The Least of These: Children

The Least of These: Children.

“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the very least of these, you did it to Me.” (Mathew 25:31-46).

All the numbers these days are pointing to the tragic fact that our society is making a living hell for too many of our children. The Judeo-Christian ethic has always believed that mistreatment of children is an abomination in the eyes of God. Children unfortunately fit into the category of the “least of these” in America, and when we care for the children in our midst, we in fact are caring for Jesus who is intimately present with each child. The truth is that our Lord is divinely disgusted with the horrors that our nation is putting our kids through. But first the good news of God’s love of children, before the bad news of how they are dishonored and harmed in our society.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO HONOR CHILDREN. What did Jesus mean when, after taking up a child into His arms, He said that whoever welcomes one of these little ones in His name in fact welcomes Him? (Mark 9:36). It seems to me that Jesus might be saying:

Here’s the bottom line, people… I love children. I knit every one of their little bodies together in the womb, I strung together their DNA, I wired each nervous system. I breathed their first breath through my Spirit to each and every one of these children! I invented each personality, fashioned each child from scratch, and then danced a jig to celebrate every birth. And so I designed each child to represent much of what is true of my Kingdom: simple and transparent, playful and straightforward, relational and curious, zealous and dynamic, dependent and trusting. Children, all of them in general and each one in particular, are my pride and joy. Unfortunately, each one of my prize packages is also vulnerable in this fallen world of mine. So they have my heart, and I have their back.

I’m like any devoted parent, only more so. I take personally whatever happens to them, as if it happens to me. I’m like the parent who screeches “ouch!” when the child falls on the sidewalk. I identify so closely with my children that when a child is bullied, I feel the humiliation. When a child is victimized, I feel the shame and revulsion. When a child is harmed in any way, I head in the direction of justice for that child. On the other hand, when a little ragamuffin kid is received with kindness and respect, I feel like I’m being received that way too. 

When parents graciously open their hearts and home to be blessed with a child – as an act of faith and trust – they had better set an extra plate at the table for me. When schools welcome students into their classrooms as honored guests made in my image, they’d better get an extra desk for me. Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me, the Lord of children. And in this process arrives the Father, from whom all fatherhood gets its name. 

I become a household name whenever love for children is a natural outgrowth of love for me, whether the child is sick or healthy, athletic or awkward, academic or artistic, passive or exuberant, a rock star or someone who is easily lost in the shuffle. I especially root for those underdogs, because I know what that feels like. I was once an unknown child, often dismissed as being “just a kid.” As I grew, I was considered a fool and a misfit. I remained a child at heart, even though I was judged and abused as an adult. I know what those children feel like in an adult world. So, by all means, by every means, welcome my children into your embrace, and you will find that you’d better open your arms a little wider, because I’m right there with you. Make room for me too. And don’t even think about mistreating my children. I have a millstone waiting.

Each Child is Sacred. Creator God hates any type of dishonoring of children, any type of treatment that shows an unwillingness to accept the eternal value of children. Every child is made in the image of God, and so is a sacred human being. In the Judeo-Christian faith, children are honored, held up as valuable and treated as such. Jesus reserved one of his starkest warnings against those who would harm children. Children are highly valued by Jesus, and He went way out of His way to communicate that. He said that there was a special punishment reserved for those who harmed children in any way. He gave a recommendation for anyone who mistreated children: It would be better for you to have a huge boulder, a giant millstone, tied around your neck and be thrown into the deep blue sea, than to receive the punishment you richly deserve. The devaluing and mistreatment of children today is rampant in our society. We could include many grotesque facts about how we are treating our children that are in the spirit of child sacrifice…

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO DISHONOR CHILDREN… Read these statistics and weep: 

1. Abortion, Neonaticide, and Infanticide: As of 2024, there are a million murders of unborn babies a year (400,000 in abortion centers and 600,00 chemical abortions at home), and 70 million abortions since 1973; 13,000 deaths of infants yearly in late-term abortions; untold numbers of newborns left to die soon after birth.
2. IVF: At least 1.8 million embryos conceived in reproductive technology this year will never be born, and will be either discarded with the trash, left frozen, or used for research. Only 7% of embryos, conceived and thus containing the full complement of human DNA, will eventually survive the process. There have been untold millions of conceived embryos that have been destroyed, with more deaths to preborn children each year through IVF than abortion.
3. Surrogacy: This rent-a-womb industry treats children like commodities. It cruelly deprives the newborn of his/her natural mother and in the process leaves what scientists call a “primal wound” in the child’s brain development. There are around 2,000 surrogate births each year.
4. Fatherless: Men who abandon wife and child are practicing a passive form of child abuse. There are currently almost 20 million children living in a home without a father, 19.5 million to be exact. That means that one out of every 4 children in the U.S. are not living with a father. Boys without fathers are 4 times more likely to live in poverty, 4 times more likely to commit a crime, twice as likely to drop out of school, and twice as likely to end up in prison. Girls without fathers are 7 times more likely to get pregnant as teenagers. 90% of homeless/runaway children are from fatherless homes. 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.
5. Pornography. Some tragic statistics: one in five teens say they have a porn habit; 73% of teens have viewed porn online; 93% of boys younger than 18 have been exposed to porn; 83% of boys have personally seen group sex online; 54% of boys first saw porn before they were 13 years old. In 2024 over 500,000 child sex videos were shared online. One porn site reports over 81 million visits a day.
6. Abandonment. World-wide, there are over 60 million children who have been abandoned and thus live on the streets or in an orphanage of some sort. In the United States, the latest statistic is appalling: At least 7,000 children older than newborns are abandoned each year, and even more mind-boggling, there are at least 22,000 babies who are abandoned in the hospitals alone.
7. Abuse and Neglect. In 2019 there were 700,000 children who were abused, which includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. That comes out to about 1% of our country’s children, and it is vastly underreported. Almost two million children received prevention services from child protection agencies. In 2018, a total of 1,770 children died from abuse. The highest rate of victimization is among the youngest children, from 0-4 years old. 7% of the children being abused or neglected were sexually abused, and 15% of the victims were abused both physically and through neglect. Of the children being abused, 78% were victimized by the child’s parents. There are at least 7,000 cases of pedophilia/sex abuse yearly.
8. Sex Trafficking. Globally there are about 40 million victims of human trafficking. Astoundingly, fully 25% of those victims are children. Human trafficking is now a $150 billion business worldwide. Every 2.5 hours a child is taken by human traffickers. In the United States, of the 23,500 children runaways, one in every 7 children are victims of child sex trafficking. Child predators continue to find great success in grooming their child victims online. The National Human Trafficking Hotline receives an average of 90 calls per day.
9. Inferior Education. Our public-school systems are failing our low-income children. The statistics for minority children in city schools is especially troubling. White students are nearly 4.5 grade levels ahead of their black peers within the Atlanta Public Schools. In San Francisco, only 12% of black students are proficient in math. In Washington, D.C., only 23% scored proficient in reading. In Philadelphia, 47% of black students scored below basic in math. In Detroit, 73% of black students scored below basic in math and 56% in reading. In 2019, the racial breakdown of high school seniors who met the minimum ACT readiness benchmarks were 62% of Asians, 47% of whites, 23% of Hispanics, and 11% of African Americans. Intentionally maintaining a low-quality education for children from poor homes is a racist form of child abuse, because it takes away the possibility of a good future and the hopes of a successful life.
10. Kids from Divorce. One out of three children in the U.S. experience parental divorce before adulthood, which is over one million children every year. Kids from divorce are 63% more likely to have a teen pregnancy, 43% more likely to become incarcerated, and have to adapt to an increased instability that includes less access to both parents, much less in eventual job earnings, and the negative effects of switching schools and neighborhoods, and the loss of friends.
11. Homelessness. Although usually underreported, at last count there were 450,000 homeless infants and toddlers. At last report in 2025, the public schools have reported about 1.4 million homeless children and youth. There are at least 4.2 million homeless teens and young adults each year.
12. Transgender Surgeries. Between 2016-2020, there were 43,000 minors receiving gender surgeries. Between 2019-2023, there were over 62,000 minors receiving sex change prescriptions, and 8,500 minors receiving puberty blockers and hormones. These surgeries and gender hormones are now considered irreversible by all credible researchers.
13. Drug Abuse. The U.S. apparently has an insatiable drug habit, with over 47 million drug users, which have led to hundreds of thousands of OD deaths, many of them teens. Over one-half of people in the U.S. over the age of twelve have used illegal drugs. In 2024 there was an increase of 1,400 drug overdoses among young people.
14. Foster Kids. Children enter the foster care system when they cannot live safely with their families due to parental drug use, child neglect and abuse, childhood mental illness, or child abandonment. There were 343,000 children in foster care in 2023… 39% were 1-5 years old, 26% were 6-10 years old, and 29% were 11-16 years of age. Over 77,000 children and teens are now waiting for permanency with a family.
15. Other enemies of children in our society, such as what the social media is doing to the mental health of our youth; the addictive qualities of video games; the presence everywhere of sexual confusion; the indoctrinating and grooming efforts of queer theory and gender ideology; the normalization of what used to be “abnormal,” such as drag queen story hours and pride parades; the beckoning presence of mind-numbing screens to weaken their imaginations, lower literacy, and decrease their attention spans; the woke establishment that unfairly allows biological boys/men to compete against biological girls/women in athletics, as well as boys allowed into the private spaces of girls such as locker rooms and bathrooms; the prevalence of school teachers having the freedom to keep vital information from the parents of students, such as gender confusion, pregnancy, even abortion procedures.

“He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, Jesus said, ‘Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embrace me, and far more than me – God who sent me… Woe to anyone who is the downfall of one of these little ones. If you give one of these children a hard time, bullying, corrupting, or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.’” (Mark 9:36, 37, 42; also Matthew 18:5-6).