To End Child Abuse

The New Morality​—Harvesting Its Crop

The remedy works when practiced, not when preached

THE new morality is not new. It is only a new name for the old immorality. The tree is still rotten, its fruit still worthless. Its wisdom is unrighteous, its “children” prove it so. As it occurred in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot, so it is occurring in these last days of another immoral system. The crop being reaped is the same, only this time it’s a bumper harvest. And not at all practical​—very, very impractical. Especially so for the children.

The Bible’s remedy is practical, for children and everyone else. Even the professional people who are involved with the problem of child abuse offer similar solutions, up to a point. They know that bad family conditions cause children to run away from home, and that a high percentage of runaways end up on the streets and in prostitution and pornography and suffer appalling abuse. Some are escaping incest at home, homes broken by divorce, chronic conflicts with parents, lack of loving attention, and some are swayed by their peers. Whatever the specific causes, the remedy is the healing of family breakdown. So say the experts.

So does the Bible. It calls for close communication between parent and child. Concerning righteous principles, the command is: “You must inculcate them in your son and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up.”​—Deuteronomy 6:7.

The Bible counsels both parents and children on how to act: “Children, be obedient to your parents in union with the Lord, for this is righteous . . . And you, fathers, do not be irritating your children, but go on bringing them up in the discipline and mental-regulating of Jehovah.”​—Ephesians 6:1, 4.

Psychiatrists agree. They say parents must be fair and set good examples, but children need regulations and discipline. One psychotherapist confirms this, saying: “We abandon our children also when, hoping to make ‘friends’ of them, we renounce our responsibilities as models and as law-givers. This is a betrayal that children feel acutely because no need is stronger to a growing child than the sense of boundaries and limits. The child experiences them as love.” The Bible confirms this. “The one whom Jehovah loves he reproves, even as a father does a son in whom he finds pleasure.”​—Proverbs 3:12.

Some say that more sex education in the schools is what is needed; others contend it’s already too explicit and goes too far. One illustrated booklet for children, prepared by a Syracuse University professor, says: “All thoughts are normal.” “Masturbation is a normal expression of sex for both males and females at any age. Enjoy it.” Homosexuality is your business, “so choose the sexual life you want.” “A lot of people wonder about oral and anal sex, and some think it is ‘perverted.’ We think there is nothing wrong with any kind of sex.” “Pornography is harmless.”

Perhaps Johnny can’t read or write because his teachers are too busy indoctrinating him with the “normality” of sexual perversions. Sex instruction for children can be too much too soon. Dr. Greenwood warns: “Parents in their efforts to be liberal often overeducate, and they may be giving their children material they’re not yet ready to cope with.” Regardless of the pros and cons of sex education, the hard fact is the tremendous increase in child prostitution, sodomy, pornography and incest.

Those who greedily exploit children in these ways fit the Bible’s description, found at Ephesians 4:19: “Having come to be past all moral sense, they gave themselves over to loose conduct to work uncleanness of every sort with greediness.” They fit those of Noah’s day: “Jehovah saw that the badness of man was abundant in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time.”​—Genesis 6:5.

Only the Bible’s solution will end the abuse of children. Jesus summed it up: ‘Love God with your whole heart. Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39) The apostle Paul repeated it: “Love does not work evil to one’s neighbor; therefore love is the law’s fulfillment.”​—Romans 13:10.

This solution of brotherly love is practical. When applied, it works. Too many are hearers of God’s Word but not doers of it. Too many say “Lord, Lord,” but don’t listen to Jesus or do Jehovah’s will.​—James 1:22; Matthew 7:21.

In God’s due time all who embrace his kingdom under Christ will become able to keep this law of love perfectly. Then will come fulfillment of Proverbs 2:21, 22: “The upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it. As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.”

This is the only way, the final way, to end child abuse.