
So, whether or not we receive a statement from the prime minister, the minister of security, or the minister of youth and culture condemning crime and violence in general, or murder in particular, that will not stop sinners from sinning. Why? Sinners sin.
The people carrying out acts of violence and crime against children, women, the elderly, and the rest of us are sinners, as described by our Creator. And, as sinners, they sin.
To sin, by the way, is to miss the mark. So, when one person commits a gruesome act of beheading another person for whatever reason, he/she has missed the mark of standing against murder, manslaughter, violence, and brutality in every shape or form. Romans 7 describes for us the debacle in which mankind has been trapped since the beginning of time: "... it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me... For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it" (NIV).
C Aloysius Johnson
caj_hellshire@yahoo.com
Sin on the loose
-->