The Age of Violence

A FLOOD of violence fills the earth. We see it almost everywhere. Throughout the world thieves and thugs terrorize cities. The streets of many a city are unsafe at night, and some not very safe during the day.

“It is not just the numbers of crimes and delinquents that bother us,” recently said Philadelphia’s police commissioner. “It’s the growing evidence in many instances of a wanton disregard for human life that seems to go with many of these robberies—almost as if there were a deliberate desire to kill or maim.”

And what of children in this age of violence? They no longer merely play at forms of violence. The gang warfare of teen-agers, with the resultant violence, has become a critical problem in many cities.

The greatest source of large-scale violence has come from governments and political aspirants. Wars have claimed the lives of millions of persons and have brought hideous violence upon the civilian population. Some governments have even legalized violence and terrorism, such as did Nazi Germany and now Communist Russia and Red China. Torture and brainwashing by secret police are glaring examples of the inhumanity of this age of violence.

Why so much violence in the world? False religion is largely responsible. It has not escaped our notice that the clergy of many religions have either supported or condoned the violence of their political rulers. The fact that World Wars I and II were fought mainly by professed Christians points the finger of guilt at the religious leaders.

Discussing the violence in the world, the New York Times of November 22, 1958, said editorially: “There is no general outcry in revulsion, as there ought to be, against the stabbings in the back, the bomb throwings and the violent deaths of innocent civilians that have been going on. . . . The shooting down of civilians, including women, in cold blood on the streets of Cyprus should horrify the world. . . . Yet Archbishop Makarios says in New York this week that ‘I cannot condemn violence.’”

What are we to think of a world that has plunged into the abyss of violence, with the teachers of religion doing little to prevent it? We can think what God thinks. “Jehovah himself examines the righteous one as well as the wicked one, and anyone loving violence His soul certainly hates.”—Ps. 11:5.