Eph 1014-6 3/7/89; David 5/11/80 D068
A. The criminal is an irresponsible person.
1. All criminality is the product of human volition. Criminals are not criminals because of their environment, but because of the function of their volition in relationship to the trends of the old sin nature. Irresponsibility is a basic characteristic of the criminal-type person.
2. The criminal is not a mature person because he does not take the responsibility for his own decisions in life
. a. Therefore, criminality is characterized by irresponsibility and childishness. The criminal is not responsible, answerable, or accountable to any authority in life.
b. Therefore, the criminal lives in a state of self- fragmentation followed by polarized fragmentation in the field of antinomianism.
c. A responsible person relates to some form of virtue; virtue related to people, virtue related to obligations, virtue related to the work ethic. This virtue produces self-esteem under the laws of divine establishment and spiritual self-esteem under the protocol plan of God. The unbeliever from his own achievements derives self-respect, respect for others and a lifestyle related to the laws of divine establishment. The believer from learning thinking and solving develops respect for truth and occupation with Christ.
3. In anger, vindictiveness, and bitterness, the law-abiding citizen may violate someone else’s privacy or show disrespect for property, but it does not become a way of life.
4. While criminality is sinful, all sinfulness is not criminality.
5. The law-abiding citizen is basically a responsible person. He takes full responsibility for his own decisions and avoids infringement on the privacy, property and freedom, and rights of others.
6. The law-abiding citizen may be irresponsible without violating laws. In such a case, the irresponsible liar, or obligation defaulter, or excuse offerer is so poor at work, so dishonorable in his social life, that he may be classified as unreliable rather than criminal.
7. The criminal is also irresponsible, immature, and refuses to take responsibility for his own decisions and motivations.
8. An Old Testament example is Absalom’s irresponsibility in his burning of Joab’s barley harvest, and his undermining of the jurisprudence of Israel.
9. The believer who is negative to doctrine fails to execute the protocol plan of God and becomes a loser. Losers will inevitably enter into some form of fragmentation and Christian degeneracy. Some Christians become criminals.
10. A law abiding citizen may be irresponsible without being a criminal, but all criminals are irresponsible. Criminal irresponsibility translated in terms of the laws of divine establishment includes:
a. The criminal has no respect for the freedom of others.
b. The criminal does not recognize the rights of others in a free society.
c. The criminal does not understand or totally rejects the concepts of freedom - privacy of others, the sacredness of life.
d. The criminal is insensitive to others.
e. The criminal is totally preoccupied with self, totally subjective, totally arrogant, therefore, totally irresponsible.
f. The criminal has no sense of obligation to such institutions as marriage, family, or government. Therefore, his relationships in life are superficial, self-centered, and irresponsible.
B. The criminal lacks authority orientation.
1. In authority arrogance, the criminal rejects all delegated authority from God, beginning with his parents’ authority. Without authority orientation there is no capacity or blessing.
2. The arrogance of rejection of parental authority results in disorientation to authority in life in general. This becomes the basis for self-justification.
3. The frustration of no capacity for life turns young people to criminal activity as an outlet for their arrogance and energy.
4. The criminal is guilty of authority arrogance, which begins in the home and extends to every facet of life.
5. In this country there is increased teenage crime, a direct result of rejection of parental authority. This rejection of authority extends to every system of authority in life, so that disorientation to authority extends into adulthood and leads to criminal activity.
6. Criminality begins early in life and extends into the teenage years. As a result criminality becomes a way of life.
C. The criminal has a basic sense of insecurity.
1. Insecurity may result from various fears in life, i.e., fear of injury, death, not being accepted, ridicule, or being put down by others. Emotional revolt of the soul can produce criminal activity.
2. The criminal has all of these fears, but thinks in terms of fear reducing him to a nothing. When his self-esteem reduces him to a state of worthlessness and helplessness, psychology calls this the zero state.
3. The criminal’s insecurity includes a sense of failure in terms of extremes. He must be either top dog or he thinks he is nothing.
4. The criminal fears the zero state even when he is not in it.
5. This insecurity leads the criminal to transparency, in which the criminal believes his worthlessness is obvious to everyone and that everyone sees how horrible he is.
6. In reality, when he thinks he has succeeded in life, society regards him as a failure; but when he thinks he has failed, society thinks he is a success. In his bored state he thinks of himself as a zero. This is why it is so difficult to rehabilitate him.
7. So the criminal’s insecurity keeps him in a state of disorientation to the norms and standards of divine establishment.
8. In the zero state, the criminal often blames others for his real or imagined failures. In this way the self-pity of the arrogance complex interacts with arrogant self-righteousness resulting in great instability.
D. The criminal has no control over his temper or emotions.
1. A lot of law-abiding citizens also have no control over their temper, but when this is related to criminal arrogance and a distorted conscience, it becomes a characteristic of criminality.
2. Anger is a sin, and therefore applies to the entire human race. But criminality is characterized by chronic uncontrolled anger.
3. Anger in the criminal is outwardly suppressed for a purpose, but inwardly it boils continually. It is the inner anger never expressed overtly which exists in criminals and certain non-criminals.
4. Criminality anger is anger related to the interlocking systems of arrogance. It begins with an isolated episode, but expands into scar tissue of the soul until the criminal has lost all perspective in life.
5. Only the criminal parlays his anger into criminal motivation and activity. He uses his anger and lack of control to get his way.
E. Criminality is characterized by boredom or lack of capacity for life.
1. Boredom means having no capacity for life, no ability to entertain self. Being involved in the interlocking systems of arrogance, the criminal has no capacity for life, happiness, or love. Therefore, he is easily bored by life even when things are going his way. Criminals are bored even when doing what they want to do.
2. The criminal wants excitement as proof of his power. He is bored unless he is demonstrating his power. He wants people to see and feel his power. He wants to make people afraid.
3. The criminal’s desire for excitement is so great and so much a part of himself that he becomes jaded and requires even more excitement and more stimulation from excitement.
4. To live without increasing excitement is a put down to him. Therefore, he seeks constant excitement from sex, torture, alcohol, or drugs to get his kicks. 5. Finally, only violence and extreme criminal activity is the antidote for his boredom. This is why they torture their hostages. All terrorists are criminals; terrorism is not patriotism.
6. The Christian criminal has no interest in Bible doctrine except when he is in trouble.
F. All criminals are liars.
1. All liars are not criminals, but all criminals are liars.
2. For the criminal, lying is a way of life. The criminal is a pathological liar and habitually he deceives.
3. Habitual lying is the criminal’s demonstration of his total disregard for the truth in any form.
4. Lying is his standard way of dealing with the world.
5. He lies for self-preservation, to build himself up, and to achieve criminal objectives.
6. Lying is a major part of criminal manipulation.
7. He lies as part of the con game. Conning is a way of life.
8. He lies so often that he comes to believe his lies. He says whatever is necessary to get what he wants.
9. “The criminal may seem to be remarkably modest; however, the inner state is far different. While adopting such an outward demeanor, he is deceiving someone. He is enjoying the triumph of being a con.” The Criminal Personality, Yokelson and Saminov, Vol I, p. 275.
G. The criminal is arrogant.
1. Humility gives capacity for life and perfect happiness without reacting to failure and responding to success. Humility is the ability to perpetuate happiness and capacity for life in every circumstance of life, while arrogance is failure to cope with success or failure. Capacity for life cannot be related to success or failure.
2. Arrogance is inflexible about self; criminal arrogance is totally preoccupied with self. Criminal arrogance is subjective.
3. Arrogance is the motivation of the criminal personality. Criminal pride is inflexible; it creates an image of power in the totally self- determining person. “I am powerful because I have decided to be.”
4. Neither argumentation nor persuasion nor reason nor logic nor truth can modify the criminal’s arrogance and his inflexible subjectivity. Therefore, he rejects all authority in fear of entering the zero state.
5. Criminal arrogance rejects Bible doctrine, the only real source of help and hope. He learns the language to use it for manipulation. Criminal arrogance knows it all. He insists he is right and resists all views to the contrary.
6. Therefore, criminal arrogance is disorientation to establishment authority.
7. From life in the arrogance system, the criminal becomes both a sociopath and a pathological liar who functions under mental attitude arrogance using the facade of hypocrisy to cover his evil thinking.
8. The criminal has a colossal ego. He considers himself superior to all other people, too superior to work at an ordinary job.
9. The criminal expects to dominate every gathering, believing that everyone who meets him will be impressed.
10. The criminal reasons that no woman can resist him.
11. The criminal will trust only those people whom he can control, and he would rather get what he wants through manipulation or force than by asking for it or earning it.
12. The criminal cannot tolerate criticism. He considers it a put down and to which he responds with anger and violence.
13. Arrogance is hypersensitive; criminal arrogance carries a hypersensitivity to the point of violence and crime.
14. It was the famous thief Judas Iscariot who used the facade of hypocrisy to cover his criminality, Jn 12:3-6.
a. “Mary therefore took a pound of very expensive, genuine spikenard ointment, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who intended to betray Him, said, `Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii [eleven months wages], and given to the poor?’ Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and he had the money box, and used to steal what was put in it.”
b. Criminal arrogance hides behind a facade of self- righteousness.
H. The criminal is irrational.
1. The motive for crime against property is not money; the motive for sex crimes is not sex. In both cases the criminal is acting to assert control and superiority over a victim, over the authorities, over the non- criminal way of life. Arrogance is the motive for crime, not money or sex. The criminal is motivated by what he is thinking, not by emotion or libido.
2. This is also true of senseless violence. Actions which may appear senseless to a non-criminal are perfectly normal to the arrogant criminal, because it lines up with his desire to establish his superiority and control all others. The classic example is the criminal who, after holding up the bank, returned to stand around and listen to the description which didn’t fit him, laughing to himself.
3. In both cases as well as in the case of senseless violence, the criminal is acting to assert control over his victim. This is where criminals and revolutionaries meet to form leadership for revolution.
4. The criminal feels superior when he hurts others. The criminal rationality is to avoid the zero state by getting back at society for not admiring him. This includes going down in a blaze of glory. They would rather live one day as a lion, rather than 100 years as a sheep.
5. The criminal cannot stand routine in life.
6. In arrogance, the criminal rejects legitimate power and authority.
7. Arrogance disowns responsibility and makes God the scapegoat. Religion allows the criminal to cloak himself in a mantle of respectability. A criminal may wear a cross to give a good opinion of himself while committing a crime.
I. Criminality and childhood.
1. The Criminal Personality, Yokelson and Saminov, Vol I, p. 119, “Over half the criminals came from stable families, in which the parents have lived together, raised their children, and have experienced the usual tensions in living. Many of the criminals when children rejected the people who attempted to show them affection and stabilize their homes.”
2. They generally presented their mother as their excuse for why they choose to use their volition to commit crime. They didn’t care about their parents, they only used them as an excuse for what they had done.
3. Instead of the parents rejecting them as children, the criminal as a child rejected their parents. Parents were rejected because the criminals were interested in other things.
4. The criminal also rejects his brothers and sisters, rather than they him.
5. The criminal child has a mantle of secrecy surrounding themselves. They develop a secret life early in life. Lying is a major part of this life. He sets himself apart from others, keep to himself. He wants to keep his activities secret. He makes a contest out of anything just to win the fight with his parents. He rejects being friends with responsible children.
6. He lacks deep friendships. He does not maintain relationships. He only wants people available to use them. He does not know how to act with responsible people.
7. Crime does not come to or force itself upon a child. It is not the neighborhood; it is not association with bad company. Rather a child decides very early he wants to be with, and what kind of a life he wants to lead. He makes choices all along the way, and criminal patterns are identifiable by the age of ten.
8. Criminality is a function of arrogance and volition. It is a matter of self-fragmentation.
J. The Christian criminal.
1. Eph 4:28a, “He who stole up to now, from now on stop stealing.” Christian criminality is part of immoral degeneracy.
2. This implies that the born-again criminal can make the break from crime. It requires daily decisions over a long period of time to recover. An unbeliever probably cannot because of the control of the old sin nature.
3. The believer can stop because God in grace provides the way to obey the command: spiritual growth through perception, metabolization and application of Bible doctrine in the soul; learning, thinking and solving.
4. For a criminal to recover takes more than just rebound, but he must learn a vast amount of doctrine, and apply it so that he changes his enter way of thinking. His complete occupation with self must be converted to occupation with Christ. His belief in his superiority must be converted into impersonal love toward others. Criminality is permanently broken when the former criminal is sharing the happiness of God. When you share the happiness of God, the desire to be a criminal is gone and will not even tempt you. The same is true for drug addiction, alcoholism, and chasing women.
5. Criminals have a fundamentally different view of the world. All criminals are product of their own volition. Social conditions do not cause crimes. The criminal must be held completely accountable for his own decisions and actions. Criminals cannot be reformed, they must learn to think differently and to make different choices.
6. There are four categories of sins the criminal commits.
a. Sins against human life - murder.
b. Sins against people - kidnapping, assault.
c. Sins against property - stealing.
d. Sexual sins - rape.
7. Mandates against criminal activity are given in Ex 20:15; Lev 19:11; Jer 7:9; Jn 10:10; Rom 2:21.
8. The criminal believer is anti-authority, anti-establishment, a liar, a con artist, a rapist, a murderer. He follows the lust patterns of the sin nature.
K. Misconceptions about criminals and criminality.
1. The criminal is mentally ill. Criminals learn to fool psychiatrists and the courts in order to serve “easy time” in a hospital with the prospects of getting released sooner. He is anything but sick. He is rational, smart, calculating, and deliberate in his actions.
2. Criminals do not know right from wrong. In fact, some know the laws better than their lawyers. They believe that whatever they want to do at any given time is right for them.
3. Criminals are compulsive in their acts. Their crimes require logic and self-control. They are habitual in what they do; it is not a compulsion.
4. Some people act out of character and are seized by a sudden uncontrollable impulse. In his thinking there was a precedent for such a crime.
5. Criminals are victims of poverty, broken homes, racism and a society that denies them proper opportunities. Crime knows no social boundaries.
6. Social institutions (schools, churches, the news media) contribute to crime. This is one of the biggest myths of all.
7. Economic hard times cause people to turn to crime. Most poor people are law abiding, and most kids from broken homes do not end up as criminals. Children may be neglected, but must who are never become criminals. Most employed people are not criminals; the criminals just do not want to work.
8. Criminals frequently claim that they were rejected by their parents. But rarely does a criminal say why they were rejected. Usually it is because they were sneaky, liars, defiant, a thief, and made life unbearable in the home. It was the criminal who rejected his parents, not the only way around.
9. Human character is easily shaped by external events. Criminals are already thinking about committing crimes and have already made their decision to commit a crime before they ever read anything in books, newspapers, or see something on television. __________________________________________________________________________
R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740
© 1997, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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