More often than not, I suspect, the devil laughs at us. It must be a thin, whining kind of laugh, since he already knows he's a defeated foe but, in the interim between Now and Then, how vile and viral his efforts wax...
The following are two online headlines that I stumbled across within 10 minutes of each other, from different news sources...
Parents' anger after class of seven-year-olds is shown 'graphic sex cartoon' at schoolBy Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:27 PM on 04th March 2010
"A mother has taken her seven-year-old daughter out of school after she was made to watch a cartoon showing a couple chasing each other around a bed and having sex."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255483/Parents-anger-class-seven-year-olds-shown-graphic-sex-cartoon-school.html#ixzz0hFhY8GJM
And...
'Extra Small' Condoms for 12-Year-Old Boys Go on Sale
Thursday, March 04, 2010
"A leading condom manufacturer in Switzerland has created extra-small condoms for boys as young as 12 years old, the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reported."
I realize that the gist of these 'stories' is, unfortunately, not news, although it may retain the power to shock. And my purpose is not to bring further discouragement to an already oppressive social culture.
But, really, what does it say when such flagrant and devastating attacks on childhood come so thick and fast?
That children are not valued? That government continues to usurp the province of parents? That businesses who can profit from the exploitation of the next
generation(s) have no scruples about doing so? That the next generation(s) have less and less probability of understanding or experiencing normal, nurturing human relationships? That the "Traditional Family," which--like it or not--is essential to stable societies is under attack like never before?
Of course--all this and more.
But I think there may well be a scarier component...the one that has to do with "hearts and minds": call it The Outrage Threshold...or, as Dr. Dobson has described it, the "doctrine of limited tears." It's the notion that there is a point beyond which the human emotions of alarm, anger, revulsion, shock, and despair no longer register--because the onslaught has been too great, for too long, and the desensitization seems irreversible.
This is the point at which, I would argue, we become less human; certainly less humane.
I'm not branching off into the logical-extension Big Issues here, the sanctity of human life at all ages, in all conditions, etc. It's enough to point out that the situation grows breathtakingly more dire, that we dare not lose our capacity to care and, most of all, that Jesus alone has the power to overcome and transform. And He does so one life at a time. If that doesn't prove the value of a single human life, I don't know what does.
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