Paul wrote of mankind’s rejection of God in Romans 1:22: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].” (The Amplified Bible). Wow! Isn’t that where we are today? Particularly here in America, where we claim to be more civil, sophisticated and smarter than the rest of the world! Yet in America, we have more people incarcerated per capita than any other advanced nation! As of January 15, 2015, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies, there are 2,228,424 prisoners in the United States. That is enough to make the United States rank first in that category. The second highest number of prisoners is in China, at 1,701,344. According to the Brookings Institution, in 2013 there were 710 Americans imprisoned for every 100,000 residents. This makes the United States rank first out of thirty-four OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries ranked in that category. The average incarceration rate among the OECD nations is 115. We spend more money on education than anyone else, yet we are NOT among the list of the 3rd quarter rankings of The World Top 20 Educational Systems! According to the site: Ranking America, the United States rank 14th out of forty countries ranked in the category of cognitive skills and educational attainment!
A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people – more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied. Japan, on the other hand, had only .6 guns per 100 people and .06 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people, making it the country with both the fewest guns per capita and the fewest gun-related deaths. Drs. Sripal Bangalore, who works at NYU Langone Medical Center, and Dr. Franz Messerli of St. Luke’s Medical Center studied the statistics of guns per capita and gun deaths. They used firearm injury data from the World Health Organization and guns per capita data from the Small Arms Survey to put together a list of 27 developed countries.
In view of the seemingly monthly occurrences of mass-shootings in America, coupled with juvenile behavior of government on all levels, it is obvious that we are not addressing “the elephant in the room!” When we have problems, we think we can fix them by throwing more money at them! But of course, before we do that, we must conduct studies of the studies to verify the finding of the studies! Then we must have meetings to plan the meetings so that we will be more productive in the meetings! I’m sorry, but nobody told me when or where the funeral was held; but apparently, common sense has died! If it is not dead, it is definitely not as common as it used to be!
What is the elephant in the room that we don’t want to address? The fact that the basic problem in this country is something that money, studies, gun-control, and government cannot address! It is the problem of sin! Call it psychoses, social maladjustment, or whatever! The real issue in America is a matter of the spirit! Gun control or even having more guns makes no difference if we have no self-control! But self-control does not come naturally! It comes as one’s spirit is influenced by Spirit of God! But the problem there is that, in America, for the most part, at best, we have restricted God and spiritual things to church buildings on Sunday mornings. And at worst, we deny the reality of spirit, by insisting that a bad home life, mental illness and other factors are to blame and that psychology and behavior modification (Pavlov’s dogs) are the answers! But the truth of the matter is this! Some people just don’t do evil things; some people are evil! And evil is not just restricted to behavior; evil is a malady of the spirit! And the malady of the spirit can only be fixed by the God of the Bible that America seeks to restrict to the pages of the Bible!
Wow! What a mess we have made! We are seeking morality without the Author of morals! We are seeking peace without the Prince of Peace! We’re trying to make people act right while all the time denying the reality of right! In this country, we’re so smart; we’re stupid!