Insight on the News
Fragmenting World
● Recently Canada has been in ferment over the desire of Quebec’s Premier Rene Levesque to separate his French-speaking province from the English-speaking nation. In presenting his position before Canadian university students, he noted that there were only 50 different nations in 1945, but now the number has grown to about 150. “If that’s not a trend then what is?” he asked. “It’s a worldwide trend and we’re part of it.”
The world has been breaking up into ever smaller fragments over issues that have perplexed mankind for centuries: Religion, race, language and many others. Often the divisions result from seemingly unsolvable problems that drive peoples apart. How good it would be if such differences could be resolved without division.
For this reason the Creator of mankind long ago purposed an “arranging, when the time should have fully come, that everything in heaven and on earth should be unified in Christ.” Yes, fragmented human society, under the management of God’s wise Son Jesus Christ, will finally be brought back together as one united family.—Eph. 1:9, 10, “An American Translation.”
Friends of the Underworld
● Another alleged high-ranking organized crime figure recently was buried after a requiem High Mass in Brooklyn, New York. “Yesterday, speaking in the church where [the reputed mobster] often worshiped,” says the New York “Times,” “Father Gigante urged those who knew him not to shed tears.” In an emotional 10-minute eulogy, the priest, a “family friend,” claimed that the deceased “went about his life’s work by loving and helping others. . . . He is in the hands of God now.”
Meanwhile, across the street, agents of the police Organized Crime Control Bureau were noting the presence of another reputed mobster and “Rabbi Abraham Novitsky, who until recently ran an illegal gambling operation in a Queens supermarket,” reports the New York “Daily News.” Priest Gigante had himself recently been cited for contempt of court for refusing to testify about illegal favors that he allegedly obtained for another imprisoned underworld “friend” while that one was serving as a city councilman. The priest and the rabbi both led the graveside service.
Such accounts, common in American big-city newspapers, lead thinking persons to wonder how churches and synagogues can so openly ignore the wrongdoing of their members and clergy. It is true that churches should help sinners, and Jesus came to save such; but those who received this help were to change their ways, not continue wrongdoing under a cloak of religious respectability.—See 1 Corinthians 5:11-13; 6:10, 11; Ezekiel 18:21-23.
‘Swear and Yell’ to Cool Anger?
● How can we deal effectively with our irritation over the wrongs that we see in the world? According to noted California psychiatrist and criminologist Joel Fort, “anger is a perfectly normal reaction—not an abnormal one”—to the frustrations caused by injustice. “Swearing and yelling can help,” he says. “Enlarge your vocabulary. Use more imagination when you swear. Try learning to swear in two languages. Use sexual swear words more creatively. Strike or break objects rather than people or animals. Kick the wall, break dishes.”
Venting rage may be the only way many persons have to deal with their emotions. However, there is another way that really works for those who follow the Bible’s counsel. It is: “Let anger alone and leave rage; do not show yourself heated up only to do evil.” (Ps. 37:8) But how is this possible in the real world?
Well, “fits of anger” are among the “works of the flesh” mentioned in the Bible, which says also that “if you live in accord with the flesh you are sure to die; but if you put the practices of the body to death by the spirit, you will live.” So God’s holy spirit will help true Christians to avoid childish rages. “Self-control” is among the fruits of that spirit.—Gal. 5:19, 20, 22, 23; Rom. 8:13.