Divine Disgust – Mistreating Children

Divine Disgust – Mistreating Children.

“Enough! How long will you defend the evil-doers? How long will 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).

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 His creation made in His image, 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. The category entitled “Divine Disgust” is intended to be a biblical catalogue of what God hates, what God finds abominable. 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. (Proverbs 8:13).

ABOMINATION: (Hebrew, “towebah”) = An 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.

“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).

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, including abortion, pornography, child abandonment, child abuse, child trafficking, fatherlessness, surrogacy, and inadequate education for poor children. This is without delving into 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 growing horror of gender-mutilation transitioning and the surgery and hormones that accompany that form of child abuse; the weak establishment that unfairly allows biological boys/men to compete against biological girls/women. 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.

“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?

Thankfully, the righteous king Josiah came into power and immediately shut down Molech’s operation in the valley. During his national reforms, Josiah declared Gehenna an abomination, unclean and utterly defiled (2 Kings 23:10). Josiah destroyed anything and everything that had to do with Molech, Baal, Asheroth and any other pagan gods being worshiped. Thereafter, Josiah declared that Gehenna was good for nothing but a garbage dump, and that’s what it became in short order. Gehenna became the site where those living in Jerusalem would place dead animals, executed criminals, dead lepers and others with contagious diseases, rotting food, and every kind of trash. Through this unimaginable landscape the cesspool water and waste would flow through the valley dump as well. The smoldering fires in Gehenna would burn continuously. In order to keep the fires burning, someone would throw combustible brimstone (Sulphur) over the trash. And whatever didn’t burn was quickly ingested by an army of worms living there.

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

ABORTION. Abortion is united in spirit with child sacrifice, and is the ultimate child abuse. Since 1973’s Roe v. Wade, there have been 62 million abortions. Only a statistic? Not when you consider that every one of those 62 million was the developing life of a preborn baby in the mother’s womb. 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 an abomination if 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 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?

PORNOGRAPHY. The viewing of sexual activity on screen has never enjoyed such wide popularity in the lives of our children as now. With pornography, a child is likely to see everything from bestiality, incest, same-sex activity, group sex, and every kind of warped sex on the screen. Sex between married male and female partners is natural and was invented by God to give pleasure and lead to procreation. Porn perverts that innocent gift to humanity, and is only meant to stimulate one’s brain to release more dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasurable feelings. And with the child’s growing brain, that release of dopamine is even more pronounced, since their brains naturally produce more dopamine as it is. The child’s brain is much more likely to become addicted to porn because of the way the brain is wired. And pornography actually succeeds in rewiring the brain, reprogramming the way the child finds pleasure, looks at women, views sexual activity. 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. The more porn is viewed by a person, the more likely it is to distort the child’s brain into adopting immoral perspectives on sexual activity, twisting the child’s sexual values system and 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. Parents, since society is hardly helping us in this fight against pornography, it’s up to us a community of concerned parents to protect our children from this scourge, for the children’s sake.

Here Are 12 Things Less Destructive Than Porn | Babylon Bee

CHILD 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. The result of this willingness of a parent to abandon their own child is graphically seen in pediatric hospitals and in the ER’s. It is estimated that fully one-fifth of the total population of children in American hospitals are abandoned. In the pediatric hospitals in the Triangle area of North Carolina, for example, there has been such an increase of child abandonment in the hospitals that there are a minimum of beds for those children who need medical care. Evidently, parents have found it more convenient to simply refuse to pick up their child in the hospital after medical treatment. The child remains there in the hospital, abandoned and homeless. The abandoned children continue to take up beds because there is simply no place to house them. All the pediatric mental health facilities are full. And many of the abandoned children in the hospitals are in need of mental health treatment. Foster care organizations reportedly will not accept these children languishing in the hospitals because of their high-risk, especially needy status that most foster homes are ill equipped to handle. Most of the abandoned kids in hospitals are from low-income families, therefore they cannot be placed in private facilities that would be too expensive for them. Right now, at least in North Carolina, a solution to this on-going problem has not been discovered. Meanwhile, the child abandonment issue in pediatric hospitals continues to increase.

CHILD ABUSE. 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. How long will the Lord put up with this in our nation’s homes?

CHILD 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. Using children as sex objects is revolting and morally repugnant. What would be worse than that? What would Jesus, the ultimate child advocate, have to say about that?

VAN MORRISON ~ Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child ~.wmv (youtube.com)

SURROGACY. The huge increase of surrogacy is another unfortunate case of when an advanced technology went ahead of any moral considerations. In this case, we are referring to advanced reproductive technology, in which sperm provided by the intended father is used to fertilize an egg from the egg donor which has no intention of remaining that baby’s mother. It has been termed the “rent-a-womb” process, in which a pregnancy is produced in order for the father to enjoy “his” child. The fertilized embryo is implanted into the surrogate mother, and when the pregnancy reaches full term and the baby is delivered, the father will assume parenthood. There is no maternal bonding immediately after birth, and there is no mother raising the child as it grows older. Surrogacy denies each child’s right to have a mother. Sounds basic, right? 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 has, naturally, been known to produce a “primal wound” in the child. This separation at birth has dire consequences, including the recently researched fact that 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 a 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. It is logical too that a child born from a surrogate will have all kinds of identity problems, wondering who provided the other half of one’s DNA and genetic background… I seem to have my father’s nose, but where did I get my hair color? Also, research shows that only 7% of embryos produced in the lab via IVF will eventually survive the process. Evidently, most of the fertilized eggs, which are conceived human beings remember, die from either the unsuccessful thawing of the frozen embryo, or being forgotten in a freezer after a few years, or a failure to successfully implant in the surrogate’s womb, or are discarded after being rejected because of being at-risk or the wrong gender. The billion-dollar surrogacy business treats infants as a commodity, something bought and sold, and not a successfully conceived sacred human being. In a worst-case scenario that tragically has repeated itself around the world at a shocking level, there are times when the child is intentionally produced to provide sexual activity or to be trafficked and thus become a money maker. This is nightmare material, and a horror story that has been documented around the world. Believe it or not, surrogate babies are shipped worldwide, with no vetting of interested parents or screening of pedophile backgrounds. The welfare of the children being acquired isn’t even considered by those conducting the business. There are cases of pedophile rings being established this way. This whole business is so easily taken advantage of by those who are warped and evil, that perhaps the whole surrogacy industry should be shut down.

FATHERLESSNESS. This is 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. There are millions more children who live with emotionally distant but physically present fathers. The fathers who disconnect from their child, whether physically or emotionally, deeply harm the child and are doing that child no favors. 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. Children without fathers are more likely to face abuse or neglect, have behavioral problems, and abuse drugs/alcohol. There are 17.7 million school-age children living in a home without a father. Our Father in heaven must be grieving over this form of child abuse.

LOW-INCOME EDUCATION. The statistics for minority children in city schools is especially troubling. They are not prepared for college or employment. Schools in most school districts across America are not giving the students a fair chance at a good job and further education. 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. That’s a crying shame across the board, for everyone. Our educational system is failing our low-income children, it is treating our students with little respect or consideration. It is mistreating our children, and no one seems to be taking responsibility. 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.

POST-PANDEMIC. Psychologists are warning us of a “mental health epidemic”, but that’s not all. Hospitals reported a sharp rise in child admission due to severe injury from child abuse and neglect. Many officials worry that the abuse is grossly underreported. This pandemic took a terrible toll on our children: their inadequate education via remote learning; their mental health, especially depression and anxiety, because of isolation and inactivity; their worsening of social skills; their experience of abuse at home due to lack of parents’ jobs and adult addictions.

Terrian – Love Your Children (Official Music Video) (youtube.com)

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.