Christians must tell what they know about crime – St James pastor

WESTERN BUREAU:

Reverend Peter Burnett, chairman of the St James Ministers’ Fraternal, is urging Christians not to turn a blind eye to crime, but to instead be brave and tell the security forces what they know about criminal activities in their communities.

Burnett made the call while addressing last week’s press launch of the fraternal’s Transformation 2019 public awareness campaign, which was held at the Burchell Memorial Baptist Church in Montego Bay, St James. The objectives of the campaign, which were chosen for the 26th annual National Prayer Vigil, include encouraging citizens to break the code of silence, which Burnett says, allows crime to thrive.

“There are so many Christians in our country, and we sing how we want to go to Heaven and rest, but we won’t make any phone call and expose crime on our streets, or do anything that will incriminate us. If you love our policemen, our soldiers, and our nation, you can’t keep quiet anymore,” Burnett told the launch’s attendees.

He encouraged Christians to be brave.

“We need to embolden Christians and the good people of St James to break the code of silence around criminal activities. If the Government and the ­leaders do all they can to remove corruption from the security forces and we the people remain quiet, there’ll be absolutely no change,” Burnett added.

“There will be no transformation in our parish, our city, and our nation if the ordinary people of Jamaica will not open their mouths and call the tip lines and hotlines,” the pastor added.

He said a culture of forgiveness is needed to counter the pattern of reprisal that motivates many violent crimes.

“One of the things we need to focus on is to build a culture of forgiveness. When you look at the data with the crimes, it is brothers and cousins who used to play football together, they have a little ‘beef’ with one another, and someone hurts one family member, and then somebody else has to get hurt,” said Burnett.

“If everybody goes after each other’s eyes, we’ll all be blind. We need to say that there’s a God, who is a just God, and that justice will be served, and so we must forgive one another,” added Burnett.