MISSION IN SOCIETY
Vol. XVIII x No. 6
JULY 2006
The future
of the present
The future of our children will be much brighter and happier if we are able to respect and love our children, each one of them individually as a full human person.
By José Dias da Silva
Professor
In the list of "international days," somebody has remembered to include "Children′s Day." Lately, however, we need not have this day as the celebration has only become an irony. A growing sensibility, made more acute by successive violations of their rights and denunciation of several aggressions, has put children at the center of public debate, and has called our attention to serious and grave situations in today’s world.
War lords invented the child-soldier; sex industrialists refined interior and exotic perversions to offer products at the blooming of life: publicists have discovered them (the children) as sure potential means for successful trade, not only now – as clients to be exploited – but especially for the future as promoters of successful fashions. School books treat them as guinea pigs for new knowledge methods, not taking into account the evolution of their own characteristics. Some parents, moved by need, irresponsibility or wrong conviction, have made them object of –child labor,– stepping in the fragile border between immoral exploitation and real practice for future jobs. Other parents, incapable of spending quality time on the few occasions they are together or of witnessing true love, flood them with "technological gadgets." All these suggest values that would mark them for the rest of their lives.
These are just some examples of what should not happen. Not to mention the extreme cases of children who die of hunger or from just missing a vaccine that costs as little as a cup of coffee. However, there are also situations – and I want to believe that they are the great majority – where children are well taken care of. In one way or another today, we experience difficulty in dealing with children because they have changed, because we ourselves have changed, and because time changes so fast that we find it difficult to keep up with it.
I would like to mention three words of Jesus that may enlighten us in our time.
"Do not scandalize them" (Mt 18:6), that is, let us treat children like human beings; like persons who are being formed, and who are open either to be helped or exploited – because of their innocence, simplicity and, especially, their trusting ways in others.
"Do not despise them" (Mt 18:10), that is, let us accept them as persons, human persons who are "unique and unrepeatable," with specific talents, charismas and potentialities. Every child has the right to be himself or herself, not a copycat. They should be dealt with as persons with a specific purpose and plan in life; they were not born to meet other people′s expectations.
"Do not let them be lost" (Mt 18:14), that is, let us accept children as persons who have proper needs. Beyond their need for affection, they expect new ways and answers different from those of our own childhood.
Many children live in huge and densely-populated cities, where the authorities are more concerned with trade than creating green parks where they can play. They are born to families whose parents are overburdened with work and do not find enough time to stay with them and give them the love and care they need. They go to schools that are not ready to help them face today’s reality with earnest human-spiritual values. Their peer group, street people, TV, radio, and Internet become their sources of information.
Undoubtedly, the future of our children will be much brighter and happier if we are able to respect and love them, each one of them individually, as a full human person. Every child is "unique and unrepeatable" in constant growth and formation. <WM
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