Mt. Zion Christian Church
3631 Combs Ferry Road
Winchester, KY
859.745.2446
exists to... Worship God. Love Others. Share Jesus.
I pray you will decide today to worship God with us at Mt. Zion Christian Church this Sunday. We will be discussing God’s 6th commandment from Exodus 20:13 “You shall not murder.” This week I have given much information and most of it comes from the magazine “Christianity Today.” You might believe this would never apply to yourself but this is the most misunderstood commandment and we as a society need to examine every aspect of this commandment…and there are many.
The word "assassin" comes from a secret Moslem religious order whose fanatic members terrorized and killed the Christian crusaders. The legal system is frustrated by the assassin since the law acts after the fact, and, historically, the successful assassin often became the new Caesar or king.
But the American assassin has more often been from the lunatic fringe than from any organized terror or religious group. The first would-be assassin of an American president was Richard Lawrence who tried to kill Andrew Jackson in 1835. Since that attempt on Jackson's life, ten other presidents have been targets of the assassin. Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan were all prey of the American Assassin.
Murder is a crime against our Creator and a fellow creature. Adam and Eve's disobedience brought sin into the human race. They may have thought their sin—eating a piece of fruit—wasn't very bad, but notice how quickly their sinful nature developed in their children. Simple disobedience quickly degenerated into outright murder. Adam and Eve acted only against God, but Cain acted against both God and humankind. A small sin has a way of growing out of control.
Aggravated assault and killings are higher in the U.S. than in other Western countries. Still, most societies are concerned about increases in youthful violence and killings. Canada's Center for Justice reports an almost five-fold increase in assault rates (per capita assaults) between 1964 and 1993. New Zealand and Australia report a fourfold increase...with a doubling of their murder rates. Significant increases of assaults are reported by Belgium, Denmark, England-Wales, France, Hungary, Netherlands, and Scotland as well—along with smaller increases in murders. South Africa and other countries in the developing world are also aware of the increase of violent crime including youthful killings.
David Groomsman is a military psychologist who has coined a new term for his discipline: killology, an interdisciplinary study of the methods and effects of training military recruits to kill. Basically, he shows that civilian soldiers are very reluctant to kill others (tracing this from the Civil War through the World Wars and Vietnam.) Snipers are now trained and go into combat in pairs (one operating a telescoping site and the other pulling the trigger) which increases the kill rate.
What Grossman is showing that killing is unnatural; people have to be trained to kill.
Children don't naturally kill; they learn it from violence in the home and most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, movies, and interactive video games.
Grossman goes on to show how similar the media's techniques are to the ways in which the military trains its soldiers to kill.
Every time a child plays a (violent) interactive video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex skills as a soldier or police officer in training.
Television was brought into a Canadian town in 1973. In the next year aggression in first and second graders (defined as hitting, shoving, and biting) increased 160 percent after exposure. Canadian children in two control towns without TV showed no such increase.
The Journal of the American Medical Society (1992, June 10) published its definitive research on the effect of television violence on children. In every country studied, there is a doubling of the murder rate within 15 years. This is how long the researchers figured it took for the brutalization of three- and five-year-olds to reach "prime crime age."
...the introduction of television in the 1950s caused a subsequent doubling of the homicide rate, i.e. long-term childhood exposure to television is a causal factor behind approximately one half of the homicides annually...if, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States...
An objective study of human nature and development would seem to detect a basic aggressive streak in boys, and in adult human beings as well. It is a natural self-defense mechanism. Social conditioning, however, makes killing unnatural in most situations. In war and law enforcement, soldiers and police are trained to kill under certain conditions and with established restraints.
When children are conditioned to delight in killing, first as observers in cartoon comedy situations and then more seriously in the struggle between so-called forces of good and evil, the more vulnerable can act out the killings they've seen. Gradually, the media desensitizes; then it even trains children by means of some interactive video and fantasy games. A majority of children may only become desensitized to violence (which is harmful enough), but those who feel terribly and unjustly ostracized or picked on, may take arms to kill. The school killings in the U.S. are examples of such behavior.
Statistics and theory are one thing; the reality of being tortured and killed, of losing one's beloved child or closest friend, and the stigma of being related to a young killer, are another. These are terrible experiences to live through. Imagine playing or talking one moment, and the next, seeing your playmate shot and killed beside you in a school yard or a school hallway! Or walking home from school and being shot at your front door steps. Think of what it means to care for a baby, do all that loving parents do through sickness and health, good times and bad times, and just as your son or daughter seems to be "blooming" have them cut down and leave their body at the cemetery. Tough youth workers have been burned out after attending fifty-some funerals of kids they knew and worked with. And many of the killers are remorseless...apparently without feelings or conscience.
Come this Sunday and learn what the Bible says about this, the most hotly debated commandment. Some scriptures to examine are:
Genesis 4:10-11
Exodus 1:16
Exodus 20:13;
Exodus 21:8-15-29
Numbers 35:16-29
Duet 19:1-13
Joshua 20:1-6
Matthew 2:16
Matthew 5:21-22
James 5:1-6
For the Cause of Christ,
Kenny