Thuggery                          Word on the Week                    20thJuly 2024.

The dictionary definition is that of a violent and aggressive man, especially a criminal.   It may require to be updated as most criminals are patient and calculating.   The people they influence and inflame do the dastardly deeds.

However, they break the laws of the land and in a week when the candidate for the US Presidency was shot at and our own Mary Lou MacDonald revealed that she received a death threat it seems that violence is all around us.

It breaks out in the protests against housing refugees or economic immigrants in places that have suffered from social neglect and poor Government policies.   Local backlash, fanned by inflammatory news in the media, triggers violence.  

The issue of tents to immigrants when there is no other housing available, only for these same tents to be forcefully removed portrays a government which does not know what to do.

Violence does best where there are injustices.   These can easily be fanned into flame by fake news.    Fear can be whipped up when Immigrants are given a bad name.   Single males, language barriers and no prior liaison with the community produce a toxic mix.

The irony is that so many of us have immigration in our family’s past.  In many cases the indigenous people assisted the incomer.   Today sons and daughters fly off to the pleasanter spots of the globe and report favourably on the reception they receive.

But at home violence spreads.   It appears in main streets, buses and lodges in the brain in a “they are out to get me” motivation, so I strike first.    And if we saw ourselves as the victims of injustice we too revert to violence, perhaps it’s internalised but it’s in our heart (Genesis 6 verse 11). 

There was only one man in the Bible of whom it was said “He had done no violence” and that was Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53 verse 9).   Indeed, it was for these sins, internalised or articulated, that Jesus died and rose again to prove he had conquered sin (1 Corinthians 15 verses 3 to 4).

Nobody likes to be called a thug.   But when we realise that it was for thugs that Jesus died maybe I should revise my likes.   After all, the repentant thief on the cross did just that and was welcomed into paradise (Luke 23 verses 40 to 43).

Or as the Apostle Paul said “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3 verse 20).    And there all the thugs who come to Christ will be made new!