What happened to childhood?

Two other items of news today have caused me a different kind of concern. 

The first concerns a 12-year-old girl who died in her father's arm.  The father claims that it was the stress of constant bullying that caused her death.  I do not have the relevant medical, or pathological, knowledge to make any comment on that.  However, the newspaper article went on to explain the grounds of the bullying.  It reported that, after this young girl's death, her family found various notes in her bedroom.  In them, "... she outlined her personal torment at being picked on 'for being innocent' about sex."  The father is also reported as having said that his daughter "... was a beautifully innocent girl, but the kids started to call her a lesbian because she didn't know as much as them."

On the same page was another disturbing article.  A group of nine-year-old boys (yes, that's 9!) have been suspended from their school after having been found selling cannabis in the playground.  They were, it is alleged, selling the drug at a ridiculously low price, on behalf of another boy!

A child of 12 doesn't know enough about sex; children of 9 selling drugs - even if one mother claims that her son only did so under pressure.  I don't know about a fairer, or a bigger, society; but it seems to me that these incidents are a clear indication that we have a badly broken society.

So, how might this broken society be mended?  Perhaps a return to the values of the Creator would be a step in the right direction!  Paul wrote to the disciples of Jesus in 1st-century Ephesus: "... submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the Head of the church. He is the Saviour of His body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.  For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up His life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.  He did this to present her to Himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.  In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.  No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of His body.  As the Scriptures say, 'A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.'  This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.  So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do.  'Honour your father and mother.' This is the first commandment with a promise:  If you honour your father and mother, 'things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.'  Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord." (Eph 5:21-6:4; NLT).

It may seem a bit old-fashioned to some.  But it works - and even those who are not committed followers of Jesus would do well to apply its instruction to their own lives.

Of course, there needs to be a protection for our children that doesn't just involve taking all of the conkers from a horse-chestnut tree at a school, lest one fall on a pupil, and the parents sue the local council!  The whole 'pushing of the boundaries' by television and film/DVD/video producers; the gradual ignoring of the 'nine o'clock watershed' (which was pretty useless as few children over about seven years of age seem to be in bed by that time - and those who are have a television set in the bedroom); the ready availability of pornograhic material on the internet - and all too few parents applying any level of responsible monitoring of their children; the preponderance of 'single-parent' families; all of this, and more, needs attention.

That's why government legislation will never be sufficient.  What is needed is a wholesale renewal of the mind (see Rom.12:2); what the late Peter Marshall referred to as "surgery of the soul".  It may already be too late - but it is surely incumbent upon all who claim to be disciples of Jesus to be much in prayer for a generation that seems to have been denied the opportunity to enjoy a real childhood!