March 22, 2010
Innocence
My son and daughter-in-law were doing their family Bible Study and the text happened to be on the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3). Though Troy didn’t want to gloss over the term, he also wanted to choose his words carefully in explaining it to his young children. Before he could form his thoughts six year-old David said, “Oh, I know what it means. Adult - tell - ree…It’s when an adult has something they want to tell you.” You’ve just got to love childhood innocence. The apostle Paul says, “…I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.” (Ro 16:19b NIV)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Childhood innocence provides a prism useful for understanding otherwise perplexing problems. There are many evils a child has no ability to change or even fully perceive. From these his parents and the other responsible adults in his life owe him shelter. On the other hand, some evils belong to a child, such as mistreating siblings, being selfishly demanding, and misappropriating things not meant for his own enjoyment. Of these his responsible adults owe him proper education, lest he do them often. I have known some parents who try slip misdeeds under the cover of childhood innocence. But they do not fit there. At best, they are childish innocence.
-----Between those two extremes rest a number of subtle evils that are quite difficult even for adults to grasp. Distance seems to be culpable in robbing our awareness of evil. And not just distance in location, but also in time and effect. When I was a child my dad often told me to eat everything I put on my plate because there was certainly some poor child in China that didn’t have anything to eat. Well, why should that kid‘s hunger, half-a-world away, bother me? Since he did not sit at the table next to me, I could not scrape something off my plate for him. And I did not have to look into his hungry face. But the distance between us did not eliminate his existence, nor his hunger. He was real, regardless. So it was childish innocence that eliminated the sympathies from my heart.
-----As adults, we maintain much childish innocence in different ways. The effects of many things we do and think are felt by other people at different times and in different places. As the liberals were helping the gays to struggle out of the closet, the common expression bantered about was, “What I do in my own bedroom is none of your business.” It always made me want to scream, because I think that hungry kid in China effected me. What these people do in their own bedrooms has a devastating effect on me, and everyone else, too. Bedroom behavior effects who and what they are, then that effects others they associate with in the market places. The moral expectations of society become loose. Individual moral rectitude begins to dissipate. And eventually society begins to look askance upon morality itself. And not just sexual morality, since morality is ethereal. Sexual looseness is a breach of fidelity with the spouse just as theft is a breach of fidelity with the neighbor. Because childish innocence can see no wrong in sexual immorality, how long will it take for childish innocence to loose consciousness of the very principle of fidelity? Probably not today. Or next week. Maybe not next year. But next decade? Look back at the principles we held in common a few decades ago and compare them to the principles we hold today. Though they have tiny little mouths, the consuming effects of childish innocence are devastating! In mass, they can eliminate the fabric of society as quickly as a heap of maggots can render a carcass to bones.
-----Beforehand God created the good works in which we should walk.(Eph 2:10) Everything we do has an effect. It is for us to throw the blanket of childish innocence off ourselves and keep the carcass of this world replenished with the good deeds of life maggots can not eat.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment