How Can We Stop The Violence and Killing?
By Michael Goings
I was awakened at about 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, by a knock at my door from a deputy who works for the Dillon County Sheriff’s Department.
A double slaying had been perpetrated and the two victims had been left in a car that was in the yard of one of my neighbors.
When I opened my front door in a somewhat bedazzled state, the deputy told me what had happened.
He asked me if I had heard any gun shots. I had to quickly and fully awaken from my somewhat sleepy state before I could give him the right answer. I had heard some repeated gunshots from what sounded like a semiautomatic firearm. However, I thought it had taken place earlier than the time the deputy had stated or suggested. Whatever the time, those repeated gun shots had to have come from the weapon that murdered the two victims (who happened to be females).
Once again in this column, I am compelled to address a very present and deadly evil that has beset our locale and left many wounded and slain in the process.
This evil that we are contending with is not a disease or pandemic. Perhaps if it was, it would be much easier to deal with and render a practical solution. This evil is being unleashed upon us due to the unregenerate and desperate wickedness of the human heart.
What else can explain why (in our little, rural county) we are witnessing so much violence, crimes, and slayings? According to the law of average and the population ratio, people are more likely to be murdered in Dillon County and other adjacent counties in South and North Carolina than in large metropolitan and urban areas like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, etc.
There are several reasons cited by the sociologists, behavioral psychologists, and criminologists that have been given as explanations based upon scientific research why people do such evil acts like the one that just unfolded recently not too far from where I stay. Is there a deeper rooted and sinister reason why people will do violence and snuff out the life of another human being without giving it any serious thought?
Given there is the usual motives that must be considered like vengeance, retaliation, an illegal drug deal gone bad, and even a lover’s jealousy, without dispute or denial, these are some of the common motives that drive many to resort to taking another’s life.
In my B.C. (Before Christ) days, I was in one of the categories that I have cited. Though I did not succeed in my attempt, I could have just as easily been a murderer (if not for the grace and mercy of God).
Full of anger and rage, I fired several shots at a car (that I was in hot pursuit of in another car) that contained two people who had dared to betray and cross me.
In those days when I was young, dumb, and full of the devil, no one was going to do to me what I thought they had done to me and get away with it.
Come to find out, when the truth finally surfaced, they were not as guilty as I (in my anger and rage) suspected them to have been. So, I have been there and acted without thinking.
My reason for sharing that incident about my life is to bring you to the true solution to all of the killings that we are witnessing in our area.
Again, this is not to dispute the findings of the professionals for why certain people are so aggressive and violent to others. For certain this is no justification or excuse for them.
However, this is a theological and spiritual explanation of both the cause and the cure. At the very root of all the crime, violence, and killings are hearts like mine (before Christ came into my life) that are wicked, wretched, and evil.
Right here, I want to cite two very relevant passages of Scripture that will greatly assist me in the point I am endeavoring to make here:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it” (Jeremiah 17:9)?
“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:19).
In light of all that I have stated, I am convinced that the greatest way that we are going to be able to combat, curtail, and cause these senseless killings to cease is through the prayers of the righteous.
For it was the intercessory outcry by people like my mother, Mother Mabel Gilchrist, Mother Ida McColl, and quite a few others whose prayers moved the Lord to convict and save me.
I believe that this is the missing ingredient in our effort to suppress and triumph over the evil, violence, and slayings in our county and nation as a whole.
I commend all of the efforts by the few groups who are trying to make a difference in the African-American community by the events they sponsor.
These events are designed to build unity in our divided and impoverished neighborhoods as well as bring awareness to the awful reality of black-on-black crime and slayings. I believe that they are making an impact on many of the young people in helping to bring them to a greater understanding of their heritage, history, potentials, and opportunities. However, at the end of the day, there is a diabolical and sinister adversary that can only be subdued by the power of God that is activated when His people pray. With that being said, we will end with the following passage:
“If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).