How Criminals Use Religion to Justify Their Crimes

The Background: The researchers found that despite the deterrent effects of religion that have been highlighted in prior research, their results indicate that religion may have a counterintuitive effect in certain contexts of encouraging or supporting criminal behavior. As they note in the papers' abstract, "Through purposeful distortion or genuine ignorance, the hardcore offenders we interviewed are able to exploit the absolvitory tenets of religious doctrine, neutralizing their fear of death to not only allow but encourage offending."

The Story: Research has found that many hardcore criminals anticipate an early death, making them less prone to delay gratification, more likely to discount the future costs of crime, and thus more likely to offend. Ironically, many such offenders also hold strong religious convictions, including those related to the punitive afterlife consequences of offending. To reconcile these findings, researchers from Georgia State University interviewed 48 active street offenders to determine their expectation of an early demise, belief in the afterlife, and notions of redemption and punishment.

The researchers found some of the causes to be an incomplete understanding of the precepts, rules, and expectations of their faith. For instance, Que, an 18-year-old male robber, said:

Que: I believe in God and the Bible and stuff. I believe in Christmas, and uh, you know the commitments and what not.
Int: You mean the Commandments?
Que: Yeah that. I believe in that.
Int: Can you name any of them?
Que: Ahhh ... well, I don't know ... like don't steal, and uh, don't cheat and [expletive deleted] like that. Uhmm ... I can't remember the rest.
Int: How about the Bible?
Que: Yeah I know some of that. You know. Heaven and Hell, and Jesus fighting with the Devil, but for real, I didn't really go to church enough to know like all the details, just the important [expletive deleted], like Jesus forgives you for all your bad [expletive deleted] if you donate some money to the church, or pray and say you're sorry.   Continue at Joe Carter

The Post-Christian Condition — Anders Breivik and the Limitations of Justice

The trial of Anders Behring Breivik represents one of the greatest tests of human justice in decades. Breivik stood in an Oslo courtroom this week and declared: “I admit to the actions, but not to the guilt.” The “actions,” of course, were the killing of 77 people on July 22, 2011. Eight were killed in a car bomb in Oslo. Breivik then shot 69 people to death on Utoya Island — most of them teenagers and young people involved in a summer camp sponsored by one of Norway’s major political parties.

Breivik has celebrated his murderous actions in court, calling his massacre the most “spectacular” event in recent European history. Having admitted to the killings, Breivik told the court, “I would do it again.”

He may have an opportunity to do so. Norwegian law allows Breivik to be imprisoned for only 21 years, even if found guilty of all 77 killings. Officials in Norway have attempted to assure their fellow citizens that Breivik is unlikely to be released, but the law allows criminals to be held in captivity after their sentence only on psychological grounds that represent a threat, and Breivik has been found sufficiently sane to stand trial.

How can this be? What sane nation would allow for a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison for premeditated murder — much less the calculated killing of 77 people?  Continue at Al Mohler

The Amish, A Mullet, and Total Depravity

Straight from the headlines, an Amish community in rural Ohio recently suffered a series of attacks in which members of the Amish community had their homes invaded. Men and women had their hair forcibly cut, men having their beards shorn, a great indignity for Amish men.

Startlingly, the criminals were fellow Amish. The attackers, led by a man named Sam Mullet, were a disenfranchised group, upset at a local bishop’s decision not to excommunicate several others who they felt had broken community laws. To commemorate their attacks, they are said to have taken pictures of those whom they assaulted. A great irony in these attacks is that The Amish way of life is intended to protect its members from the sinful influences of the outside world. (There is also something incredibly ironic about a movement to cut people’s hair being led by a man named “Mullet”.) Unfortunately, this way of living fails to account for the fact that sinful influence can never be escaped because we are all corrupt. No matter where we go, as long as we are there, sin will be there too.

The Biblical doctrine of Total Depravity, one of the doctrines collectively known as the “Doctrines of Grace,” states that the basic nature of man is corrupt, that he is inclined toward evil, and that he is unable to do anything that merits God’s favor because he is unwilling. Total depravity is ultimately oriented toward God and sometimes expressed toward others.

Theologian Lorraine Boettner says it well:  Keep Reading >>>

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