DISGUSTED

(per my friend Tracy, this post needs a warning...Use your own judgement in whether or not you want to read this as it contains sensitive material on the sexual abuse of children.)

Today I can honestly say I was DISGUSTED!

I have been known to use the word disgusting before to describe bugs and vomit…but today I realized the depravity that comes with the word disgusting.

Literally, I was so disgusted that I felt like vomiting and when I think of it now, 5 hours later, it invokes the exact say sense in me again.

As part of my job, it is my responsibility to go through the books we have acquired for our child development program and create course outlines, descriptions and core text books that will be used for each class.

Now when I heard the word child development initially I thought of theorists like Piaget, Vygotski and the like…but now, as I plan our courses and the content, I don’t think child development is really the right word for our program. I think our program should really be called the Children at Risk Program.

Topics we include are:

Holistic Ministry to Children

Understanding Children at Risk

Ministry to Street Children

Children and Armed Violence

Sexually Exploited and Trafficked Children

Crisis Counseling

Child Evangelism and Discipleship

Mentoring and Listening to Children

Issues and Potential of the Girl Child

Global Perspectives on Youth

Children and the Church

HIV and other childhood health risks

Etc…

I think you get the point…Definitely not your typical “Child Development” Course.

So in the 4 hours I spent in the library today, I made it through the first 2 shelves of the 9 shelves that we have on child development. My goal was to really look at the books. Their descriptions, the content they contained, and see which books would be beneficial to have as class sets and required course readers.

As I did, I came across books with content that I am so very familiar with. Sadly, I have become a little numb to it actually…as I read about children who are slaves, children who have been forced into war, children who live in utter poverty and despair…but today I came across a book that literally made me want to puke…and it contained a subject that I had never imagined could happen…even in the worst and wildest of dreams.

It was a book about Africa, and the different types of sexual abuse that occur here, and all over the globe….As I opened the book, which was probably about 300 – 350 pages long, I stumbled across the chapter about the rape of infants. Their were reports of 5 month olds and 8 month old babies who were raped, and who had to undergo surgery of their internal organs because of the brutal attacks. Some of the babies died as the result of the attacks, simply because the damage to their internal organs was too great to repair.

It was disgusting…and a reminder that sin and our fallen world is disgusting. It gave me a deeper image of the depravity and grossness that earth has become as people push themselves further and further away from God.

The idea that God does allow sin right now, and the fact that he is holding back the fullness of it makes me even more disgusted…I can’t imagine how much more gross and vile our society would be if God didn’t protect us from the maximum damage of sin and depravity.

Grossness like infant rape makes me look forward to the new heaven and the new earth. To a place where people won’t have to bury their 5 month old babies because they were literally raped to death. It makes me feel like the martyrs in the book of revelation who sit in their white robes under the throne of God and ask “how long Lord, how long”….

And yes…It’s disgusting…