Insight on the News
Immorality Can Kill
● Saying that “no sex act ever killed anybody,” Catholic priest Depaul Genska of Chicago believes that the Church should stop condemning prostitutes and homosexuals. He favors legalizing prostitution, stating that “prostitution is just like any other business,” reports “The News” of San Antonio, Texas.
But wrong sex acts can kill, in several ways. In ancient times countless numbers of people were wiped out by venereal disease transmitted by immoral sex relations. Today, these diseases still kill many people each year, or result in crippling disabilities such as blindness and deformed children. Also, God destroyed the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because the people “had committed fornication excessively and gone out after flesh for unnatural use,” which included homosexuality and sodomy. (Gen. 19:1-25; Jude 7) And immoral persons will lose their lives when God judges this world because his Word states: “Do not be misled. Neither fornicators . . . nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men . . . will inherit God’s kingdom.”—1 Cor. 6:9, 10.
The priest made reference to the words of Jesus who said that “the harlots are going ahead of” the religious hypocrites into God’s kingdom. (Matt. 21:31) But what the priest failed to mention was that neither harlots nor hypocrites will get into God’s kingdom unless they change their course of action. True, Jesus and his followers took their message to all types of sinners. But these men of God clearly taught that to gain God’s favor the wrongdoer would have to stop breaking God’s laws.
That is why, after declaring that immoral persons would not get into God’s kingdom, the Bible says: “Yet that is what some of you were. But you have been washed clean.” (1 Cor. 6:11) Such previously immoral persons became acceptable to God after they abandoned their immoral course, and then conformed their lives to God’s will.
Fear “Dominant Mood”
● The huge stockpile of atomic weapons of annihilation has caused many to be fearful of the future. So have the persistent economic, family and other social problems that seem to defy solution. A great cause of fear is concern for one’s personal safety because of the huge increase in crime and violence.
The New York “Post” said regarding New York city: “Fear is the dominant mood in many neighborhoods, in small shops, in classrooms and even in offices and homes. It poisons the life and climate of the city.” This newspaper further observed: “The dread empties the streets and parks at dusk, discourages business, frightens visitors and imprisons residents in their double and triple-locked apartments.”
Nor is any neighborhood now considered “safe.” Regarding the crime rise, the “Post” said: “The rise was sharpest in middle-class neighborhoods once considered safe refuges. Crime haunts the minds of multitudes.”
How accurately God’s Word foretold this very condition! In his great prophecy about our generation, Jesus said that it would be characterized by people becoming “faint out of fear” because of what they see coming upon the inhabited earth.—Luke 21:26.
Example Needed
● How can parents who want their children to do homework or other reading get their youngsters away from the television set? Dr. R. Stubblefield of New Canaan, Connecticut, answers: “The best way is for the parent to set the example. Children still model most of their behavior after their parents’—so you have to be prepared to turn the set off and pick up a book yourself.”
He also remarked: “Remember that a child preoccupied with television is likely to be functioning at six to 18 months below his or her age level.” Too much television can cause hyperactive behavior, loss of appetite, sleeping difficulties, refusal to play with other children, and can even interfere with the development of walking and talking.
So when God’s Word counsels parents to train children, that training cannot be done apart from parental example. (Prov. 22:6) Often “actions speak louder than words.”