By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

Parents and school administrators are still nervous as schools reopen this Fall across the country. The bitter taste of the killings at Columbine High School and the violence in schools nationwide still lingers. Security experts struggle to ascertain how to keep students safe while social scientists search to determine why such events occur in the most prosperous society in history.

Yet, one wonders if the answers are not so complex after all but terribly, horrifyingly, brutally simple. There is a law of nature, expounded in scripture, that says that “what one sows, one reaps.” The modern rendition is, “What goes around, comes around.”

Why are larger and larger numbers of America's children becoming more violent, more murderous, especially against their own? Law enforcement officials will not hesitate to point out that the most dangerous criminals are the young. In cities all over the land, the lawbreakers without remorse, without compassion, without conscience, are the young between 12 and 18.

Most police would rather encounter a serial killer than a junior high student with a gun. The latter is felt to be far more likely to kill without hesitation.

For all it's wealth, opportunity, and possibilities, America is a world leader in systematized violence against its own young. Every year, without letup, Americans kill 1,500,000 of its most innocent citizens - the unborn. Since Roe vs. Wade, some 40,000,000 boys and girls, who should have been enjoying the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” have been ripped to pieces and discarded like so much medical trash in this nation's abortuaries.

Abortion is a profitable business with multi-billions of dollars being paid to snuff out the lives of those who would inconvenience and complicate the lives of their parents. And make no mistake — the vast number of terminated pregnancies are not because of rape, incest, or to preserve the life and health of the mother. That number is so small as to be practically negligible.

No, children have their lives ended because, for whatever reason, their birth and life is inconvenient... like a weed in an otherwise groomed lawn. Is it any wonder that, in a society so bent on destroying its children, children are, themselves, becoming destroyers? What goes around comes around. The seeds that are sown always produce a crop.

Yet, the church has all too often been the leader in declaring children to be inconvenient. In the days when families were valued and children considered to be essential components of those families, church services were filled with children. Even in the most staid of services, the little ones, even the babies, following Sunday School, where lessons would be taught at age levels, would take their places in the pews alongside their parents for a joint expression of worship and solidarity. The old saying that “families that pray together, stay together,” included the hour on Sunday morning.

Somewhere along the line, Mom and Dad got tired of the inconvenience of trying to listen to the sermon as little Johnny shuffled and squirmed. Within a generation, sanctuaries were devoid of children and the Johnnys and Susies of America were transported en mass to a holding center called “children's church.” Children's church, it was said, was designed to teach children to worship at their own level, but the truth is that it really gained in popularity because it removed the noise, the distractions, the inconveniences, from the sanctuary.

Mom and Dad could abandon their responsibility to be role models of worship and could have an hour of peace without the bother of troublesome kids.

Pastors all over the land then decided that ushers would be specifically trained to remove crying babies from the hallowed places so that people would not be distracted during the all-important sermon. Remove the inconvenience for the sake of the adults. Before long, America's young and youth were being warehoused, away from adults, in ghettos with the catchy names of “superchurch,” “teen church,” “youth hour,” and the like.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. On Sunday, children's pastors and youth pastors took the place of the pastors in the kids lives just as the day care workers had taken the place of the parents during the week.

Little by little, for their own good, we believed, children were effectively removed from the lives of the adults in their lives. They were removed for the convenience of the parents.

A social and spiritual removal — a social and spiritual abortion, if you will — slowly began to take shape until, now, total isolation on Sunday is the normal way of doing things. The children have been removed. Life is simpler. The message, though unintentional, is clear. Children are wanted and desired... but only if they are convenient and under strictly defined conditions.

Society, too, has determined that children are wanted and desired... if convenient. But popular writers also have concluded that, if children are not wanted, it is actually better for the children if they are killed before they are born so they will not have to grow up unwanted! We show the children that they are really loved by killing them! Is it any wonder that many youth feel isolated, unloved, angry, and self-destructive?

In its most extreme form, the children of a violent nation turn violent against other children. Some parents are reversing the trend, home-schooling their children, becoming involved in the public schools, or including the children in all family activities. Some churches are sponsoring “family retreats” instead of just getaways for youth, as important as these functions are.

Some congregations are keeping the children in the church services for most of the service, sending the children out only during the sermon and, even then, bringing them back in to be reunited with their parents as quickly as possibly.

In some churches, even in those that employ children's workers and youth pastors, pastors are relearning how to be the pastor to all of the people, children and youth included. In some families and churches, children are being valued once again.

Children who know they are valued, loved, and included in church, family, society, and life (even when they are inconvenient), are not likely to turn violent. It is time to begin to sow different seeds if we want a different crop. What goes around comes around.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church, meeting at 10 a.m. each Sunday in the Carmichael-Hemperley building on Ga. Highway 74 in Peachtree City. He may be contacted online at CTKCEC@aol.com or at P. O. Box 2192, Peachtree City, GA 30269.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page