Last Updated on April 29, 2025 6:09 PM by herald
The Marcia Weeks show of Monday 31 March was one of the most thought provoking I have listened to in a long time. That was due, in part, to the return of Caswell Franklin to the programme, to a profusion of well wishes.
We do not wish to rehash details of what was said in that 3-hour long show so below we summarize the six major points made.
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There is rampant corruption in Barbados
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Crime has reached a fear-inspiring level.
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The leader has become a de facto dictator
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The representatives have been castrated.
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The church in Barbados has been compromised.
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We cannot continue on this path!
Who To Blame
We describe the current state of affairs as Crime, Corruption and Corrosion. We use the term “corrosion” deliberately. It comes from a Latin word which means “the act of gnawing away at or chewing on something”. That aptly describes how we have reached this state; it did not happen overnight. Bit by bit (or is it bite by bite?) a number of individuals, groups and institutions, both secular and religious, have been eating away at the moral and spiritual fabric of this country.
The prevailing consensus seems to be that the administration is responsible for this state of affairs in the country. Since the administration is responsible, it follows that it must solve the problem, especially the problem of crime. Well, so goes the thinking.
I seldom agree with PMM on ecclesiastical matters, especially when she tries to quote scripture. But she is right when she says we need to send our children back to Sunday School! That may be what the two spiritual advisers told her, but it is, nonetheless, part of the bigger truth.
PMM also said that government alone cannot be responsible for raising our children. Agreed! But it was NEVER the government’s job to RAISE children, period. Never! Government’s job is to help prepare children and people in general to make a useful contribution to the social and economic life of the country through “formal education”.
However, God assigned parents the task of bringing up children “in the fear and admonition of the Lord”. The instruction to the Israelites, as a society, is still the instruction to parents (and all educators) today.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6: 4 -9 NIV
Here in beautiful Barbados, we have a situation where, far from bringing up children, “in the fear and admonition of the Lord”, many parents have abandoned even the idea of the existence of God, let alone follow His instructions. Our situation was not an accident waiting to happen, but the creeping, cumulative result of choices made over decades.
According to verse 2 of our national anthem,
The Lord has been the people’s guide for past three hundred years.
What we must now ponder is not “with him still on the people’s side” but whether we are still on His side! God is not a Bajan so he will not bend the rules he has created to suit us; rather, we will be breaking ourselves on those rules!
We are actively engaged in stripping away the essentials of our spiritual being by kicking spiritual things out of the classroom, inviting negative, violent and destructive thoughts into our music and arts as well as allowing our justice system to be hijacked by “politrickians” and criminals. We infuse materialism into everything we do and as the panelists on the Marcia Weekes Show agreed, we behave as though development was only about material things.
No Can Do
So, the current administration cannot stop the crisis because we are all responsible. Neither should we be fooled by the notion that changing administrations will automatically stop crime. Those who are old enough – and do not suffer from acute amnesia – know that both “cartels” have thrown stones at each other over the matter of crime when the other was in the driver’s seat.
The special commission on crime and national security was doomed to failure from its inception. It is an infeasible enterprise. It is not feasible for any administration to STOP crime. It can ensure that crime is suitably punished but that has never reduced crime to zero.
Cause vs Consequences
Most people would agree that to solve a problem, you have to treat the cause, not the symptoms or consequences. We know that the real cause of a flu is a virus. So, while we have to lessen the symptoms like a running nose or fever, you have to get rid of the virus either naturally or through medication.
Recently a medical doctor opined to me that the cause of crime in Barbados is economic deprivation. That is the standard sociological explanation of crime. But is it accurate? We say, “no”! We say that that is an over-simplification and a generalization because there are different types of crimes.
For example, much of the white-collar crime which we experience can hardly be attributed to economic deprivation but rather to greed, pure and simple. Then there are crimes of passion which have nothing to do with economic hardship but are the result of states of extreme emotional agitation. So, what then is the cause of the crisis? Our thesis is this:
The real cause of our crisis of crime, corruption and corrosion is spiritual: not economic, or for that matter, social.
Indeed, we argue that the real cause of ALL of our problems is SPIRITUAL! By “spiritual” we mean matters that have to do with the human spirit. The older generation which came up in church and Sunday School knows that the human being is body, soul and spirit. That is because they were introduced to the Genesis record of the creation of man, where God created a body, breathed into its nostrils the breath of life or spirit (Hebrew “ruah” or spirit) and the entity (man) became a living soul.
Regrettably, this origin of our species does not account for those among us who believe they are products of evolution from some primordial sludge that just appeared from nowhere or those who may see themselves as creations of AAI (Alien Artificial Intelligence).
A Matter of Mind
Speaking broadly, this generation (and I don’t mean the “youth” only) is experiencing a fundamental identity crisis: it does not know, or choses to ignore, who we are at the most basic level: body, soul and spirit.
The core of our spiritual being is the mind or psyche and our thoughts are to our spiritual body, what blood is to the physical body! We could explain the reasoning behind these conclusions in nice logical steps but that would increase the length of this article considerably. Suffice it to say that spiritual matters have to do with the structure of our mind or psyche (the “heart” in biblical terminology) namely: attitudes, motives, values and will.
Scripture confirms that crimes start in the minds of would-be perpetrators:
For out of the heart [mind] come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Matthew 15:19
Passing more laws or amending gun crimes legislation may deter some but it may not have any impact whatsoever on the content of a person’s psyche!
Prognosis
The term “prognosis” means forecast. My forecast, for what it is worth, is that we are one step away from the moral state of calling “good”, “evil” and “evil”, “good”; in other words, moral inversion (See Isaiah 50:20). The entire chapter is worth reading because it is an indictment of a people who had turned their backs on God repeatedly and increasingly.
As a work-in-progress, it would certainly benefit us to study the state of the USA today because that is exactly the slippery slope on which that society has embarked. Police are defunded, criminals are coddled while victims are targeted. Innocent people are persecuted and prosecuted; people are merely pronouns and intolerance reigns supreme. State and city leaders, judges and too many members of the legislature, actively oppose what common sense dictates as good, moral and appropriate (without having to deny that nothing was perfect or indeed can be).
This reverse moral polarity is where Barbados is heading. If we do not put an end to this process of moral inversion sooner rather than later, we can expect an increase in crime, violence and corruption. If you read Isaiah chapter 50 in its detail you will see the progressive consequences of this moral inversion.
Treatment
We submit, therefore, that the current crisis of crime, corruption and moral corrosion in Barbados cannot be solved by a new administration or another social programme. Since the cause is spiritual, treating to the current situation will require a disciplined spiritual approach.
Scripture not only hands us the diagnosis but also offers the solution. In a single verse, it has summarized the spiritual action plan that must be taken and who is responsible for implementing it. We discuss that verse in detail in part 2 which can be accessed by clicking on the image on the right.
The author, Dr. Aldon D. Tull, is a retired educator
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