Julie DelCour’s “Should we license some parents?” is an excellent although heart-breaking summary of the current status of child abuse in Oklahoma and the nation (maltreatment, physical abuse, neglect, and death). [Julie DelCour, Tulsa World, p. G1.] She cites a litany of factors that are associated with child abuse: “…maternal youth and low education, very low income, parental mental health issues, absence of established paternity and the presence of unrelated adults in the household, …[and] parental substance abuse.”
Child abuse and neglect are on the increase and government officials, law officers, sociologists, and concerned citizens want to know why. However, we have already identified the factors associated with child abuse. In spite of new and strengthened child abuse laws, rules, regulations, training, programs, etc., child abuse continues to grow. But, Mrs. DelCour cuts to the heart of the matter when she asks “How do we fix unfit parents and caregivers?” With no answers, she ends her editorial with the melancholy observation that “…something is still broken.”
Could it be that are we merely treating the symptoms and not the disease which causes child abuse? It appears there is a systemic problem much larger than child abuse whose causal factors are merely a microcosm of larger societal issues which, unless fixed, will continue to bedevil and ultimately destroy the American culture that we once knew. The question is not just how does society fix parents and caregivers but how does society fix the individual.
Christian principles were the center of the nation’s cultural vision at its founding and remained so for 150 years. With the abandonment of these biblical principles in favor of a humanistic principles, policies, and practices, we have substantially destroyed the family. The proof is incontrovertible. Even prominent humanists recognize the loss of our fundamental values in American society. One such was Benjamin Spock who championed the humanistic worldview throughout his life. In 1994, four years before the end of his life at age ninety, Spock wrote of his concern as he viewed the harmful effects of society on American children.
…I am near despair. My despair comes not only from the progressive loss of values in this century, but from the fact that present society is simply not working. Societies and people who live in them fall apart if they lose their fundamental beliefs, and the signs of this loss are everywhere. [Spock, p. 15.]
As a result America was losing its way because of “a progressive relaxation of many of our standards of behavior and the souring of many commonly held beliefs.” He listed a number of signs of this loss of fundamental values and beliefs and included the increasing instability of marriage, child neglect through excessive focus on careers, materialism, single parent households, failure of schools, progressive coarsening of the attitude towards sexuality due to mass media, and growth in family violence. [Spock pp. 15-16, 93.] Amazingly, Spock remained oblivious to humanism’s disintegrating effects and did not see that the ills of society are a direct result of nearly a century of humanism’s dominance in American life as it stripped away our fundamental beliefs instilled by a biblical worldview. [Spock, pp. 124-125; Johnson, pp. 404-405.]
In his book The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis captured the essence of this cultural madness brought about by the unwitting soldiers in the army of the “knowledge class” having been indoctrinated with a humanistic worldview. [Johnson, pp. 301-302.]
It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals…Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. All the time…we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible…In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. [Lewis, p. 704.]
Ms. DelCour is right. Something is still broken, but this brokenness involves far more than just child abuse. America is losing its fundamental beliefs. America’s original central cultural vision is held together by the moral capital banked decades ago but is near depletion. Faced with a hostile popular culture and leadership in our American institutions that embrace the humanistic worldview, we are in critical danger of forever losing the central cultural vision established by the Founders—those men with chests.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
Julie DelCour, “Should we license some parents?” Tulsa World, January 5, 2014, G1;
“Julie DelCour, A license for parents?” Tulsa World, January 5, 2014. http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/juliedelcour/julie-delcour-a-license-for-parents/article_79378171-a113-5eb8-84b0-84866e50c673.html (accessed January 8, 2014).
Dr. Benjamin M. Spock, A better World for Our Children – Rebuilding American Family Values, (Bethesda, Maryland: National Press Books, 1994), pp. 15, 93, 99, 124-125.
Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 301-302, 404-405.
C. S. Lewis, The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics, The Abolition of Man, (New York: Harper One, 2002), p. 704.
