CLARITY
A Biblical Response to Current Events – 2-19-20
Sacred Trust
What’s Happening: “In an NBC News article appearing yesterday, James Alex Hurley, a twelve-year-old Montana boy, was found tortured to death, and his 14-year old uncle and his grandparents are being charged with the crime. Cellphones confiscated show recordings of the torture that apparently began over two years ago, All the food was locked up and the boy had become emaciated. He was given to the grandparents to care for when his father, the grandparents’ son, died (https://www.yahoo.com/news/grandparents-uncle-charged-beating-death-172800284.html). The grandparents, James Sasser, Jr., 47, and Patricia Batts, 48, are being held for $500,000 and $750,000 bail, respectively. The teen-age uncle is being held and charged as a minor.”
Knee-Jerk Response: “If you can’t trust family, who can you trust?”
Biblical Response: “I don’t have an answer to that (well,actually, I do…trustworthiness comes from God, when his people allow the transformation – Phil. 2:5 – that God intended by His Holy Spirit). It seems that the sacred trust of children was not a principle by which that family lived! All the details will no doubt come out at trial, but there’s one background truth: the family is under assault. Parents are too busy pursuing personal pleasure or career success to accept the challenge of kids. They’d rather the screen be the baby-sitter. It’s no wonder kids are still living in the basement of their parents’ home…some past thirty years of age! And no wonder so many marriages end in divorce…couples were not prepared by their parents for the kind of maturity required for relationships. Sure, family is hard work and discipline unpleasant (Heb. 12:11; Eph. 6:4), but children are like arrows shot into the future and we are to fill our quivers full of them (Ps. 127:3-5)”
“Christians? We believe that family is important and consequences for not raising children properly is far-reaching:
‘I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.’ (Ex. 34:7)”
Here’s a Prayer You Can Pray: “Heavenly Father, help us to consider children the sacred trust that they are; in Jesus’ Name, amen.”
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