The Bible has the answer

THE EDITOR, Madam:

IT IS interesting how many scurry hopelessly for tangible solutions to crime and violence, with the result of trapping water in a basket or grasping it within your fists – the tighter you squeeze, the greater the escape.

There is this tiring endeavour, while ignoring and demeaning the Bible’s invaluable counsel on social morality and life in general. The frequent dismissive response is that the Bible is incapable of addressing modern problems and the evolution of change that has overtaken us. And yet it is this posture that has allowed and created the dire outcome.

People are often bent on closing gates after horses have bolted, but external rules and constraints can hardly sway a man who is riveted to a violent response to the slightest air of provocation, or whose “hammer get lick affa tick” with every kind of misunderstanding.

Jamaicans generally don’t tek chat – man ‘higgnarant’! There is hardly an allowance for peaceful clarification when any matter of dispute takes place. A non-combative resolution on any inflammatory matter is seen as a weak or pushover settlement.

ENDLESS CHAIN OF STRIFE

So the main problem here is that there are fully grown men with tough exterior whose internal growth has not evolved beyond childhood days. From these come delinquent fathers, whose chief occupation throughout a day is burning marijuana and sleeping, and if someone disturbs the peace, them mad? Trouble in paradise.

There is an endless chain of strife enhanced by rejecting the Bible’s way as impractical and obsolete; while the lives and testimonies of those who not only advertise the Bible, but faithfully live by every word, are living proof that its author has already provided man with the answer.

HOMER SYLVESTER