(8.) Women and Children First: God is Disgusted with the Mistreatment of Children

(8.) Women and Children First: God is Disgusted with the Mistreatment of Children.

“Enough! How long will you defend the evil-doers? How long will you show kindness to those who do wicked things? You’re here to defend the defenseless, to give justice to the weak and fatherless, to maintain the rights of the oppressed and needy. Your job is to rescue the powerless and stand up for them, to deliver them from all who exploit them!” (Psalm 82:2-4).

God Hates Evil. The mistreatment of children, this dishonoring of God’s image, this degrading of human sanctity, certainly qualifies as evil in God’s eyes. As we continue to grow in our relationship with God, we discover that we yearn to progress in loving what God loves and hating what God hates.  If we are not growing in those two areas of God’s character, it’s doubtful we even have a relationship with God to begin with. Following the example of Jesus in the gospels, loving the sinner while hating the sin itself is crucial to our growing in the character of the Lord. If God finds certain behavior morally disgusting, but we find it acceptable, then we are not where we should be. It might be surprising to realize that God can have hate in His heart. We know that God is full of love, that He is in fact Love. But hate? That is a difficult concept to digest. But think about it more, and it starts to make sense. Like the Father He is, God loves us so much that He hates whatever might be destructive to us, whatever might come to harm us or our relationship to Him. God’s hatred for evil comes out of His eternal protective instinct. Another thing to think about… God is purely righteous, virtuous, filled with goodness through and through. Out of His goodness, He established a moral universe. Since the profoundly tragic fall of mankind, the overall moral universe remains, but immorality has to be dealt with and judged. Because of the way God created the world, there are rights and wrongs, the moral and immoral, the righteous and the unrighteous. God hates the wrongs. It’s no wonder the early Christians called them the ”deadly sins.” God wants to give us life, the evil one wants to give us death. God hates whatever might be deadly to us. God hates whatever in the world was not a part of His righteous plan for the world. Simply put, God’s hate comes out of His righteous love for us and His world. Yes, God hates. But He hates whatever is worth hating. God speaks plainly in His Word about what He loves and what He hates, about what God embraces and what He rejects. Naturally, as we are becoming aware of what God hates, we will also learn what God loves. The truth is, if we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus and thus the character of God, we show our fearful love of God by joining Him in hating what is evil. “To reverently honor the LORD is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance, evil behavior, and twisted speech.”(Proverbs 8:13). Or, as the psalmist proclaims in Psalm 97:10, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.”

ABOMINATION: (Hebrew, “towebah”). The mistreatment of God’s beloved creation, which of course includes the glorious woman, is biblically termed abominable. An abomination in Scripture is any activity that God considers morally disgusting; a detestable behavior; any action or attitude that is loathed with a passion by God; behavior that God has judged as spiritually abhorrent and unacceptable; something that God hates and finds deeply repugnant; something that is deeply offensive to God’s sensibilities; any action or attitude that God thinks is repulsive, revolting and utterly alien to God’s nature. We have treated children abominably as we continue to devalue them in contemporary times. It seems that wherever we find adult sinfulness in our society, it’s the children who are paying the price. Something tells me that the millstone business is going to be hopping come Judgment Day.

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…

“You must not worship Yahweh your God the way the other nations worship their gods, for they perform for their gods every detestable act the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods.” (Deut. 12:31); ‘You shall not let any of your children to be offered as a sacrifice to Molech, for you must not bring shame on the name of our God. I am Yahweh. So obey my instructions, and do not defile yourselves by committing this abomination… I am Yahweh your God.” (Lev. 18:21, 30); “They even sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons, and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. Therefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people, so that He abhorred His own inheritance.” (Psalm 106:37-40).

CHILD SACRIFICE. Yes, what today seems unthinkable was rather common back in the days of the ancient pagan religions. And believe it or not, God’s chosen people even surrendered to this horrific practice. The Valley of Gehenna, which is known as the Valley of Hinnom in the Hebrew Bible, was a little valley just outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. Gehenna/Hinnom had a horrific history, the lowest of the low points of the nation of Israel. There were two very evil kings in Israel, Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:3) and Manasseh, who practiced and advocated pagan worshjp at its worst. In the Valley of Gehenna, Ahaz built a throne and placed an idol figure of the detestable pagan god Molech. The metal idol had the head of an ox and the body of a man with outstretched arms. The idol was totally hollow, so when they heated it up with fires, the idol would become unbearably hot to the touch. Once the pagan priests thought the metal was sufficiently hot, they practiced the unthinkable… child sacrifice. Ahaz and Manasseh led the way by sacrificing their own children to the fires of Molech by laying the child on the idol’s blazing hot extended arms. The child would then be roasted alive by the idol. The particular section of the valley where the sacrifices were held was called Tophet, which means “fire-stove.” The putrid air hanging above Gehenna day and night was surely a rotten stench in the nostrils of Lord Yahweh. In Michael Card’s excellent book on Hesed, he says it is traditionally accepted that during the times of sacrifice in Gehenna, there would be pagan officials who would beat a constant drumbeat to drown out the screams of the dying infants. This type of cruelty could only have come from the mind of Satan, the truly evil one. Believe it or not, Solomon built an altar for Molech to appease his pagan wives. That was the last straw for God, and Solomon had his kingdom taken away for committing such an atrocity (1 Kings 11). Is this qualitatively different from the modern practice of abortion, in which the unborn, healthy child still forming in the womb of its mother, is cut into pieces and then suctioned into a trash bag?

Motherless Child — The Blind Boys of Alabama (youtube.com)

ABORTION: The Ultimate Child Abuse. Abortion is the killing of an unborn child developing in the womb of a pregnant mother. It is morally equivalent to child sacrifice, and is the ultimate child abuse. A preborn baby in the womb is actually a human life! Let’s follow the science: At the moment of conception, the parents’ DNA is passed on to this new creation; the genetic framework that makes someone human is established; the new person’s inherited characteristics are determined, everything from sex to facial features to body type to hair color to his/her personality. At conception, everything is now mapped out, programmed, and it’s full steam ahead as the unborn person receives the nutrition and protection needed by the pregnant mom. The baby’s heart begins to beat on day 18, response to touch at 13 weeks. By the tenth week of pregnancy, the preborn baby has brain activity, a digestive system, and all the main bodily organs ate formed. Some in the medical community, based on outdated research, claim that the fetus starts to feel pain at the 24^th week, while recent fetal research confirms it is actually much sooner, that the unborn baby is already forming pain receptors at 7 weeks that are fully linked to the brain by 12 weeks, and at 15 weeks the brain’s hemispheres are connected with the nerves in the spine to signal pain and a stress response to anything invasive. The humanity of the unborn from the point of conception has been well established in the scientific community. Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life at its most vulnerable. Since 1973’s Roe v. Wade, there have been almost 70 million abortions. Only a statistic? Not when you consider that each and every one of those 70 million preborn children were in the process of being handcrafted by our Creator, were created in the image of God, and thus has a God-given value and enjoys eternal worth. There has been a growing callousness in our general society toward the worth and dignity of children ever since abortion has become such an accepted part of our culture. Abortion is a barbaric violation of the sacred intimacy between mother and child, and is an abomination in the eyes of God. It is unthinkable that in a civilized society it would be acceptable to pick up a sharp scalpel, reach into the womb of a pregnant mother, slice up the fetus into small enough parts to suction out with a miniature vacuum cleaner, and dispose of the remains into a trash bag to be taken out with the afternoon trash. It is equally unthinkable that over half of the abortions now are accomplished at home, with no medical personnel at hand, and taking a few pills that have resulted in death of the mother as well as the unborn child. With the abortion pill, the fetus’ blood and nutrient supply is cut off and is forcefully expelled in an early delivery. In the U. S. society, the innocent blood of these children is crying out to God from the ground. The voices of these victims seem to be getting louder and louder. How long will God put up with this?

The Truth About What Abortion Looks Like. The following is true but is not for the faint of heart. The major abortion procedures are: (1.) Aspiration Abortion: During the first 12 weeks; a high-power suction tube is inserted into the uterus and proceeds to tear apart the baby’s body parts and suck them through a hose into a waste container; (2.) D. and C. Abortion: Up through the 12^th week; a razor-sharp knife is inserted into the uterus and cuts the baby’s body apart into small enough pieces to be sucked out of the womb and placed in a waste container; (3.) D. and E. Abortion: Up through 18 weeks; a forceps is inserted into uterus, and the doctor dismembers the baby’s body parts by twisting and pulling out the dismembered parts, at which time the head is crushed in order to remove it; (4.) Saline Abortion: Between 4-7 months; a strong saline solution is injected into the uterus through the woman’s abdomen, which burns the baby’s skin off, dehydrates the baby, and eventually the baby dies from salt poisoning; (5.) Late-Term Abortion: The doctor injects Digoxin into the unborn baby’s heart, causing immediate heart attack and death. The next day the woman takes Misoprostol to stimulate contractions. The 3^rd day, the woman delivers her dead baby; (6.) Partial-Birth Abortion: Performed by the doctor up to the time of delivery and sometimes during delivery; the unborn baby is placed feet-first in the breech position, at which time the doctor delivers the baby intact outside of the womb, leaving just the head in utero. The doctor then sucks out the brain matter from the baby’s cranium, crushes the cranium, and then delivers the dead baby’s body. There is no getting around the fact that abortion is grotesque, inhumane, and a personal affront to the God who created that baby.

Lord Protect My Child – Susan Tedeschi

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO MISTREAT 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 since IVF began, some are estimating as much as 100 million, 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 neural development. There are around 2,000 surrogate births each year. There is no maternal bonding immediately after birth, and there is no natural mother raising the child as it grows older. Surrogacy denies each child’s right to have a natural mother. Surrogacy is an industry that mistreats children, for many reasons: The baby is deprived of a mother-baby bonding at birth, because of the intentional separation of baby from the surrogate as soon as the baby is delivered.  This separation at birth has dire consequences, including the recently researched fact that natural mother separation at birth actually alters the structures of the infant brain. Infant separation from mother is very traumatic on the infant and might even produce permanent consequences. As the child grows older, children raised in a home without the natural mother, without that vital maternal love, will experience a gaping hole in the child psyche, because children are created to depend on maternal love as they mature, as well as father love.
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. It is a $13 billion/year business in the US, since it exploded with the onset of the internet. One pornographic site reports it gets 81 million visits a day. One-in-five teens have a porn habit, while 60% of adults are regular users of porn. Now with smartphones in particular, we find that 97% of teens have been exposed to porn before the age of 18, with first-time usage as young as 12 years old.  Recently, over 500,000 men shared child sex videos, live videos of children being abused, raped and tortured, with the majority of those offenders averaging 13 victims each. 73% of teens have viewed porn online; 83% of boys have personally seen group sex online; 54% of boys first saw porn before they were 13 years old. The more porn is viewed by a young person, the more likely it is to rewire the child’s brain, distorting the child’s brain into adopting immoral perspectives on sexual activity, twisting the child’s sexual values system and warping their sexual discernment. It is infuriating that something as pernicious and self-destructive can be so easily accessed by children without adult supervision or influence. Mental health experts say that the damage porn does to a growing mind is substantial and fast becoming a crisis.
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. 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.

Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt – Everything Is Broken [Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2019]

“Where sin has superabounded, grace has hyper-superabounded!” (Romans 5:20). Yes, there is sin, sin and more sin. But that only means there is the far-surpassing presence of grace, grace and much more grace! When the devil seems to be overplaying his hand, that only means he’s running scared. For each material step backward, there are ten spiritual steps forward. For every flame of sin, there are bonfires of revival. Pray that we won’t allow what seems to be the worst of times to blind us to what is actually the best of times!

Trouble In My Way Reginald Sharpe

“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).