THE BROKEN WINDOW PHENOMENON

     It began as an observation that if a broken window in an abandoned building was not immediately repaired it was an open invitation for vandals to break all they wanted.  It grew into a theory of the cause of crime in urban areas.  If 'minor laws' such as breaking windows and littering were not strictly enforced law breaking would escalate to worse and worse crimes.  I first felt compelled to apply the concept to mass murders after the Colorado high school murders around twenty years ago.  But the internet was only in its infancy and the possibilities of a blog like this were almost undreamed of.
     The broken window theory of crime is not new at all.  Around nine hundred years before Christ it was observed by Solomon.  "When sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong."  (Ecc. 8:11)   The same general idea is found in the Proverbs and appears from time to time in writings ancient and modern.  At the time of the Colorado high school killings I saw it as predictive of where the U.S. was headed.  From the 1960's on there has been a steady "breaking of moral windows" by groups as diverse as the entertainment industry and the Supreme Court.  This has been rightly called a form of anarchy.  In the words of the Book of Judges: "every man did what was right in his own eyes".   In particular there has been complete sexual anarchy: first, we will live together unmarried; then we will have children without being married; if married, we will divorce and remarry for any and every reason; then we will wallow in pornography; we will approve any sexual acts between "consenting" adults regardless of their gender; then we will get the highest court in the land to declare that all this anarchy is an inalienable right.  There!  We just broke about every window in the building and we feel so proud of ourselves for scoring so many hits.  We are working on breaking those remaining 'windows' of pedophilia and polygamy.   It had not seemed to occur to us that by not protecting all 'windows' those 'other windows', like murder - even mass murder - might get smashed also.
      So now we have a slight problem.  We have a few people who want to break things other than the 'moral windows'.  They want to shoot people!  Many people!  All at one time!   I mean, after all, they get a much bigger thrill out of 'breaking' people than merely breaking the other moral windows.  So we have got to stop this breaking of 'other things' like people and limit window breaking to just the sexual 'windows'.  So how are we going to stop this other 'breaking'?  The solution is easy!  Any morally and intellectually bankrupt mind can come up with the solution.  GUN CONTROL!
     But wait!  When we had virtually no gun laws to speak of (50 or more years ago before the Gun Control Act of 1968) we hardly ever heard of a mass shooting.  There was one at the U. of Texas in 1966 but the perpetrator was found, during autopsy, to have a brain tumor.  No background check would have found that.  Semi auto rifles with extra magazines have been available for at least a century.  From 1920 to 1935 you could easily and legally buy a Browning Automatic Rifle or a Thompson submachine gun.  No mass shootings.  But, you say, what about the gangsters of the 1930's?  They mainly shot each other and rarely - thank God - killed an innocent person with their automatic weapons.    But the point holds true.  Outside of organized crime, mass shootings were virtually unheard of.  With the exception of New York's notorious Sullivan Law which created safe working conditions for criminals by banning pistols to almost all civilians, there were virtually no gun control laws.
     In his monumental series "How Should We Then Live?" Schaeffer predicted forty years ago where we would go.  With the loss of the Christian consensus and the absence of compelling moral absolutes we would descend into chaos.  People cannot live in chaos.  They will give up their liberties for the promise of security.  We will probably not have, Schaeffer said, a dictatorship like Hitler or Stalin.  We will have arbitrary absolutes imposed upon us by a manipulating, authoritarian elite.   Just think.  Obama was only a teenager and Hillary was virtually unknown when Schaeffer wrote that.  He was more of a prophet than anyone at the time could have guessed. 
       Do we, at this moment of history, have another authentic, prophetic voice to see a move of God and repentance on a scale that will be . . . . . . off the charts?