TULIP

Have you ever heard of the acrostic TULIP used to expound upon the Doctrines of Grace? Do you agree? You might be surprised to see that you do. While you might not use the same terminology you might actually believe in the doctrine.

Total Depravity - Almost all Christians will agree that we are all sinners and need a savior. If we have sinned we have violated at least one point of the Law. The Bible teaches that if you are guilty of one violation you are guilty of ALL.

James 2:10 (NKJV) “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”

Romans 5:8 (NKJV) “⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Unconditional Election – Again almost all Christians will readily admit that there is neither a sinner so bad nor a sin so terrible that God can’t forgive them. They will admit that God will save anyone, so there are no human conditions needed for Salvation. The sticking point is who does the choosing. If it is God all Glory to God. On the other hand; if I have chosen God and it was the volition of my own will that saved me then who gets the Glory?

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV) ^“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

John 1:12-13 (ESV) “¹² But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Limited Atonement – Most Christians have an objection to this doctrine, yet they will almost all agree that there is at least one, and probably many more people in Hell. Therefore whether they will admit it or not they believe that the Atonement of Christ was limited to those that are or will be in heaven. Therefore; they believe in Limited Atonement rather they will admit it or not.

John 10:25-26 (ESV) “²⁵ Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, ²⁶ but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.”

John 6:64 (ESV) “⁶⁴ But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)”

Irresistible Grace – If God has called us who can resist? If we can resist are we greater then God’s will? Almost all will agree that God can harden hearts to unbelief. Why not then can he not soften our hearts and call us to him. If he calls how can we resist.

John 6:65 (ESV)“⁶⁵ And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

John 6:44 (ESV)“⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”

Perseverance of the Saints – For my Christian brothers and sisters that believe that we have a choice and through our own free will can choose to believe in Christ, Jesus and receive the gift of Salvation; this is a very tricky doctrine. Many who say we choose and make a decision for Christ will also say, “Once saved, always saved.” Yet, if I chose God of my own free will then why can’t I then un-choose him and decide not to believe? If all that is required for me to lose my Salvation is my will then where is my hope. My Salvation now rests on me and me alone. It is not God who saves but my will. If on the other hand if God chose me then it is him who keeps me by his will.

John 6:37-39 (ESV) “³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

John 10: 27-30 (ESV) “²⁷ My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

T -- total depravity. This doesn't mean people are as bad as they can be. It means that sin is in every part of one's being, including the mind and will, so that a man cannot save himself.

U -- unconditional election. God chooses to save people unconditionally; that is, they are not chosen on the basis of their own merit.

L -- limited atonement. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was for the purpose of saving the elect.

I -- irresistible grace. When God has chosen to save someone, He will.

P -- perseverance of the saints. Those people God chooses cannot lose their salvation; they will continue to believe. If they fall away, it will be only for a time.

Praise God

Watch the whole video to the right. You will be blessed.

The Cost of Justice

Cost of Justice

Kyle M. Anderson

Introduction

What is the cost of justice? How can we even qualify that? Justice should and must be served at any cost. There is no cost/benefit analysis that can be conducted that will truly be representative of  the true cost of justice. We can look at the cost of running our jails and prisons. We can examine the cost in dollars and man-power in our court systems. We can study the perceived benefits and social cost of our system. We can quantify and plug in statistics until we are blue in the face, yet we still have not defined the cost. Has justice been served? That is the only true cost/benefit analysis that matters. God demands that justice be served, Deuteronomy 16:19-21 “Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV), 2001).

As we can never fulfill perfect justice here on earth and since we must quantify the cost of justice in terms we can define I shall examine the cost in dollars, man-power, and the social cost of operating our justice system.

The Cost: defined

             To define the cost we must define the terms we are using. We have several costs involved. First is the monetary cost: the cost in dollars. Second we have the man-power cost: the amount of time our corrections, courts and legal personnel invest in serving justice. Third we have the societal cost: the cost that society bears in the confidence of our system and the feelings of security it brings.

The Benefit: defined

            To define the benefit we need to clarify what we define as the benefits of our system. There are several factors to examine in defining the benefits. First and primary is that justice is served. Second; provide a safe and secure environment to incarcerate the offenders. Third; remand the offender away from the public in order to rehabilitate them prior to release so that they will not re-offend.

The Cost/Benefits Analysis

Cost

            Monetary Cost: In fiscal year 2010, North Carolina spent $1,095,395,000 in direct prison costs, $109,272,000 in prison costs outside the corrections budget, for a total taxpayer amount of $1,204,667,000 or slightly over 9% of the state budget (Henrichson, 2012). Of the forty states that participated in the VERA study the total expenditures were: $38,903,304.000 or approximately 13.9% of the budget (Henrichson, 2012).

            Man-Power Cost: The cost of man-power is to broad a spectrum to quantify. Countless hours are spent by criminal justice personnel in running our system. Form the police officer on the street to the corrections officer in the prison there are thousands of people behind the scenes that the public never sees.

            Societal Cost: When the public loses confidence in the integrity of the system there is an unidentifiable societal cost. Cases such as the OJ Simpson murder trial and the more recent Casey Anthony trial erode the public’s confidence that justice can be served. Both of these cases cost the tax payers and extreme amount of money for negligible results.

Benefit.

Justice Served: How can we quantify if justice was served? The simplistic model would say the guilty were convicted and the innocent were freed. Overall we do a pretty good job of that. A study conducted in 1996 suggested that the number of innocents convicted of serious crimes was estimated conservatively at 0.5 percent. Of the 1,993,880 convictions for index crimes in 1990 that means nearly 10,000 innocents were wrongfully convicted (Huff, 1996). Still that is a 99.5% success rate and we are only human.

            Safe and Secure: In terms of safety and security of our jails and prisons no other country can even come close to our system. So we succeed in this area, but is it worth the over $30,000 we spend per inmate. Yes, when inmates are in our custody they are our responsibility.

            Remand/Rehabilitate: This is another are to diverse to define effectively. The national recidivism rate is around 70% (Bureau of Justice Statitics, 2012). This would suggest that perhaps we are failing in the rehabilitation of the inmates.               

Analysis

The benefit is much harder to determine. Simply in terms of cost per inmate, with the 2010 prison population in North Carolina, (not counting prison inmates held in local jails), of 40,116 (Guerino, 2011) the cost per inmate is $30,029. Unfortunately this still does not count the whole cost as there are many prison inmates housed in local jails at a cost to the taxpayer as well.

Summery

            It is my belief that there can be no realistic cost/benefit analysis of Justice. God demands us to seek justice and God is just. We cannot achieve perfection but a 99.5% conviction is pretty good. The cost of justice is high, but the cost of injustice is even higher. 2 Chronicles 19:7 "Now let the fear of the LORD be on you. Judge carefully, for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.” (Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV), 2001)

Bibliography

Bureau of Justice Statitics. (2012). Recidivism.

Guerino, P. H. (2011). Prisoners in 2010. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Henrichson, C. a. (2012). The Price of Prisons. VERA Institute of Justice.

Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). (2001). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Huff, C. (1996). Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy. Sage.