Symbolism Will Not Bend The Arc Of Crime…

As a Christian I believe in the pow­er of prayer. I believe in pray­ing to God as an acknowl­edge­ment that he is my source. My pray­ing to God is not an exer­cise intend­ed that God mag­i­cal­ly do for me what I can do for myself.
God is a mir­a­cle work­ing God , he is not a magician.
Subsequently , when I pray to God, I do not do so into per­pe­tu­ity . I am of the belief that when I pray he hears me the first time. I believe if I con­tin­ue to pray to him for the same thing I do a cou­ple of things.
♦ I believe he did­n’t hear me the first time I prayed.
♦ I am unsure of his abil­i­ty to grant that which I pray for.

Since I believe that God hears me and knows what I will pray for even before I pray . And since I am absolute­ly con­vinced about his abil­i­ty to grant that which I pray for accord­ing to his will I do not pray a prayer for stuff more than once.
Does that mean that I do not pray to God much ? Of course not ! There are prayers of praise, prayer of thanks, prayers of acknowl­edge­ment among oth­er rea­sons we pray to God. So yes I pray con­sis­tent­ly. I sim­ply under­stand that the pow­er to change my cir­cum­stance rests with me. Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you,what­ev­er you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

How did I come to this belief sys­tem as against con­sis­tent­ly stay­ing on my knees in prayer for what I want?

Jesus’ moth­er tells him there was no more wine .
John 2 – 7 . Jesus said to the ser­vants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Jesus heals a leper.

Luke 5:14 . 14 “Do not tell any­one,Jesus instruct­ed him. “But go, show your­self to the priest and present the offer­ing Moses pre­scribed foryour cleans­ing, as a tes­ti­mo­ny to them.”

“Elisha sent a mes­sen­ger unto him, say­ing, Go and wash in the Jordan sev­en times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean” (II Kings 5: 10).

A brief look at the min­istry of Jesus Christ or even the prophets who pre­ced­ed him demon­strates clear­ly that if we want to receive the ben­e­fits we seek we also have some work to do on our own.

WE HAVE THE SOLUTIONS IN OUR HANDS BUT CHOSE TO ENGAGE IN NONSENSICAL RITUALS

In declar­ing what they char­ac­ter­ize as “death to crime” some Jamaican pas­tors took turns destroy­ing a cof­fin paint­ed gold and white. The sig­nif­i­cance of the exer­cise was to demon­strate their com­mit­ment to the destruc­tion of crime.
In atten­dance was the Minister of nation­al secu­ri­ty Robert Montague and for­mer min­is­ter of National secu­ri­ty Peter Bunting. Speaking to a packed crowd in the Half-Way-Tree square the min­is­ter told the crowd ““to those who wreak hav­oc on soci­ety, we the peo­ple of Jamaica have drawn a line”. “We are going to begin to take back our country.”.

I am not one to dis­re­gard any­thing which is geared toward reduc­ing crime. However as a prag­mat­ic chris­t­ian I believe in the pow­er of doing for our­selves what we need to do.
God is not going to come down and fix what he already empow­ered us to fix.
No amount of mean­ing­less the­atrics will fix crime.
Dithering while ignor­ing the prag­mat­ic com­mon sense changes which must be embarked on to begin the slow tedious process of end­ing ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty on the Island will not be fixed by bust­ing up a cof­fin like a piñata .
No amount of sym­bol­ism , no mat­ter how well-inten­tion-ed will turn the coun­try around .
If Jamaicans want a crime free soci­ety let them embrace respect for the laws and those who enforce them. Let them demand truth in sen­tenc­ing. Let them eschew gar­risons. Let them demand that mur­der­ers not be allowed out on bail. Let them demand account­abil­i­ty by those in pub­lic office.

There are a raft of things Jamaicans can begin to do to start to bend the arc of crime , sym­bol­ism is not one of them.