Month: December 2013

Stephen King has a horror story to tell. No, not that Stephen King of It, Doctor Sleep, Bag of Bones, Cujo, Firestarter, Misery, The Tommyknockers etc. I’m referring to Stephen D. King who is chief economist of HSBC Bank. The latter has just written a book that is as scary as anything the Maine-based horror writer ever thought of. King D.’s book is entitled, When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence.  His premise is simple and sobering: The Western world, especially America, has experienced extraordinary economic progress throughout the last six decades, a prosperous period so continuous that ever-expanding economic growth has come to seem normal – and expected.  But such an era of continuously rising living standards is a historical anomaly Stephen D. warns, and the current stagnation of Western economies threatens to reach crisis proportions in the not-so-distant future. He isn’t recommending buying gold bullion and heading for the hills with dehydrated food, but King does warn that government benefits as we know them, and Obama wants to give in greater measure, won’t be affordable in the future. By allowing budget deficits to soar and interest rates to go to zero, American citizens have become, in King’s words, “stimulus junkies.”

All this should be sobering to Christians, who more than any other people, see the trajectory of civilization headed toward an end point of centralized control and the loss of all significant human liberties. The forecast looks like this: governments promise ever more benefits of health care, pensions, and social safety nets until the resources to underwrite such largess is gone. That is followed by major social upheaval and the promise of someone, anyone, to fix it – at the price of creeping totalitarianism. We’re not the first country to encounter such a scenario, but we are the nation with the best-financed Christian population. Strangle that, and the ability to evangelize is severely hindered. Missions will suffer, Christian charities will be stymied, and all outreaches will have to pull back drastically. Finally the whole thing will be near collapse, the perfect time for a “savior” to arrive on the scene. It seems to me that the conclusion to be drawn from this projection is that “when the money runs out” the trumpet is about to sound! (1 Thess. 4:16)

A report in yesterday’s USA-TODAY newspaper reveals a shocking statistical conclusion. Since 2006, one-third of victims in mass killings were younger than 18. The average age of meeting a violent death was eight! More shocking, one-third of those murdered were killed by a blood parent. Others were killed by stepparents, their parents’ ex-lovers, or other family members. Only 25% were killed by a person they didn’t know. Sadly, you can add to that toll all those who were maimed and violently injured by a family member. The individual stories are gut-wrenching, such as a four-year-old covered in blood who told police, responding to a call, “Everybody’s dead.” The child had covered her own bullet wounds with Band-Aids. In short, child homicide is getting out of control. In many of these cases, the killings were preceded by unthinkable abuse.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, most of the fingers pointed at guns. But take away all the firearms and you’ve still got plenty of stab wounds, broken bones, and tortured beatings. What are the real facts about our culture killing our kids?

1. Most of these killings took place in broken homes, common-law or live-in arrangements, or other dysfunctional child-rearing circumstances. It’s not a stretch to say that the destruction of the two-parent nuclear family is a huge contributing factor.
2. We legalize killing late-term babies ex-utero, so it’s just a matter of physical development separating those extracted from the womb at 8 months v. a six-month-old baby. If killing the late-term baby is government sanctioned, some might conclude that killing a kid a few months later doesn’t involve a higher premium on life?
3. Our movies and video games reward body counts to the extent that victims dispatched with abandon are discarded without emotion.
4. Extreme humanistic enthusiasts and godless behaviorist insist that life is no more sacred for the human than the animal, or plants for that matter. If humans are not unique creatures of God, their life has less value.
5. Research shows that abuse often turns fatal. In fact, the majority of kids killed were first beaten and bruised. If a child can be sexually and physically mistreated it may be a small step for an out-of-control, mentally ill caretaker to end the child’s life.

Stopping the killing of our kids has many solutions, but we can start by remembering the words of Psalm 127:3 – Children are a heritage from the Lord. When we recognize that there is a God, that God is the creator of life, and that all life is a sacred trust from the Almighty, it means that every human created in His image is worthy of dignity and respect. Submitting our culture and our country to God is a first step to stop killing our kids.

What is this chimpanzee’s life like?  He currently spends his fall days in a room heated to 70 degrees with walls decorated to look like a jungle. The chimp even has color, cable TV. Hundreds of millions of people in third world countries don’t have it that good. Never mind, the lawsuit is going forward until this attorney is convinced the chimp can go free, though where the chimp goes after that no one knows. Perhaps Mr. Wise would like the chimp to move in with him and sleep in his bed. Just one day of experiencing the chimp’s lack of toilet trained habits might make Mr. Wise think otherwise about his evolutionary equal. This chimpanzee might be a chimp but this lawyer is a chump.