Is Scripture Totally Trustworthy?

Today, we ask the question, “Is Scripture inerrant” – without errors in its original writing. And it’s an essential question! Theologian R.C. Sproul writes that although believing in “inerrancy” might not be necessary for salvation,

• It is a very important part of the growth process of the Christian to rest his confidence in the truthful revelation of the Word of God and thereby be moved inwardly to conform to the image of Christ. A strong doctrine of the authority of Scripture [which you can’t have if you believe that Scripture pock-marked with errors], when properly implemented, should bead a person to a greater degree of conformity to that Word he espouses as true. (Can I Trust the Bible? 64)

In opposition to this understanding, the late theologian and professing “evangelical,” Clark Pinnock, wrote,

• God uses fallible spokesmen all the time to deliver His Word, and it does not follow that the Bible must be otherwise.

However, when confronted with a difficult command, like “forgive those who have hurt you,” it will be difficult to apply if we’re not sure that the teaching is free from error. It’s just too easy to convince ourselves that our enemy has just gone too far.

Just last night, I was at a discussion group at the Ethical Culture Society. One Episcopalian woman lamented that everything is now up in the air, and she no longer knows what to believe. Her state of confusion was palpable and fully understandable. Her church no longer preached the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. How then could she discern truth amidst the many competing voices circling her head like flies?

However, this is precisely the perplexity resulting from Pinnock’s position:

• It is important to insist that the Bible is a merely human text – written, copied, translated, and interpreted by fallible people. It contains all manner of internal contradictions, moral blemishes, legend and saga, inaccuracies, and the like. It is a collection of intensely human documents and is not an authority beyond criticism or correction. To regard it as God’s written Word is an idolatrous perversion of belief which must be dethroned.

Why is this belief “idolatrous” when it is exactly the teaching of the Bible! Jesus taught that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). If Scripture is man’s word, then there is every reason in the world that it should be broken or set aside. Instead, Jesus taught that our lives depended upon embracing every word of Scripture as God’s Word:

• Jesus answered [the devil], "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4)

Jesus always quoted Scripture as absolutely authoritative, never giving any indication whatsoever that any of it was in error! If taking Scripture as the Word of God is idolatrous, then following Jesus is also idolatrous, since this is what He taught! What then wouldn’t be idolatrous in Pinnock’s mind? According to Jesus, even the smallest letter had its divine purpose:

• "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)

Consistent with this assertion, He taught that everything in Scripture had to be fulfilled:

• He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." (Luke 24:44)

He left no verse out of this equation. Even the most personal of the writings – the Psalms – had to be completely fulfilled.

Jesus’ teaching was also the teaching of all of His Apostles. Peter claimed that the teachings of the Apostles weren’t their own private teaching but the teaching of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:19-21; 3:2; 1 Peter 1:10-11). John even wrote that the words of his own book were as inviolable as those of the Torah (Rev. 22:18-19; Deut. 4:2; 12:42). Meanwhile, Paul claimed that all Scripture was breathed forth by God Himself:

• All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)

Has there been errors in Scripture, then Paul would have been wrong in writing that the “man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Errors would mislead and not reliably equip!

The Old Testament was equally insistent that Scripture is God’s very Words. Israel had to obey everything that had been written, not just those sections that could be reliably established as inspired. There could be no picking-and-choosing!

In contrast to this teaching, Pinnock maintained that inerrancy was not relevant to Scripture:

• Instead of placing emphasis upon the saving truth of the Bible to bear witness to Christ, attention is focused on the precise accuracy of minor details. This unfortunate development does not do justice to the kind of book the Bible is. Minute inerrancy might be the central issue of the telephone book, but not for…

However, the teachings of Jesus depended upon “minute inerrancy.” His teaching that the Patriarchs still lived was based upon a tiny detail. Jesus proved His point by quoting from Exodus 3:

• “But about the resurrection of the dead--have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." (Matthew 22:31-32)

The details make all the difference. God had not replied, “I had been their God,” but “I am…” Paul asserted:

• For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)

None of the teachings of the Bible suggest that we have the liberty to disregard details by virtue of “higher criticism” or any other consideration. Pinnock and many others also claim that the doctrine of inerrancy is a recent invention, unknown to the fathers of the Church. However, no church father could possibly be ignorant of this teaching if he had any knowledge of Scripture. Besides, Sproul argues that they indeed had been in agreement with this vital doctrine:

• Luther argued that the Scriptures never “err.” To say that the Scriptures never err is to say nothing more or less than that the Bible is inerrant. So though the word “inerrancy” is of relatively modern invention, the concept is rooted not only in the biblical witness of Scripture itself but also in its acceptance by the vast majority of God’s people throughout the history of the Christian church. We find the doctrine taught, embraced and espoused by men such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Jonathan Edward, and other Christian scholars and teachers throughout church history. (58-59)

Inevitably, when we dump this doctrine, we then make ourselves the ultimate authority. We decide what portions of Scripture are truly inspired and which aren’t. Instead of Scripture judging us, we have positioned ourselves to judge Scripture – which parts are truly inspired and which aren’t.

Ironically, it isn’t even us who are the judges but our culture. Thomas Jefferson had re-written the Bible, leaving out the miracles. Why? Because in his Deistic culture, miracles were an offense to the modern mind! Today we are more apt to reject the teachings about divine judgment. They have become the offense to our permissive culture.

But do we then stuff the problem verses – those that seem to contradict? Are we putting our heads in the sand as some allege? Sproul, while admitting that “there are some as-yet-unresolved apparent contradictions,” claims that progress is being made:

• A great many alleged contradictions have been resolved…The trend has been in the direction of fewer problems rather than more of them. (49)

More importantly, an apparent contradiction doesn’t prove an actual contradiction. Sproul argues:

• The number of seriously difficult passages compared with the total quantity of material found there is small indeed. It would be injudicious and even foolhardy for us to ignore the truth claims of the Bible simply because of the so-far-unresolved difficulties. We have a parallel here with the presence of anomalies in the scientific world. (50-51)

If we don’t throw away science because of the anomalies – apparent contradictions to prior scientific findings – should we do so when confronted by the anomalies of Scripture? Of course not! Besides, the Creator is further beyond our understanding than is His creation. Therefore, we should be less insistent to throw away the doctrine of inerrancy simply because Scripture doesn’t seem to fit together coherently.

If we throw away this doctrine, we throw away any possible vitality that the church might enjoy. Sproul affirms this concern:

• We believe that history has demonstrated again and again that all too often there is a close relationship between rejection of inerrancy and subsequent defections from the matters of the Christian faith that are essential to salvation. When the church loses its confidence in the authority of sacred Scripture, it inevitably looks to human opinion as its guiding light. When that happens, the purity of the church is direly threatened.

“Threatened?” The church soon becomes ready for hospice care!

The Fine-Tuned Gift of Speech

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How Do We Love God? By Shutting Down Our Minds?

If you happen to be looking for a teacher/leader/guru who will con, dupe, and manipulate you, just look for one who will tell you to turn off your mind, your critical faculty. The Hindu guru Baghwan Shree Rajneesh had stated that the,

• Goal is to create a new man, one who is happily mindless.

And this is what he did! He had his followers dance, gyrate, jerk themselves about, and to engage in orgies – whatever was required to turn off their minds and to make them subservient to his program. However, God lovingly gave us a mind for our protection and His glory:

• Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'” (Matthew 22:37)

Using our mind with its power for discernment is not optional. It is required!

Eckhart Tolle, Oprah Winfrey’s New Age guru, attacks rationality and discernment in a different way:

• If you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place. It’s a question of going deeper, so there’s no conflict here. The important thing is that religion doesn’t become an ideology…the moment you say 'only my belief' or 'our belief' is true, and you deny other people’s beliefs, then you’ve adopted an ideology [theology]. And then religion becomes a closed door.

Thinking and ideology are evils, while experience apart from mental discernment (unless it’s Tolle’s) is the good. He is not alone in teaching that the mind is a great obstacle to transformational experience and enlightenment. Another guru, the Emergent Church’s Tony Jones – and he labels himself “Christian” – informs us that we can’t know divine truth:

• There’ll be no cutting corners, no easy answers, no magic bullets. (The New Christians, 111)

• To assume that our convictions about God are somehow timeless is the deepest arrogance, and it establishes an imperialistic attitude that has a chilling effect on the honest conversation that’s needed for theology to progress. (114)

Not only can’t we know God’s truth, but when we think that we do, we’re just being “arrogant.” Why then bother to study Scripture and to exercise discernment! However, this is far from the Biblical message. The entire Bible is a revelation of God. Rather than this revelation making us arrogant, we are told that the knowledge of God is the one thing that we can boast about:

• "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

Throughout the Bible, we are instructed that this knowledge is of critical importance. In contrast, Jones assures us of his surpassing knowledge:

• The Kingdom of God is expansive, explosive, and un-pin-downable (to coin a phrase). Consequently, our characterizations of God and God’s Kingdom are necessarily fleeting? (114)

If God can’t be pinned-down, then God can’t be understood. Nevertheless, Jones seems to understand a lot about our inability to understand.

Dismissing knowledge creates a vacuum. The Emergent Church is quick to fill it with experience. Consequently, Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline) and the contemplative spirituality movement have become popular when Scripture is disparaged. Foster argues that we miss out on the blessings of God without using his techniques – silence, visualizations, imaginations:

• Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence, is relaxed. (39)

Scripture never teaches that our “conscious mind” is a barrier against His influence. Instead, He is omnipotent! His grace cannot be impeded by our weaknesses!

Furthermore, we are not in need of Foster’s unscriptural techniques. Instead we have EVERYTHING we need in Christ:

• For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. (Col. 2:9-10)

If we refuse to believe in this “fullness,” we become vulnerable to every false promise to fill some area in our lives where we feel empty. Not only are we complete in Christ, Scripture gives us sufficient guidance for every spiritual matter:

• All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)

We commonly hear claims that we fail to receive the good things from the Holy Spirit, because we block Him by thinking too much. Pastor John Arnott of the Vineyard Toronto Airport Church (“Toronto Blessing”) argued that the “greatest deception” was a matter of missing out on the blessings of the Spirit because of a concern about being deceived:

• If you’re going to be concerned about deception, then please be concerned about the greatest deception that there is, and the greatest deception of all, in my opinion, is not to fall for teachings of a false prophet or fall for some, you know, wild goose chase of a rabbit trail out there or whatever and wake up in tens years [sic] that you’ve been deceived. In my opinion the greatest deception of all is to have a move of God come through and you not recognize it. (Quoted by Hank Hanegraaff, Counterfeit Revival, 231)

However, this does not line up with Jesus’ opinion. He was very concerned that His sheep might stray into false teaching:

• "Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast [or “teachings”] of the Pharisees and that of Herod." (Mark 8:15)

• "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)

Paul also warned about the dangers of false teaching:

• See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. (Col. 2:8)

According to both Paul and Jesus, missing out on divine blessings wasn’t a matter of exercising too much mental discernment or mental activity. Instead, it was a matter of listening to false teaching. Paul tearfully warned the Ephesian elders about this threat:

• I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard…(Acts 20:29-31)

The flock wouldn’t suffer because they failed to be open to new experiences but distorted teachings. Paul therefore argued that an Elder,

• Must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it…They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach... (Titus 1:9-11)

When we turn off our critical faculties in order to experience something new and exciting, we shouldn’t expect the Spirit to bless us. Why should He, when we are walking contrary to His Word. He warned us that

• And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Cor. 11:14-15)

We therefore mustn’t listen to those who are teaching contrary to the Word, even if they are performing miracles:

• If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deut. 13:1-3)

When we put other things above Scripture – experience, miracles, social concerns…whatever – we prove that we don’t love the Lord with all of our “heart and…soul.” Loving God is a matter of keeping His Word (John 14:21-24; 15:6-10). This is how He wants to be loved.

"Merry Christmas" - Verbotten!

My Dear Wormbottom,

I know that you will be delighted to hear of our latest victory:

• Members of the House of Representatives have been banned from using the phrase “Merry Christmas” in any “franked,” or taxpayer-funded, correspondence to their constituents, but have been told that “Happy Holidays” is permissible. A December 12 memo from the Franking Commission Staff reported by the Washington Examiner noted that the “Franking Manual” already bans using taxpayer-funded postage for correspondence whose sole purpose is to mark special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, births, retirements, or holidays. This year, however, members are being told that even in correspondence sent for otherwise legitimate purposes, the phrase “Merry Christmas” cannot be used. The ban extends to any e-mail, website, or social media posting that uses “official resources,” according to the memo. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/us-house-reps-banned-from-wishing-constituents-merry-christmas?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0b78b005a5-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines12_20_2011&utm_medium=email

I have to congratulate you on your brilliant strategy of separating our beloved secularism from the other banal religions. It’s really worked! No one now thinks of our beliefs of materialism, multi-culturalism, religious pluralism, moral-relativism, and naturalism as a “religion.” This glorious strategy has enabled us to demote and marginalize all of the other religions while ours successfully operates under the radar.

I am certainly not complimenting you too highly when I say that it had been your brilliance that has engineered and guided this strategy. Who else had foreseen that the First Amendment, forbidding the establishment of one national religion, could have been distorted in such a way as to keep all the other religions out of public sight, while ours reigns unquestioned!

And you were right – nobody even pays attention to the second phrase of the First Amendment:

• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF…

And this is exactly what your strategy has enabled us to do – to prohibit “the free exercise thereof,” by prohibiting those hypocritical congressmen from sending out their manipulative little Christmas greetings. They care no more about Christmas than we do.

Who would have thought, just several decades ago, that your strategy would have produced such delectable fruits! I can now walk comfortably down the street without concern that anyone will wish me a “Merry Christmas.” In fact, we have pulled the strings so effectively that even Christians now feel twinges of guilt when they even try to articulate those two hated words.

However, this is just symptomatic of our greater victory. It has now become illegitimate, even in their own minds, to drag any vestige of their faith into the public domain. While we can push evolution in every nature presentation, we can yell “foul” whenever they try to bring out any evidence against this idiotic dogma. It has been because of your strategy that we have been so successful in silencing any opposition by invoking “separation between church and state.”

Yes, I am aware that you don’t like us to refer to evolution as “idiotic,” but it is. Nevertheless, I agree with you that it’s the best God-substitute on the market. I can’t even imagine a better one. With this clever alternative to God, we have been able to jam moral-relativism down the throats of every school child.

We started by using “values clarification” exercises. These were able to subtly teach the children that there are no right answers – that morality was just a matter of clarifying and understanding their own subjective feelings and choices.

Once again, our successes all come back to your initial strategy. We were able to convince the ignorant public that we weren’t teaching another religion, one in direct opposition to their own, but were merely helping their little darlings to better make moral choices.

Of course, we also sold this program by claiming that it would teach tolerance for other points of view. Brilliant, eh? They failed to see that, in the process, we were actually teaching intolerance for their system of absolute moral law.

Well, these ignorant fools deserve just what they are getting. Perhaps someday, they will look back and thank us for liberating them from their superstitions. In fact, I’ve already heard many glowing testimonials!

Our Secular Institutions Lead the Charge against Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America reads:

• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

However, the institutions that should be most concerned about defending our freedom of speech are flagrantly violating this right when that speech goes against their own religious dogmas:

• Jennifer Keeton was enrolled in the Counselor Education Program at Augusta State University (ASU), a Georgia state school, seeking to obtain her master’s degree in school counseling. After Keeton completed her first year in the program, ASU’s officials asked her to participate in a remediation plan addressing what the faculty perceived as deficiencies in her “ability to be a multiculturally competent counselor, particularly with regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (GLBTQ) populations.” ASU’s officials required Keeton’s consent to the remediation plan before Keeton could participate in the program’s clinical practicum, in which she would have to counsel students one-on-one. Rather than completing the remediation plan, Keeton filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that requiring her to complete the remediation plan violated her First Amendment free speech and free exercise rights. Along with her verified complaint, Keeton also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would prevent ASU’s officials from dismissing her from the program if she did not complete the remediation plan.

• After holding an evidentiary hearing, the district court denied her motion for a preliminary injunction, and it is from this order that Keeton now appeals.

• Keeton claims that ASU’s officials violated her First Amendment free speech rights in three ways: by discriminating against her viewpoint; by retaliating against her for exercising her First Amendment rights; and finally by compelling her to express beliefs with which she disagrees. We address each specific claim in turn. http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/12/19/11th-circuit-issues-ruling-in-keeton-v-anderson-wiley-litigation/

Although our right to express our opinions, however unpopular they might be, is being threatened, in many circumstances, it prevails:

• An Alliance Defense Fund lawsuit has led to official recognition for a student-led Christian club at the Hicksville Union Free School District, which originally refused to recognize the club. In light of the district’s decision to change course and grant the club equal access to the rights, benefits, and privileges extended to all other non-curriculum student clubs, ADF attorneys filed a voluntary dismissal of the club’s federal lawsuit against the district Friday.

• In addition to granting recognition and equal access to the club, the district also adopted a resolution affirming its “continuing policy to comply with the Equal Access Act,” a federal law that prohibits government schools from discriminating against religious student clubs that wish to meet on campus during non-instructional time. http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/5247?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

The struggle to maintain our right to freely express our cherished faith can be very discouraging. However, we have heavenly resources:

• Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. (Psalm 37:3-6)

Perhaps the Church isn’t so Bad After All

Our youth are abandoning the church in torrents. The secularists argue that our Gospel is hate speech. Hillary Clinton was recently emboldened enough to assert that our religious arguments against LGBT issues are “not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation.” http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2011/12/hillarys-hate-speech.html.

We are routinely called “sexist,” “racist” and “homophobic.” The church now seems to be held in such contempt, that its enemies now feel confident enough to challenge its tax-exempt status and to impose secular standards upon worship and speech and even to discriminate against churches by preventing them from renting space in public schools.

In contrast to these dismal assessments, a recent Barna.org study found that:

• Three-quarters of Americans believe that churches are a positive factor in their communities. Just 1 out of 20 adults believe that the influence of churches is negative. http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/549-barna-reveals-top-trends-for-2011

It seems evident that the churches are doing more good than the media and the schools are ready to admit. Besides, the church’s light isn’t shining brighter because it is found in the midst of a dark society. Another recently published study found that,

• The United States now ranks the highest in terms of charity in a massive global survey that put the nation in fifth place in 2010, according to CAFAmerica [CAFAmerica.org]…According to those surveyed, two out of three Americans said they donated money to charity (65 percent), more than two out of five volunteered their time (43 percent) and roughly three out of four helped a stranger (73 percent).

Perhaps the church and its influence might even take some credit there?

The Fruit of the Secular State

Atheists monotonously charge that the church does everything wrong and Christians are evil. There are several ways to respond:

1. “Yes, we are evil and do bad things, and that’s why we all need the Savior.”
2. “You have no basis to talk about ‘evil’ or ‘bad,’ since you, as moral relativists, don’t believe in an objective ‘good and bad.’”
3. “Okay, let’s compare the evil of the church to the evil of atheists!”

Regarding the last response, I’ll invoke the militant communist/atheist experiments under Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot, and remind them of 100 million that these idealistic atheists had exterminated.

Of course, they’ll protest that these evils were not the result of atheism but communism, and that if we really want to see the fruits of atheism, we should look to secular (atheistic) nations of western and northern Europe.

Although these countries are going in an atheistic direction, they are not militantly trying to stamp out their Christian roots as some of the communist nations had done. Instead, their secularization is slow and far less proactive. Consequently, these nations still retain strong vestiges of their Biblical roots. Therefore, it’s harder to gauge the impact of atheism, and this requires more time.

However, this task might be easier than I had at first thought. It seems that as secularism has taken hold, so too has crime:

• The 9,350,000 inhabitants of Sweden reported 1,410,000[1] offences to the authorities in 2009 (approximately 151 offences/1000 inhabitants). The number of reported crimes have increased radically since a national statistics began in 1950. A lot of this is attributed to a higher degree of reports, but the largest factor is the factual increase of crimes. Increase in the rate of reports of violent crime in Sweden from 1976 to 2006. In three decades, reported violent crime have increased by about 200 %. (Wikipedia)

• If we next look at the crime level, the Danish Statistical Yearbook 2002 shows reported crimes from 1935 to 1960 to be stable: about 100,000 crimes per year. But from 1960 until today, the number of crime reports has increased by 500 percent, to more than 500,000 per year. And if we look at violent crime, the picture is even grimmer. The number of violent crimes in 1960 was approximately 2,000; it is approximately 15,000 today. This is an increase of more than 700 percent, and it is still rising steeply. This is a very surprising development. Welfare state advocates often say that crime is caused by poverty. Well, Denmark has become about twice as rich per citizen during this period of rising crime. Another argument is that poverty is caused by economic inequality. Well, Denmark has engaged in the most comprehensive income redistribution program of any nation. Denmark is the most egalitarian country in the world today. http://mises.org/daily/1274

This identical crime explosion is found throughout the Western world:

• With the end of World War II and the economic recovery in Europe in the 1950s, crime rates and particularly rates of violent crime began to climb once again throughout the West. In England and Wales, murder and assault cases increased from 13 per 100,000 in 1950 to 144.3 per 100,000 in 1975, for an eleven-fold increase (Gurr, p. 363). During the same period the rate of larceny-theft rose from 847 per 100,000 to 3,659 per 100,000 for a more than four-fold increase, and by 1997 this figure came to 4,083 per 100,000. In Scandinavia much the same pattern unfolded. Between 1960 and 1974–1975, assaults and murders in Finland more than doubled from 127.9 to 282.0 per 100,000, and thefts more than tripled from 886 to 2,850 per 100,000. And in Stockholm between 1950 and 1971 the rates of thefts, assaults, and murders more than quadrupled (Gurr, p. 364). These increases in Europe were recorded mainly in the cities, and a similar pattern prevailed in the United States. Between 1960 and 1997 violent crimes known to the police in the United States shot up from 160.9 to 610.8 per 100,000, and property complaints rose from 1,726.3 to 4,311.9 per 100,000 (see F.B.I., 1961–1997).
http://law.jrank.org/pages/2159/Statistics-Historical-Trends-in-Western-Society-post-World-War-II-crime-wave.html

How do we explain this explosion? It can’t be attributed to poverty, because the Western world had become wealthier during this period. In the sixties, the USA experienced a secularization outburst. Prayers were eliminated from the school systems as “unconstitutional” in 1962. Wayne Grudem argues that this one change had made an enormous impact:

• In the book [“America: To Pray or not to Pray”] Barton documents the dramatic rise in teen pregnancy rates, teen suicides, and drug abuse since pray was removed from public schools. (Politics according to the Bible, 506)

This change was accompanied in the West also by the teaching of moral relativism through “values clarification” exercises. These communicated to the students that there are no correct moral answers. However, without correct moral answers, there is no longer a higher rationale for acting one way or another. Morality is reduced to what you feel and whether or not it will work for you. Consequently, if we are no longer governed by moral absolutes, the strongest impediment against peer influence is removed.

Yes, parental influence is remains foremost, but this influence has also been undermined by secular thinking. Without absolute moral principles, emotional fulfillment becomes paramount. Instead of parents training their children in accordance with what they had always believed to be true, they now want to be liked. They therefore overly indulge their children: “I just want my Johnny to be happy and fulfilled.” And Johnny not only agrees, but he has very definite ideas about securing his happiness.