A Nation Without Natural Affection

Why is there so much hatred and strife—violence and bloodshed—between human beings? What is the cause and where is it leading? God reveals the answers to these questions in the one book most people ignore—the Holy Bible.
 

In looking at the way world events are unfolding, a discerning observer would know that an explosion is coming. It’s only a matter of time. Just look at the widespread and senseless acts of evil in our world. And modern technology is only helping to spread the violence and immorality that much faster.

Here in the United States in recent months, we’ve seen the “flash mob” phenomenon take a violent turn for the worse. It used to be young people would text, tweet and post messages on Facebook to encourage masses of people to assemble together in public for seemingly harmless fun, like dancing.

But now some of these flash mobs are morphing into violent gangs, where young people coordinate assaults and robberies with the help of social media. Last year in downtown Philadelphia, a group of violent youths started fighting with each other, assaulting pedestrians and vandalizing the shopping district.

This year in February, about 50 young people in St. Paul, Minn., assaulted a convenience store worker and then looted the store before law enforcement officials even knew what happened.

In April, another gang of about 20 people descended on a clothing store in Washington D.C., and quickly grabbed about $20,000 worth of merchandise before fleeing the scene in every direction. In all of these cases, authorities believe the mob robbing was organized through cell phone texting.

In New York, another group of teenagers used social media devices in May to coordinate an attack on a restaurant. The teens simply showed up at the restaurant in broad daylight and ransacked the place. They kicked over tables, flung chairs at employees and destroyed equipment. Then they grabbed some food and drink and took off. They left almost as fast as they arrived.

Then there’s Chicago. Have you noticed what’s been happening in Chicago lately? Over Memorial Day weekend, six people were gunned down and another 21 were wounded in shootings. There have been several other incidents of “flash mob” violence in recent weeks. It’s gotten so bad that tourists have even been told to avoid the magnificent mile—the upscale shopping and dining district.

Earlier this year in April, two Illinois lawmakers called on the National Guard to protect the streets of Chicago—the National Guard! This is Chicago, remember—not Gaza or Fallujah! This is America’s heartland! The mayor of Chicago has since added 150 policemen to the streets of the city—just to help curb these senseless acts of violence and murder. And that, in itself, reveals how bad it is. Most major cities in the U.S. right now are scaling back law enforcement resources because they’re broke. They have no money. Chicago is up to its eyeballs in debt. But the streets are now so dangerous that they have no choice but to flood the city with more policemen.

Is this normal? When will this current of hateful violence subside? Or will it get worse?

Look at the news. It seems like every week there’s another shooting or a brawl at a fast food chain. And when have we ever witnessed this much indifference and apathy from bystanders who watch violent behavior firsthand and do nothing about it?

Some of you may have seen a video of the two girls who attacked a young woman at a McDonalds in Baltimore back in April. The victim was beaten so badly that she had a seizure after the assault. Throughout the sustained and brutal assault in front of many witnesses, the victim’s only defender was a little old lady who tried to fend off the criminals. And the men? They couldn’t be bothered. They were too busy laughing and cheering. One of them even filmed the incident so that he could later post it online. Not one man stepped forward to protect that woman!

A few weeks ago, Robert Morley wrote a powerful piece we posted at theTrumpet.com about an incident in San Francisco where a man suffering from suicidal depression decided to drown himself in the bay. Onlookers actually witnessed the incident, which went on for nearly an hour, as the man waded out into the bay and waited to be swallowed by the rising tide. No one tried to save the man. Only one bystander called the police. Even after rescuers arrived, no one helped. There were firemen there, policemen, dozens of spectators—and a man in the water flailing about, face down.

Mr. Morley writes, “When firefighters arrived, they refused to act—even later as the man began to drown.” They made the excuse by the way that they hadn’t been properly trained. He says, “The Coast Guard did nothing because the water was too shallow for its boat. Reporters did nothing because they were too busy getting the story. Hikers, dog walkers, cyclists-turned-spectators did nothing. The police did nothing because it wasn’t their jurisdiction. Other bystanders did nothing because the police wouldn’t let them.” Mr. Morley said, “Zack’s horrified, wheelchair-bound stepmother was understandably outraged that she was forced to watch her son die—while ‘rescue’ officials stood idly by.”

It’s hard to imagine something like that happening just 15 or 20 years ago—let alone at America’s founding. In fact, as Mr. Morley writes, there are times when you find better examples of life-saving sacrifice in the animal kingdom than you do in the human kingdom! He referred to a YouTube video where a herd of water buffalo was chased by several lions. And in that dramatic scene, one little calf ended up being chased into the water’s edge, where lions swarmed in for the kill. And then, to make matters worse for the little buffalo, a crocodile emerged from the water and grabbed hold of the calf. The lions eventually won the tug-of-war with the crocodile and prepared for a feast on shore.

And that’s right when the video takes a sudden and unexpected turn! The herd of buffalo responded to the cries of distress coming from the calf and rallied to its defense. The buffalo actually managed to drive away the lions, one by one and save the life of that little calf! Think about that! The natural impulse of those buffalo was to intervene on behalf of the dying calf.

Now one would think that if a young woman was being assaulted and beaten at a public facility that a young man’s natural impulse would be to step forward and help. But more often than not, that isn’t what happens.

What a sad commentary on our society today. And what a revealing sign of the times in which we live. Let’s turn to the Bible and see what God has to say. Notice Luke chapter 10 to begin with. This is in Luke 10 and verse 25. “And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Noticed now how Jesus responded to this question. Verse 26, “He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?” What do you read in the law? You’re a lawyer, you know the law, what does the Bible say? Verse 27, “And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.” The lawyer answered, correctly; he had the right answer, but as Jesus brings out you’ve got to go beyond that and actually act on that right knowledge and actually act on that truth.

Verse 29, “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?” Who is my neighbor? In this scholar’s mind he loved his neighbor the way he saw it. He loved his best friends. That that’s what he considered his neighbor to be—his buddies, his friends.

Jesus goes on to explain though, verse 30, “And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.” So here He slips into this parable now to reinforce the lesson that He wanted to teach this lawyer. And He says there is this man, this traveler who goes to Jerusalem, he probably sold some goods, made the money or pocketed the money and then headed back to Jericho—about a 20-mile journey. And the along the way he’s attacked by these bandits who rob him and beat him, who leave him; he’s left for dead basically.

Verse 31 “And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him,” the victim that is, “he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.”

Now these were religious teachers. They undoubtedly were very familiar with the two great commands quoted in verse 27 of this chapter. They knew about these two great commands but they, like that lawyer, probably reasoned in their minds, Well who is my neighbor? I mean after all this is a Samaritan; this is a Gentile. This isn’t one of my fellow Jews; this isn’t one of my neighbors. This is someone else; this is someone outside that circle. This is the way they must have thought, this is the way they must have reasoned around God’s law. Because, as you can see from the parable they went to the other side of the street and quickly passed by, they quickly moved on. They just didn’t want to get involved; they didn’t want to be bothered with this problem; they didn’t want to help their fellow man.

Verse 33, “But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.” I mean, in the case of this Samaritan his natural impulse, his spontaneous reaction was to help the victim no matter who it was. He had compassion on this victim, he took him in, he nurtured him, he nursed him back to health, he left money with the innkeeper to then take care that the situation thereafter. And then promised to return and reimburse him for any additional cost. What an attitude; what an example of how we ought to treat our fellow man, of how we ought to treat human beings. This is the lesson that Jesus wanted us to learn—to go above and beyond for others, to love our neighbor. That’s the way of a Christian.

Verse 36, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do likewise.” There’s a lesson here; Jesus was teaching that a true Christian must be compassionate and impartial in rendering assistance to others—a compassionate and impartial being who is helpful.

This is from the Daily Mirror, a recent story from back in April about one who did step forward and help to try to settle a dispute. And notice the outcome of it. It’s about a father, he’s a father four over in London. And he walked into McDonald’s one day to get a hot chocolate, he sees two people fighting and he goes to break up the fight. And the Mirror writes that one of the two patrons that he was trying to break up then shouted at this man. And according to the Mirror, it says, “You are gonna die tonight, you are not gonna see the morning.” “The thug is then said to have phoned an accomplice to fetch a gun, yelling into his mobile: “Bring me that thing.” And then the victim “left the 24-hour McDonald’s but was chased into a cul-de-sac. The gun was then delivered and [the victim] was beaten and pistol-whipped before being shot three times in an alley in Brixton, South London.” What a world we live in. Here is a case where one actually did step forward, a good Samaritan if you will, to try to stop a fight, to try to stop two people from killing themselves. And this is how they repaid him.

God destroyed the entire world in the days of Noah, because as it says in Genesis 6, the Earth was corrupt and filled with violence. It was just filled with violence—violence and evil. Is this what we’re facing? Could we be facing this, this kind of outcome that they experienced at the end of that antediluvian age?

Look at 2 Timothy 3. See what Paul wrote to his assistant, Timothy. In a world with this much evil and violence, you can see why people are afraid to step forward and help others.

That Daily Mirror article continues, “One neighbour, who saw the shooting but was too terrified to be named, said: ‘He was begging, literally begging for his life. I didn’t dare look out my window in case they saw me.’” Here she’s terrified to speak up, to reveal her name for fear of getting killed herself. This is the world we live in, this is the world of so many of our big cities, London, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Baltimore. Look at what happened in Vancouver after a hockey game finished. Just one big city after another—and right here in these prosperous nations of Israel, the people who descended from Israel anciently, and all of our cities just falling apart, terrorized by violence besieged by violent behavior.

In 2 Timothy 3 and verse 1, Paul says, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” In the last days it would be uniquely perilous, or dangerous as that word means. I mean mankind has always had its share of evil; there has always been evil in society—the days of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, is certainly proof of that. But what would these final days, these last days, be particularly known for? Well for what Paul lists off here in these next few verses. Verse 2 it says, “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.” Here is human nature in all of its true and ugly colors—disobedience to parents, disobedience toward authority, rebellion toward authority—do we have that, has that run rampant through society in Britain, in Canada, in the United States? It says lovers of their own selves, selfishness, people who care only about their own needs and desires—certainly not about other people, certainly not about someone else who’s suffering, certainly not about someone else who’s being beaten in a restaurant. We can’t bother ourselves to be concerned about that—there’s more important things to attend to: having fun, laughing it up, posting videos to have your 10 minutes of fame. This is the way of the world, this is the way of our society.

Verse 3, “Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good.” See, loving our own selves, disobedient to parents, unthankful, covetous, boasters, he goes on to say. And then at the start of verse 3, notice that, “without natural affection.” Without even a natural affection for others; just to care for fellow man, just to uphold the sanctity of human life, of human existence. That’s beginning to disappear. People are steadily degenerating to the point where we as a society are becoming almost totally, totally devoid of natural affection. And you see this even where you should see it the most, the affection I mean, within families in marriages. Why this is often where violence breaks out first among family members, or within those that know each other in a special kind of way. Look at the fighting and the strife and the bitterness there is in nations, just between groups, political organizations in nations.

Note that too in verse 3 where it says, “despisers of those that are good.” In the case of that McDonald’s beating, instead of helping the victim who was having a seizure there on the floor, the bystanders were there yelling for the attackers to leave so that they wouldn’t get caught—they heard the police sirens coming. So they wanted to help the two that were administering the beating, and couldn’t care less about the one being beaten. Is that a fulfillment of “despisers of those that are good”?

Look at Isaiah 59 and verse 15. It’s important for you to go and look at these scriptures on your own. If you don’t have your Bible now, write these down and look at them later. Isaiah 59 and verse 15 says, “Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.” The one who departs from evil, who tries to come out of this evil, makes himself a prey in this very evil world that we live in.

2 Timothy 3:4, “Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” You see you could hardly find better terms to describe our society today than what Paul lists off in these three verses. “Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” Doesn’t that ever describe our society.

Mr. Armstrong, Herbert Armstrong, wrote back in 1981—he actually wrote this earlier, this is the final version of his book Missing Dimension and Sex, and he said in that book, “But before we leave the world scene of the eighties,” he’s writing in 1981, “bear in mind the present world in revolt is in rebellion against much more than pre-20th century sex repression. And the modern downward spiral of humanity involves a much wider area than sex alone.” He spends quite a lot of time in that book talking about our sexual depravity, and the moral slide downward, but there’s more to it than just that as he explains. “Today the family structure of Western life is endangered by much more than illicit and promiscuous sex.” He says, “Along with the modern sex rampage of adolescents has come other addictions that titillate, arouse, stimulate and please the physical senses. Accompanying sexual indulgence has come, in teen life, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, modern X-rated movies, gangsterism, violence.” See, gangsterism and violence. Here is Mr. Armstrong writing well ahead of his time telling us where society was headed, and way back in the 1960s when he first produced God Speaks Out on the New Morality. And that book later became The Missing Dimension in Sex. Way ahead of his time.

Look at verse 5 here in 2 Timothy 3, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” See there’s plenty of people who talk about God today, there certainly is no shortage of religious programs, there is no shortage of talk about God, but look at our society and look at how we deny His authority by our actions, by the way that we live. We don’t submit to the Word of God, we don’t submit to His way of life the way that we should. Even in religion there is a strong current of hostility toward God’s law—the law’s supposed to be something that’s bad—we want to get rid of the law, we don’t want to have strong authoritarianism from God, no nothing like that. So we get rid of that and then we talk nice in religion and hope that that’ll solve the problems of this world. And look at the problems as they multiply; look at the evil as it multiplies.

As I said earlier it’s like every week when you see another report of some brutal and senseless crime that’s carried out for no good reason other than to get a few donuts and a drink, and to run off and post the video on the Internet. Crazy behavior. Insane behavior. What’s behind this? Who is behind this behavior? Is there a god of this world? And is it the true God? Or is the one that Paul talked about 2 Corinthians 4:4? Who is Satan the devil—who God left on the front of this earth until Jesus returns to remove him and to establish the kingdom of God, which is God’s family administering God’s laws—God’s law of love. How else are we going to solve these problems that we see playing out on news screens—except by God’s loving family government? How do we know are in the final days? How do we know we are in the last days?

Look at verse 13 it says, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” See it’s getting worse and worse and worse. Now you know that’s true, you know that’s true. Look at the United States just as one example. I mean there is a time going back several generations when the United States was founded by people who were willing to sacrifice, who were willing to lay down their lives for someone else, who were willing to give up their lives for a greater cause. You don’t see much of that spirit anymore. There’s a few examples that pop up from time to time, a few good ones. But certainly it’s not a case where good is overcoming the evil. We’re being overcome by the evil, by this evil spirit, by this tidal wave of discontent, of hatred. Worse and worse—it is getting worse. You can see that. If you’re an honest observer, if you haven’t just been calloused to all that’s happening, you can see, you can know.

This is what Mr. Armstrong wrote, going back to The Missing Dimension in Sex, he said, “Since it is a basic truism that a solid family structure is the foundational bulwark of any stable and permanent society, this fact means only one thing—CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT IS ON THE WAY DOWN—AND OUT—unless that great ‘Unseen Strong Hand from Someplace’ soon intervenes and saves today’s sick society.” I mean we don’t have hope unless that strong hand from someplace intervenes to save us from ourselves, to save us from this evil.

This is in the New Morality book, back in the 1960s, Mr. Armstrong said this downward plunge is “rapidly becoming a greater threat to humanity than the hydrogen bomb!”