Protecting Society's Weakest

Mom, would you paint my nails?

Our youngest, a young man we are currently seeking to adopt, was watching me paint my nails. Had this scene taken place ten years ago, and had I been more informed regarding some of the ideologies this little one has encountered, I probably would have acquiesced --at least, painted his toes. But here we are. It's June 2024, sin is being celebrated on many media outlets and sadly, in many churches, the lines between men and women and right and wrong are being radically, deliberately blurred, and I will probably never know --not entirely --what this child has been told is acceptable, or narrow-minded, or bigoted, or even, real love. I wonder if I will ever get over the feeling of battling a demon I'm not even certain is present. But maybe this puts me at an advantage.

When I was raising my first couple children. Not only was I not walking with the Lord, but I was taking them to church. That's a good thing, though, you say. Yes, it was, but it was a few hours each week that gave me the false sense I was doing all I could to hold back the rushing waters of humanist thinking and self-centeredness that, if we are being honest, was alive and well in the 90s. In the early 2000s, another set of children came to steal my heart. I sort of knew what they were hearing, figured I couldn't do much about it, so I prayed. Occasionally. After all, they were in a good home, right? And now, here we are.

I've heard plenty of folks ridiculing talk of a "gay agenda." I've heard people decry the claim "They are coming for our children." I've known homosexuals who make it their personal calling to intentionally antagonize those who call their behavior sin; they will get in your face using every swear word that comes to mind and will stop just short of public indecency. And, in all fairness, I know those who have no agenda but to be left to their own sin, who have no interest in influencing my children, and are not the least bit offensive or indecent. None of these people are themselves going to heaven, and none of them are any less dangerous to the spiritual welfare of my children and grandchildren. If they're not denying their own passions to protect our children, they are doing them harm. 

Psalm 82:3-4 (NIV) says:
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Ask the spouse or child of any fallen soldier: defense costs. Children are some of the weakest and most vulnerable of our society. They are unable to fully understand the consequences of sex outside of marriage or thirty years of smoking or marrying someone who doesn't have their own relationship with Jesus. It is up to us to protect them --to act self-sacrificially to protect them --until they are able to comprehend. By failing to protect them from knowing sin, we are failing them in their walk into eternal life. They need our best. Not two hours of Sunday school once a week, not occasional prayer, and not exposure to "nice" homosexuals. Not gay pride parades and drag queen story hours and politically correct cartoons. Not "COEXIST" bumper stickers and ridiculous mantras like Love is love. God is love, and they need a society that is unwilling to lead its weakest down a road they are not at all equipped to travel.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were prohibited from something. What was it? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Our loving Father sought to protect His children --all His children --through this prohibition. They were unable to handle that knowledge. The best way to protect them (and by extension, each one of us) was to call it "off-limits" and depend on their obedience. As children do, they failed; but God did not. He didn't feed them to their desires and expect them to resist; He didn't expose them to the pageantry and rapture of eating the forbidden fruit, all the while saying, "But you decide for yourselves." He protected them. Because He loved them. As He loves us today. 

So, I will not paint his nails. Not his fingernails, not his toenails. Because the flavor of the day is Innocence Stolen. Because our society refuses to protect its weakest. And because, as his parent, I will do everything I can to protect him from anything that will derail him from becoming the man God intends him to be.