Suffer the Little Children

by

Paul Parsons

 Her name was Susan Smith, and she was probably as innocuous as her name.  Had she not committed the most horrific of crimes, it is likely that she would never have “enjoyed” her fifteen minutes of fame.  We remember the story well: a mother with two precious little boys, a car rolled into a lake, and the vision of two innocent children, eyes filled with fear, their final earthly sight that of their mother watching them disappear beneath the cold, wet darkness.

 Yes, we remember her story.  The crying before national TV cameras, the pleas for a safe return of her babies, the sympathy and money of a people whose hearts had been broken pouring in from everywhere.  Then, the realization that it had all been a sham, an invention of a sickened mind, the mind of a woman whose hope for romantic love surpassed her love for her own boys.  We remember Susan Smith, but the names of her two victims seem to have gotten lost along the way.  For those who have forgotten, the boys were Michael and Alexander.  They died on October 25, 1994.

Almost exactly a year earlier, another child died at the hands of a parent.  On October 24, 1993, Robert Latimer wrapped his 12-year-old daughter Tracy in a blanket, placed her in the cab of his truck and induced carbon monoxide through a tube from the exhaust, choking the life from her small innocent body.  Later, Latimer, who also tried to cover up the crime with a lie, admitted having killed his child to eliminate her suffering; she had cerebral palsy.

Recently, in Sarasota, 11 year-old Carlie Brucia was kidnapped from the rear of a car wash in broad daylight, and in the full view of video cameras.  She, too, was brutally murdered in the aftermath.  Her alleged killer, Joseph P. Smith, a convicted felon, had been sending warning signals for years.

Now we hear of a young boy in the “holy land”, whose body became the temporary vehicle to carry a bomb designed to kill Jews…and himself.  He, too, apparently had little control over the situation, the story being that he was semi-retarded and unable to protect himself from being used as a tool of hatred and death.

Parents who kill their children, pedophiles who silence forever the object of their perverted desires, and cowardly terrorists who will exploit even their own innocents to accomplish their ends are becoming all too familiar in a world that seems to have run amok.  Why?  When did our children suddenly become so seemingly dispensable?  What happened to man’s natural propensity for the protection of the weak and the helpless?

Those questions may never be answered this side of heaven.  But I will venture into the mystery with one possible answer: could it be that when the Supreme Court of the United States devalued human life on January 22, 1973 with its decision to legalize abortion that its unintended result was to plant a mental seed in the minds of people?  Could that mental seed have flourished into an evil, unconscious frame of mentality that children are here to serve adults and that, once accomplished, may be tossed into a nearby dumpster like so much garbage? 

My only consolation is my trust that the Lord receives these small victims, both the born and the unborn, with no reservations required, the vast majority of whom have simply made a hasty U-turn.

Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”  I don’t think He had this in mind when He said it.

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