Kevin Baldeosingh

Ac­cord­ing to Act­ing Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Wayne Dick, God helped po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors ar­rest and charge a sus­pect in the Shan­non Ban­field mur­der case.

Now you might ask why God didn't stop Ms Ban­field from be­ing killed in the first place, hence sav­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice the time and trou­ble and em­bar­rass­ment of a high-pro­file in­ves­ti­ga­tion. But any­one who asks such a ques­tion on­ly proves that they don't un­der­stand that God moves in mys­te­ri­ous ways His mir­a­cles to per­form.

And, in any case, Ag Deputy Dick in a press con­fer­ence a few weeks ago of­fered a rea­son for God's ways, since Dick not­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been car­ried out un­der Dick's "as­tute lead­er­ship," hence prov­ing that God ap­proves of this ap­proach to polic­ing. And I think most read­ers will agree that this is gen­er­al­ly how po­lice of­fi­cers in T&T per­form their du­ties.

That is al­so why the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) arranges days of prayer sev­er­al times a year in or­der to fight crime. It is true that these prayer days have not suc­ceed­ed in re­duc­ing crime, but that on­ly proves that we need more days with more peo­ple pray­ing.

It's like licks for small chil­dren. Many peo­ple, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, ar­gue that you can pre­vent chil­dren be­com­ing crim­i­nals by beat­ing them in home and in school. And Mr Dil­lon, as he re­vealed dur­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, grew up in a God-fear­ing PNM house­hold, which ob­vi­ous­ly is dif­fer­ent from a mere­ly PNM house­hold, since most PNM house­holds are lo­cat­ed in high-crime ar­eas.

But you might ask, if licks pre­vents crim­i­nal­i­ty, how come near­ly all crim­i­nals got licks when they were small? But this on­ly shows that they ei­ther weren't beat­en enough or beat­en hard enough. Af­ter all, it's no use beat­ing a child in such a way that you on­ly get them vex. You have to beat them so hard that you put the fear of God in them, which is why Min­is­ter Dil­lon is a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter on whose watch the num­ber of mur­ders has in­creased, since his Min­is­te­r­i­al col­league Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia has re­ject­ed re-in­sti­tut­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools.

Since God in the Bible says spare the rod spoil the child, it is clear­ly against God's will to not beat chil­dren, which is why hunter-gath­er­ers who don't know God's word don't do so. It is al­so against God's will that chil­dren not be ex­e­cut­ed for curs­ing their par­ents and, if the gov­ern­ment would on­ly do what God says, this will erad­i­cate both crime and chil­dren who refuse to eat their peas. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, T&T is a place where many peo­ple pay lip ser­vice to God but balk at obey­ing His com­mands, and this is no doubt why this coun­try is plagued with so many ills.

It's not on­ly that more peo­ple need to pray, but they need to be more sin­cere in their prayers. Last year, a young woman was ab­duct­ed by a taxi-dri­ver and, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports, be­cause she and her par­ents prayed, her ab­duc­tor dropped her off. "What if we hadn't prayed?" her fa­ther asked, not ask­ing why God didn't an­swer the prayers of oth­er women who had been ab­duct­ed and raped or killed, be­cause such a ques­tion would be blas­phe­mous.

Ob­vi­ous­ly, though, God on­ly an­swers the prayers of sin­cere peo­ple, which shows that, when a per­son who prays for their life to be spared but is still mur­dered or killed in an earth­quake, this proves that they didn't re­al­ly mean it. As for small chil­dren who get bat­tered to death, God doesn't in­ter­vene due to their fa­thers or grand­fa­thers or great-great-great-grand­fa­thers hav­ing sinned. Be­cause that is how men are. This al­so proves that young women nev­er lie about be­ing ab­duct­ed be­cause, if they do so it's usu­al­ly to hide some re­la­tion­ship their par­ents don't ap­prove of, which would be a sin and God pun­ish­es sin­ful peo­ple by not giv­ing them His di­vine pro­tec­tion.

Luck­i­ly, there are al­ways more women than men in church and that is why women con­sti­tute just 10 per cent of all mur­der vic­tims. The cor­re­la­tion is clear. But, as pub­lic re­ac­tion time and time again has demon­strat­ed, the death of one woman is ten times as trag­ic as the death of one man. In­deed, if the dead man is poor and young and black, the same pub­lic is ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent or, more of­ten, ap­prov­ing. Be­cause God don't sleep.

That di­vine in­som­nia proves that, if God lets 400 peo­ple in T&T get killed every year, it's on­ly to show that we need to wor­ship Him more, with tithes.

�2 Email: kevin.baldeosingh@zo­ho.com

�2 Kevin Baldeosingh is a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els, and co-au­thor of a Caribbean his­to­ry text­book.