Insight on the News

‘Hitting a Raw Nerve’

On December 22, 1984, a dramatic incident on a subway car in New York City made headlines. Thirty-seven-year-old commuter Bernhard Hugo Goetz was approached by four youths who, he said, threatened to rob him. Goetz, previously a victim of muggers, pulled out a handgun and shot all four, paralyzing one of them for life.

The shooting touched off a nationwide debate on crime and public safety. “This case hit a real raw nerve,” said the co-host of a cable news show. “There is a broad sense of frustration and anger over the state of the criminal justice system.” An editorial in The New York Times elaborated: “Government has failed [the public] in its most basic responsibility: public safety. To take the law into your own hands implies taking it out of official hands. But the law, on that subway car on Dec. 22, was in no one’s hands.”

The public’s overwhelming interest in the Goetz case revealed feelings shared by many: terror over the threat of being robbed or mugged, and frustration and anger over the fact that more is not being done to ensure public safety. Of course, problems from thieves are not new. (Compare 2 Corinthians 11:26.) What is new is the extent to which crime and other worrisome conditions have made people “faint out of fear and expectation.” (Luke 21:26) However, under God’s Kingdom government such fear will soon end. In that promised new system, all earth’s inhabitants will live in peace and harmony, and “there will be no one making them tremble.”​—Micah 4:4.

“Higher” Education

“Most colleges promise to make you better culturally and morally, but it is not evident that they do,” says William J. Bennett, the new secretary of education in the United States. “They are not delivering on their promises.” There is another reason why he is negative about the state of college education today. “There’s a kind of assumption that college graduates are a priestly class and that wonderful things must come to pass when you get a degree,” says Bennett. “If my own son . . . came to me and said ‘You promised to pay for my tuition at Harvard; how about giving me $50,000 instead to start a little business?’ I might think that was a good idea.”

While college may promise a bright future, does it guarantee success? Obviously not. Yet for many people, there is something that does. True Christians today can testify to the cultural, moral, and even financial benefits that they have received from study of God’s Word and application of it in their lives. They know, as Paul said, that “all Scripture is . . . beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, . . . that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17) A Bible education carries no risk. Tapping wisdom from the God ‘whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts’ leads to genuine success.​—Isaiah 55:9.

Abortion Divides

“Nearly 10 years ago,” says William V. Shannon of The Boston Globe, “a Roman Catholic bishop said to me privately, ‘I am concerned that we as a church are driving the wrong way down a one-way street on this abortion issue. . . . Look at Poland. It is probably the most Catholic country in Europe. . . . And yet last year, Polish women had 400,000 abortions. If the Polish bishops cannot stamp out abortion in Poland, which is about 90-per-cent Catholic, how can we hope to do so in this country where we are a minority?’” Continues Shannon: “It was a relevant question then. It is even more relevant today when . . . the number of abortions in [Poland] . . . has climbed to 800,000 a year.”

The abortion issue remains a touchy subject for the Vatican, both in politics and within the church itself. In October 1984 a full-page ad in The New York Times, endorsed by 24 nuns and 73 other Catholics, stated that the church’s condemnation of abortion in all instances was not “the only legitimate Catholic position”​—a statement with which the Vatican has taken issue. The ad cited data from a recent survey that indicated that only 11 percent of Catholics disapproved of abortion in all cases. Clearly, the abortion issue divides the church. But God’s Word exhorts true Christians to “speak in agreement” and to “think in agreement.”​—1 Corinthians 1:10; 2 Corinthians 13:11.