The number of homicides in New Providence over the last several years is disheartening and is a sad indictment on the moralizing institutions of our country.  The reality is that it is not going to stop anytime soon.  The reason for this is that the entire society has failed to invest properly for the socialization of the youth of the nation, particularly young men.

The institutions failing Bahamians are the home, the school and the church.  However, the government, which is responsible for public safety, carries the bulk of the blame.

It is within the home that influences, be they good or bad, come to bear on the mind, in the lifestyle and habits of a young person.

The enemy within The Bahamas are thousands of young men who have fallen through the cracks of the system of education, who come from dysfunctional homes where there is no proper parental guidance and who do not have a place of worship where they could be taught Christian values and are bereft of spiritual gifts.  The consequence is that they lack civility, have no self-respect and are menaces to society.  In other words, they have no foundation.  They are not rooted and grounded in the attitude that would make them upright and productive citizens.  The scripture says, “if the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do.”   The foundation here is faith in God the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ as the first principle of the Christian religion and the foundation of all righteousness.

The Christian Church in The Bahamas must re-examine how they are witnessing and redouble their efforts to evangelize our young men; to find them where they are, to bring them to a faith and strengthen their devotion to duty in their country and to righteousness.

Faith in God is to believe that He is the only supreme being in whom all fullness and perfection and every good gift and principal dwell independently, and in whom the faith of all other rational beings must center for life and salvation.

Our young men are left to the wolves and their faith is so limited that they are destroying themselves and their country.

So, for our survival and the wellbeing of tens of thousands of Bahamians who depend on tourism, the enemy is within.

Illegal guns continue to be the weapon of choice in most homicides in The Bahamas. It is said that 90 percent of the homicides that occurred in the country over the past five years were committed with a firearm.  While we have seen the proliferation of illegal guns in The Bahamas and put the blame on gun trafficking from the United States, guns need people to kill people.

We have seen commentary in some quarters apportioning blame to successive government administrations in The Bahamas for the number of murders over the last twenty years.  This is so misguided.   It doesn’t matter who is Minister of National Security or Prime Minister in a particular period.   An average of 100 people have been killed every year for the last ten years despite the best efforts of governments to give the Police the resources needed to combat crime and the laudable efforts of the Criminal Justice System to address the issue.

The society is sick.  Sociologists, psychiatrists and psychologists all agree that crime is the fever chart of a sick society.  To reduce this fever, all segments of society, including the moralizing institutions, must address the enemy within.

We begin this process by teaching what Saint Paul called the characteristics of fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness and temperance.  The scripture likens a person without temperance or self-control as a wild donkey of a man, and a wild vine, all of which convey unbridled passions and pleasures leading to destruction.

This is precisely what we see among many young men in our Bahamas.  They are in a state of unhappiness and personal distress because of failures to control tempers, passions and impulses.  After pulling the trigger of a firearm, some of them wished that they had the capacity to stop themselves from creating a tragedy only after the death of someone.  Others show no remorse.

The question of self-discipline and temperance has been at or near the center of Western philosophy since its very beginning.  Plato divided the soul into three parts or operations –reason, passion and appetite — and said that right behaviour results from harmony or control of these elements.

Saint Augustine sought to understand the soul by ranking its various forms of love in his famous Ordo Amoris: Love of God, neighbour, self and material goods.  Sigmund Freud divided the psyche into the id, ego and superego.

The question of correct order of the soul is not simply the domain of sublime philosophy.  It lies at the heart of the task of successful everyday behaviour, including controlling our tempers.

We often become intemperate or lose self-control because of the enemy inside the mind.  The murder rate will remain high when people attack the wrong enemy.  Quite often, people are not the problem when one considers the cause for some homicides.  The criminal has to deal with the enemy inside his mind.

It is the mind of the man that makes the man.