Church of God, New World Ministries

Human Nature Is Violent!

Mass murders, riots, arson, rape, gang violence, kidnappings, bombings, and lootings, is there any end to it all? Never have you lived in a time of such violence! But why? What causes it? Police, sociologists, psychiatrists, and the public seek answers. They ask, “What causes race riots? What causes serial killers, the unbelievable slaughter on the University of Texas campus several years ago”? There is a basic underlying cause. This article will explain such violence today, and what you ought to be doing about it!

Everywhere, violence runs amuck. Bloody race riots, black power is chanted by Negro mobs and massive demonstrations by angered whites retaliate by shouting, white power! Nowhere, it seems, is there any more violence than right in the midst of the greatest “Christian” nation on earth!

Why? What is wrong? Why so much hate in the world? This world today is preoccupied with hate, rebellion, and violence. Television is filled with lawlessness, crime, and murder. In the past “Westerns” glamorized outlaws and “shoot-em-ups” are among the most popular television programs for all ages.

Frustrations mount, tempers flare, tensions increase, and lawlessness and violence spread like a sick, sick contagion!

The greatest mass-murders in all history were perpetrated during World War II. But again – Why? How could one-man, Adolf Hitler, arouse such hate and passion in the minds of his followers that they could calmly murder hundreds or thousands – millions?

This world still wonders. People still ask why. But Hitler knew some demoniacal quirks of human nature. He knew of the seething violence just underneath many a human mind. He understood, he knew hate will get one a bigger following than love. Violence will attract more attention than peace. Intrigue makes a more exciting news headline than harmony; suspicion will attract more interest than confidence.

And, in a sense, entertainers, actors, producers, script-writers, and sponsors also recognize these pulls of human nature. And they use those pulls to their own financial advantage.

Hate, violence, illicit sex and perversion make “good” newspaper copy, “good” television script, and “good” movie plots. Good? Well, no, not actually; but these evil attributes, actions or implied actions draw more public attention.

And it’s because all of it is so much like human nature. It’s time you understood the truth about human nature, what it is, how it works and why the eruption of violence around the world is due to unguided; misdirected, human nature let loose on a rampage!

The Bible prophesied worldwide hatred and bigotry would grip the minds of men during this time! More than ever before, people seem prone, today, to bestial acts of violence!

Paul was inspired to look beyond his time, down into ours. He portrayed the hostile, venomous attitudes of our peoples when he said, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves (selfish, self-centered, as never before!), covetous, (lusting, coveting, envious of the things of others), boasters, proud, blasphemers (and a curse is always ready on the lips of almost everyone, today, even popular entertainment figures, and government leaders!), disobedient to parents, fierce, despisers of those that are good” (II Tim. 3:1-3).

What a picture! You read of worldwide violence constantly! You hear of depraved acts, humans tormenting, butchering, bludgeoning, stabbing, and murdering one another, public figures accusing one another, husbands and wives hating each other! Don’t delude yourself into believing it’s no worse than before – it is!

Speaking of those hate-filled days, Jesus Christ said, “All these (the wars, famines, disease epidemics even now stalking this sin-sick world) are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you (you who are real Christians!) up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and you shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended. (become angry) and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another” (Matt. 24:8-10).

Those frightening prophecies are literally coming true; they are beginning to be fulfilled now in your life time!

Foretelling these days of destruction and worldwide intrigue and trouble, the prophet Ezekiel declared, “Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence” (Ezk. 7:23). When God told Ezekiel to “make a chain,” He implied that the land would be so replete, satiated with crime and violence, that one crime would be following another, like the links on a chain! And so it is!

And again, speaking of our nations today, Ezekiel records, “Then said he unto me, the iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness; for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord sees not” (Ezk. 9:9). So it is! In the midst of the present “God is Dead” movement among theologians, millions doubt the existence of God, there is no fear of God prevalent in the land, and bloody violence rears its ugly head in city after city!

Think for a moment! You live in a world of tensions, a world fraught with fear, and a world of desperate living! It is a time of insatiable desire to escape for most people, a time when most want to forget the frightening realities of our time! How do they forget? By drifting off into ready-made fantasies; movie land madness; television terrorism; paper-back perversity; newspapers nausea!

Whether in Scandinavia, Japan, Europe, South Africa, pleasure seekers gulp their daily diet of intrigue, suspicion, murder, divorce, robbery, rape, perversion, lust, arson, jealousy, violence and hatred! And remember! When you’re relaxed before your television set, or settled down to read your novel you just bought, your guard is down. You want to relax to escape the realities and complexities of daily life for a time, to enjoy your moments of make-believe. The result? It’s all around you.

Do you believe the plain statements of your Creator and your God? Or are you one who will continue to “kid” yourself this rotten world isn’t so bad after all and go right down with it into a cesspool of nightmarish destruction unimagined in your weirdest dreams?

Almighty God will soon send Jesus Christ to punish this world of evildoers? And don’t kid yourself that sounds “religious!” You’ll find little comfort in imagining yourself out of reality when the reality is all around you! Like it or not crime runs rampant in this country. But hatred is not confined to the teen-age heart. It’s a disease of the human mind. It is in your very nature to hate!

God made human beings what they are. He created man with a certain nature. We call it “human nature.” And it’s still the greatest enigma to philosophers, psychologists, and sociologist. Man, they say is still “the biggest question mark.”

One psychiatrist said, before a group of fellow psychiatrists, “We all became interested in psychiatry because we knew we ourselves had some mental problems!”

But God, the Inventor of the human heart, reveals its true nature. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it” (Jer. 17:9)? The normal, natural, fleshly mind, the mind with which you were born is desperately wicked, unless it has been changed by the nature of God!

Paul was inspired to write: “The carnal mind (the natural mind of every person) is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7)!

The normal, natural, carnal mind of every man and every woman, yes and of every child, resent s the things of God! The natural mind is always suspicious! It is envious, lustful, evil, resentful hateful! James wrote, “Do you think that the Scripture said in vain, ‘the spirit that dwells in us lusteth to envy” (James 4:3).

Today, if you feel you’re basically a “Christian” kind of person, you probably feel Christ really was the promised Messiah. You feel, whether or not you are a really zealous Christian, that Jesus Christ probably really was genuine. At least, if you are like most people, you couldn’t call Christ a guilty evil-doer could you?

But what about those who lived right with Jesus Christ? Who saw His miracles with their own eyes? What about those who lived in Jerusalem during the time of Christ’s merciless beating, His terrible night of kicks, curses, spitting, hatred, venomous accusations? What about those who had a part in it?

What about the hate-filled mob that screamed out their animalistic bestiality – “kill Him! Crucify Him! Butcher Him!”? God tells you not to bear them any malice, not to hate them even as Christ Himself said, from His tree of death “Father forgive them they know not what they do!”

But do you understand the reason they acted as they did? Do you recognize the exact, same identical nature in yourself? It’s there, recognized or not. Many of those same participants in the illegal crucifixion of Jesus Christ took their hatred, their firm belief they had rid the world of a terrible person to their graves with them.

They somehow convinced themselves they should be terrible, indignantly, “righteously” angry at Christ! They convinced themselves He was a fake! They thought they “knew” they were uncovering, exposing, and punishing some great evil! Today, you know better! But most of them never did!

And remember, Jesus predicted this evil disease of hatred would grow worse and worse, heightening in intensity until blind rage would characterize our day.

The apostle Paul wrote: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind (a deceitful, hateful, degenerate mind), to do those things which are not right: being filled with all unrighteousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, (delighting in scandal, in filth, evil, rumor), backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventor of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers (not true to their word), without natural affection (never willing to give the other fellow the benefit of the doubt), implacable (their minds unwilling to change, to admit new light, to see new facts, or accept the truth!) unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (Rom. 1:28-32).

This world is literally filled with human beings who fit this very description! And why not? It’s a description of human nature in the raw, human nature just the way it is!

Christ warned: “In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He prayed to His Father, “I have given them (His disciples and true followers in any age) thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world (they’re living different lives, lives that have been changed to conform to the life Christ led. (And remember, He was accused of being a winebibber, and a gluttonous man) even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14).

Christ had said earlier, “If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

Like it or not, admit it or not, the plain facts of your Bible are that hatred will be the lot of anyone who truly repents, and strives diligently to live the abundant, happy, joyous life Jesus Christ makes possible! Christ said, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin” (John 15:22)!

The way of life of Christ’s true servants makes other angry! Because it’s natural to resent God, it’s also natural to resent the way of God, the way of life God reveals in His Word!

Today, as never before, people allow themselves to become consumed with purple-faced, blind, mind-chilling, vicious rage against the truth of God, and against His true servants! Many hate the wonderful laws of God.

It’s about time you really saw human nature, your nature, and recognized it for what it truly is. No amount of “reasoning” and arguing about the “good” ideas and deeds of human will change the truth of God’s Word! Human nature is rotten!

It’s an evil, filthy, downward pull, tending toward violence, destruction, no good thing! Paul was inspired to say, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing” (Rom. 7:18). The human heart is evil, even the human heart that likes to think it is good!

Human nature is naturally fearful, resentful, self-justifying, egotistic, vanity-filled, hateful, despicable, proud, defiant, rebellious, boastful, obnoxious, annoying, acidic, selfish, self-centered, jealous, lustful, disobedient, stiff-necked, blasphemous, destructive, corrupt, presumptuous and vile! That is why God says repent! Change human nature by taking in some of the very nature of God II Peter 1:4).

Take a look at your own mind and heart. Think about the lives of others around you. Ask yourself a few personal questions, and be honest with yourself about your own nature!

What about your heart and mind? Do you “fly off the handle” easily? Do you become enraged at someone over racial, religious, political issues? Do you become so angry, so mad, so consumed with inflamed passion that you would literally resort to violence? Millions do!

But why? The answer is simple. It’s like a recipe for an evil concoction. Just take human nature. Sprinkle in a few situations; add a lot of entertainment pressures, such as TV violence, radio jazz and noise, movie land make-believe, newspapers sensationalism, paper-backed perversity and sex; stir well, and violence will erupt!

Solomon wrote: “Surely the churning of milk brings forth butter, and the wringing of the nose brings forth blood: so the forcing of wrath brings forth strife (Prov. 30:33)!

Do you snap at your children, argue with your employer, and yell at your spouse? Are you irritated much of the time, impatient in stress and trial, angry at situations that frustrate you? If you’re human and if you lack the spirit of God, you are!

It’s been said, “You are what you eat.” And your mind is what you think! And if your steady diet is one of violence, then you could become a violent person very easily!

Will you be one who will be filled with rage because of your spouse’s religious beliefs? Will you become brutally violent because of racial prejudices and hatreds? Will you ever be one who will persecute someone else for his religious, racial, political or personal beliefs?

Probably not, you may think – but, think again! Unless you’re changed, unless your very nature has been altered from a violent nature to a peaceful one, you may!

Look around you. Unless you are careful, you could become one of the rioting, looting, crazed individuals preying on a sick society! Most people today are passive about the crime and violence in our midst.

Law enforcement officials decry the near-obsession of the modern courts with insuring the protection of the criminal and his “rights,” instead of the strengthening the laws prohibiting and punishing criminal acts.

When a man brutally murdered his wife, became remorseful, went to the police and signed at least two separate written confessions, and later led the police to the garbage dump where he’d deposited the body, the courts later held his “rights” had been violated when no legal counsel was provided to inform him his confession was not necessary. Today the man is walking the streets. The judge threw the confessions out the window.

And so it goes. With the public obsession with protecting the rights of criminals, and with the police being increasingly handcuffed in dealing with crime, is it any wonder that crime and violence rampage more than ever before? Our society is sick!

Symptomatic of this delirium is the hazy notion between right and wrong, which often results in almost complete public indifference to crime. Noninvolvement is the course many take when a crime is being committed.

Bystanders ignore shootings; turn away from women giving birth on a cold-sidewalk; refuse aid to victims of automobile accidents; refuse to help offices in making an arrest; casually watch as a woman is raped. Case after case could be cited, where neighbors, passers-by, or on-lookers, just casually went their own ways, ignoring the crime; the assault, or the rape.

Such an attitude of public apathy contributes to the rocketing increase in violence and crime! Why do these things ever happen? They reveal one stark truth: Our peoples are sick! And there is only one sure cure!

Yes, we’re a world of cheats. A world of murderers, thieves, deviates, queers, pornographers, racists, bigots, liars, pretenders, alcoholics, dope addicts, pleasure-mad thrill seekers and religious nuts. Society is sick!

Violence threatens to spill over like a flood and bathe our cities knee-deep in rivers of blood! Berserk frenzy, madness, mayhem are continuing fear to millions. Terror lurks and prowls in city parks, along city streets and in the alleys. What can you do about it?

First of all, you need to have more of the attitude of God’s righteous servants of old, who “sighed and cried” because of the horrible atrocities, the terrible abominations that occurred around them daily! Read in Ezekiel chapter 9, of those who, because of their attitude of abhorrence of the evils of this modern era, are to be spared from the apocalyptic destruction soon to befall this world!

Read about righteous Lot who was vexed every single day because of the “filthy conduct of the wicked” and the “unlawful deeds” of the average citizen around him (II Peter 2:7-9). You need to develop more of the attitude Jesus Christ illustrated when He said His true servants would be praying “Thy Kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10)! In other words, you need to begin to view this world as God views it, and not as you have always carelessly taken it for granted.

Next, you need to become very personally critical about the way you spend your leisure time. You need to become highly selective about the motion pictures you view! Let’s face it, you know, and know that you know, that most motion pictures today are filled with pure slop, swill, violence, ghoulish insanity, murder, robbery, triangles, licentiousness, perversion, and every form of vile evil!

Always ask yourself, “Would Jesus watch this?” And then, if you really know the Christ of the Bible, you will be able to find the answer. If you feel Christ would not watch it, then remember you should not watch it either!

Probably, you feel depraved acts of wanton destruction and violence are committed by a certain type of person. But you are wrong. It is this very enigmatic problem that worries modern-day law enforcement officers. They see horrible acts of murders and violence being committed more and more by the “average” type of person. They prove conclusively that crime is not limited to those who have grown up in slums or underprivileged areas: that criminals are not demented or retarded. They shake their heads in disbelief as bestial atrocities are committed by the ‘good” people in society.

Why does this happen? Why do members of a family fly into a sudden fit of rage; grab a gun and murder in cold-blood, other members of the same family?

They probably just witnessed a dozen murders on television and in the movies, and read of more violence in the news! They had probably been feeding and gorging their minds on some murder mystery thriller, in almost every leisure moment!

Is it any wonder, when tempers flare, and a person reacts almost automatically according to habit? If you are not extremely careful what you see, how you think, what you hear, what you read, you may be establishing the same pattern of violence in your own life!

So think about it. Investigate your life. Be willing to be honest with yourself about yourself! God says, “Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope. Woe unto them that call evil good, (that was sure a “good” movie, you might have said!) and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:18-20)!

Millions keep wondering why violence. But it’s human nature to be violent. You have seen proof, now, from the Word of God. Now that you know you understand more of the true cause for crime and violence what are you going to do about it in your own life?

Check up on yourself! Be willing to call a spade a spade! Label things what they really are! And then, with the help of God, root out of your life the hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and murderous violence of this violent world! You can put on the “mind” of God.

 
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