All normal persons say child abuse is evil, and will move heaven and earth to stop it… Should Christians intervene to stop child abuse? Well, if the claim is true, we can look to God’s actions for our answer. If the claim is true, God sees every incidence of child abuse and could easily stop it, so if God is all-good we ought to do as God does.
You are being a bit disingenuous here because the way in which God would work to stop child abuse – in the hearts of those with a proclivity, inclination or will to do so – means that we would never hear about the incidents that God has successfully stopped, would we?
I mean the actual cases of child abuse might be relatively and vanishingly small when compared to all the people who might potentially commit child abuse. It isn’t like everyone is going to 'fess up to having such tendencies if they were dissuaded by some small act of God from doing so. Most would plead the fifth, in terms of culpable desire, I would expect. And the ones who chose to ignore God’s influence to the contrary, have a lot at stake by hiding the fact that they were shutting down the shouting voice of God within them.
What action does the all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God take? He lets children be abused. He sees all the physical, emotional and spiritual scars as they are inflicted on abused children, and takes no action, even though he could easily stop it. Case after case after case, he does nothing.
Christ was crucified in an egregious manner. He suffered “physical, emotional and spiritual scars.” God took “no action,” in the sense you infer. He could have easily stopped it. Why didn’t he? That is a question for the ages, but it is, at ground, the same question you are asking. In the case of Christ, it was God who suffered. That means something. Perhaps in the “case after case after case” of child abuse, it is God, too, who suffers there. Perhaps this tells us something of the nature of God and our relationship to that nature?
Which is the real evil, suffering abuse or perpetrating the abuse? God chose to suffer the abuse in Christ and permitted the perpetration of it EVEN TO HIMSELF. Why?
Logically then, as God is all-good, we should follow his example and also turn a blind eye to child abuse. Let all the damage be inflicted, in the faith that God will provide the ultimate cure, the ultimate love, the ultimate salvation as you say.
Actually, if we are to follow his example, like Christ (God) did by becoming fully human and suffering the indignity and pain of the crucifixion, we ought to fully become one with the abused child, so that we fully become aware of the pain and humility suffered by the child. Perhaps by entering fully into that suffering we would be fully able to empathize and never permit another evil thought to enter our minds again. Perhaps simply by becoming FULLY one with the rejected, scorned, victimized, tortured, abused victims as Christ did, we would never ever permit evil to enter our hearts again.
Perpetrators of abuse often have been abused themselves, but the difference is that they took that affront to their dignity as intolerable and have reacted to by attacking others and perpetrating the same. The real evil is what happens to the hearts, minds and wills of those who suffer evil – the manner in which evil is contagious and spawns itself by infecting those touched by it. The antidote is Christ, the One who has the power to suffer evil but not be infected, not be changed by it. If the abused child and the abuser had known about the antidote, perhaps neither would have been affected by it.
By nurturing the awareness of the presence of God within us, in the place where it counts, evil can be overcome. Evil is not an external phenomenon, and, as such, it can only be overcome within the subject that hosts it. Changing the externals does not make an impact. Disease, once it has taken root, must be treated internally, not by changing externals.
What you have missed is that what God does to the abused child is to share himself FULLY with that child. The child has everything – the Creator and Sustainer of all that is within him. The power to overcome the influence of the evil of abuse. The pervert on the other hand has lost everything. Which of the two is in a worse-off and more perilous condition? The perpetrator has the disease (evil) wrecking its damage to his person and will, the victim has suffered physical and psychological injury. The question is whether the victim will permit the injury to infect the core of his spirit and will.
Yet no normal person ever follows God’s example and allows children to be abused. We do the exact opposite. So either the claim is disproved or else we’re evil when we try to stop child abuse.
So Epicurus thanks you for your :twocents: but notes that by attempting to defend the claim that God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, you’ve sprung a logic trap.
The “logic trap” is superficially compelling, but like all temptations it loses its luster after you have fallen into it. Apparently, you have taken the bait and have been caught.
I suppose God is to be blamed for the bad logic of the trap, as well? For the “knowledge” of the logic of good and evil which serves as the impulse to move us near the trap even though he explicitly warned our first parents about it? We are entirely free to fall for bad logic. The only antidote, it seems would be the use of God-endowed good logic, not our own self-appointed, know-it-all rationalizing logic that we dust-off every time we need to justify human behaviour and impugn God. Somehow God is always to be blamed for what humans do despite that we are autonomous moral agents with the capacity to choose good and the power (underwritten by God’s grace) to ALWAYS do so.
