The modern gang culture is all about a group of people who cannot handle the pressures of life. They feel pressured and unable to confirm to a culture that they cannot understand, relate to and adhere to. They have unmet needs that they seek to meet in whatever way suits them personally. They get sick and tired of being told what to do and to conform to a set of rules that they find are unnatural for them to adopt.
So these people club together and encourage one another. In this group, they will then tell each other what is acceptable and what is not, so that they can attempt to make the system fit their nature, rather than making their nature fit the system. They then make enemies of those people who do not accept them: what they believe and what they do. They will tell each other that it is acceptable to carry weapons and hurt other people how are not part of their group. They will tell each other that it is alright to harm someone else who is not part of their group, in the effort to get their needs met and to prove themselves to the rest of the group.
The Pharisees
This is exactly what the Pharisees did as well; they were the religious gangsters of Jesus’ day. They basically hijacked religion for their own selfish purposes. This meant that they could go around with their sinful nature intact, and yet appear acceptable, holy and important to other people – without actually changing who they were on the inside. This meant that they did some pretty nasty things in order to protect their way of life. The Pharisees made an enemy out of Christianity, because it directly attacked their way of life. They were willing to stone a woman to death because she was caught in the act of adultery – they even used this incident to test Jesus. As a Rabbi, Jesus could of, and perhaps, should have (purely in His capacity of Rabbi), agreed with the Pharisees that she should be stoned. But Jesus showed the woman mercy and told the woman that He did not condemn her.
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