BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Yup, you better be careful! Lately, with protests (legitimate) and riots (not legitimate), there have been calls to scale back or eliminate police departments because of abuses. Well....

What restrains evil and evildoers? Law, and the penalties behind it. People get upset when the ten commandments are posted in schools because they are "religious" (found in the Bible). But what these people do not know is that these are not religious--they were Israel's law code for regulating behavior in their newly formed nation.

Accompanying the law was associated punishment for disobedience. Without a penalty, there is no reason for not breaking it. Each of the 10 commandments in the law had a punishment for it--with exception (I think) of the last one--coveting (which is a heart issue).

All this to say, law cannot regenerate anyone. It can only regulate behavior and restrain evil. Tke this away--and the means to enforce the law--society cannot function and will quickly devolve into chaos.

Those who quickly release arrested rioters only embolden others. Why not riot (and loot, shoot, hurt) since there is no penalty for doing so? Wise King Solomon says this in Ecclesiastes 8:11, "When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong." So do not be surprised when "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7).