Love remains a silver thread - “Sun Herald”

Sun-Herald Column for Sunday 7 March

Children are a precious gift from God. The greatest privilege and most awesome responsibility for any person is to be a parent. It brings the heights of joy, happiness and pleasure, but sometimes disappointment, pain and frustration. But always there is still parental pride, love and hope for the future – that’s my kid!
A great Christian leader, John Charles Ryle, long ago wrote this advice for parents: “Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys - these are the cords by which a child may be led most easily - these are the clues you must follow if you would find the way to his heart.”
Parents can be either positive or negative role models. If their children see them through loving eyes then they will be the model for the next generation of family and the community.
Children experiencing loving, caring and emotionally mature adult relationships, and love from their parents, will learn to engender that same stability and love in their own adult relationships.
In contrast, experiencing abusive, violent and dysfunctional adult relationships most often drives children to be themselves abusers with only fragile hope for security, harmony and emotional maturity in relationship.
That’s an awesome load to heap onto parents’ shoulders. But it is our primary task, far more important than career or financial goals, or our own pleasures. And when the family gets it in appropriate balance, there is hope for the community.
Every example of abuse, violation and manipulation of children is heart breaking and gut wrenching. In response to reports of what some endure, we can do little more than weep at their pain.
So a crucial question is - What sort of future are we adults of today helping our children prepare for?
Last Sunday the Observer newspaper printed a feature about the bloody civil war in northern Uganda. An army of children, equipped with modern weaponry, marched into a refugee camp and attacked the occupants. Reports said the children indulged in an orgy of bloodletting that left 240 people dead
These are the child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army, many of whom were abducted in earlier village raids and were forced to kill to save their own lives
What this report provides is evidence of contemporary, manipulative exploitation of children by power-hungry adults.
Last September, I had the privilege of meeting a Christian leader from Northern Uganda who had first hand experience of this children’s army. His anguished report of what is happening was filled with horror and despair.
When we read stories about paedophile individuals or networks in our own society, we are again confronted with the abuse of children by desire-driven adults.
So what’s the future? The LRA child soldiers are not learning that peace is found through negotiation, mediation and painstaking diplomacy. It will be difficult for them to appreciate that peace is an important objective for every individual and the entire human community. Their model is, eliminate your enemy to achieve your purpose.
The cyclical nature of family violence and abuse so often noted in our own community highlights the destructive power of abusive adult role models for children.
Parents have the privilege of achieving their children’s respect, so that they rightly viewed as patterns to follow – hopefully, a model of love, honesty, fair-mindedness, justice, and compassion.
When they do so they bring hope, both for their kids, for the world, and for their own community.

Click here to comment on this article for the next edition of Southern Cross

Latest articles in Latest articles
- Christmas lights up our darkness - 2 days, 1 hour ago
- A response to market meltdown - 1 month, 1 week ago
- The greatest thing of all - 2 months ago