A mother drives her two children into a lake one day, killing them.
Believing that her four-year-old is gay, his mom beats him to death.
A dad leaves his son out in a hot car for seven hours and his son is found dead well before then.
A dad, driving in his car, takes his baby and throws the child out of the car.
Driving her car into the ocean, a mom tries to drown both her children as rescuers save them.
A mom, fed up with her two "mouthy teenagers," hatches up a plan to kill both and succeeds in carrying it out.
Managing to hide seven pregnancies, a mother kills each of her seven babies.
A mom is found in bed, naked with a knife, clutching the bodies of all three of her young children.
A dad, angered that his wife was trying to flee from him with their two children, managed to find them and murder all of them; today he remains a fugitive from justice.
I can go on and on. So can you, I am sure, if you are aware of what is going on. What is causing all this violence among family members? Are we now just hearing more about it because we live in the age of communication and information? Along with all this violence of parents against their children, spouses, youth and even children are becoming more violent. But lately, the violence of parents against their children seems to have spiked at an all-time high. The media, especially CNN, have covered the "car dad" case, hashing every detail of this disturbing and heartbreaking case. When this story first broke, I was mad at the cops for what appeared to be a rush to judgment and a witch-hunt against a dad who may have well made the tragic mistake of his life. They charged him with "Cruelty to Children" and "Felony Murder." They declared with passion: "This is the most shocking case of our careers and to our consciences as fathers and husbands." Couldn't they cut this dad any slack? But as the case unfolded and details kept coming to light, I came to change my mind. It was revealed that on the day that his son was killed, this dad came out to the car in the afternoon and placed something in the car. At his web designer job, he was sexting women, including a sixteen-year-old girl; he sent pics of his erect penis! Details concerning what, to me, were the odd responses of his wife to all of this, also surfaced. Whenever I hear of one case after another like this, I wonder: What about adoption? If these people don't want to deal with their children, why don't they surrender them to relatives or to a safe place? Why do these people turn to murder?
Life is not as valued as it once was. It is getting cheaper and more expendable.
I believe that we, in the West and particularly in the US, have been on a downward spiral since 1973. That was when abortion became legal. Many abortion advocates have argued that by eliminating children (whom they call "fetuses") that we would reduce child abuse and violence. According to this reasoning, getting rid of "unwanted problems" would reduce "stressors" that supposedly drive people to crime and child abuse in particular. But guess what? The legalization of abortion has not reduced child abuse or any other forms of abuse. If anything, child abuse and all forms of violence have increased since then. Because unborn life has become cheap and expendable, the stage has been set for the slippery slope of valuing life at other forms of development less. I don't think this is any accident that this is so. Life has become cheaper. This, combined with our very fast pace of living in the West, has helped us on this downward spiral of violence. People today are more likely to turn to abuse, suicide and murder, to "solve problems" than was the case four decades ago. I had grown up in the 1960's and 1970's, and I don't remember hearing about violence of the scale that is epidemic today. Am I missing something? Was it just swept under the rug? Do we just talk about these things more openly?
All this makes me think, Jesus, can You come back today?
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