DEALING WITH incest and sexual abuse
INCEST AND sexual abuse is eating away at the society and affecting many areas therein. Many want to make it a gender issue, but it affects both genders, and sadly, it affects more boys than many are willing to admit.
While there are efforts to bring to fruition a court that is specifically focused on those issues, we must deal with it from its root, and we cannot honour some sexual sins while we deride others. It has to be dealt with from the root and we have to be truthful about it.
Sexual sins are the product of the spirit of perversion, and perversion cannot be effectively dealt with by human logic, intellect or opinion. It is like a contagious plague, and it brings defilement to nations, churches, families and daily living. It even corrupts the bloodline and spiritual DNA. So where there are those who may say that they are adults who can do whatever they want, whenever and however they choose, it is not so. Everything we do, regardless of how insignificant or private it may seem, it affects everyone.
When King David committed adultery, it affected the entire nation and opened the door for murder, incest, conspiracy and untimely death. When incest took place between his daughters and himself, it opened the door to the birth of the Moabites, who became a warring faction.
REBUILD THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE
I can guarantee that most of those involved in crime were born out of either a commonlaw relationship, rape or even through incest, and so they did not get the benefit of the family as God originally intended, nor did many of them have their fathers in their lives. This is why we must seek to strengthen and rebuild the institution of marriage.
Dealing with abuse or incest starts in the home. The statement ‘children should be seen and not heard’ has done a lot of damage in our society. Parents should listen to the things their children tell them and investigate it, especially when they say someone has touched them inappropriately, whether it is a pastor, teacher, relative, coach/PE teacher, doctor, visiting friend or the highly respected elder in the society.
Furthermore, the Church is not exempt from these issues because imperfect people go to church, and sadly there are many who sit on the church board, committees or even sit in the pews, who fear neither God nor man, and consider the church their playground. So we need to stop blaming God when these things happen and start taking responsibility – start paying closer attention to our children. We need to stop covering some sexual sins while seeking to expose others; we need to stop trying to discredit some schools while we cover up the other because of the names of those who have children attending the school.
IDENTIFYING ABUSE
All the teachers in the schools must be trained to identify where abuse exists and where children are abused. We need to stop shoving the truth under the ‘psychological rug’ and stop trying to categorise these issues at the expense of our children’s mental, emotional and spiritual welfare.
The teachers of today must also seek to be the good examples that their students should follow, especially in their dress, attitude and mannerisms. Furthermore, we cannot honour one genre of music and its style of dance and attire while we condemn another when they both do the same thing and yield the same results. For example, dancehall vs carnival.
GOD WANTS TO HEAL
In addition to that, we cannot promote abortion, masturbation and oral sex, for example, while we have an outcry against paedophilia and allow our children on to the Internet unsupervised and open to all kinds of pornography and graphic images, sending them into a downward spiral of skewed emotions, mental states and thought patterns.
There are many people whose lives have been shattered and they have become bitter, angry, unforgiving and hurt. But we must recognise that healing begins with forgiveness. It is not the person, but the spirit behind their actions/behaviour. Some people genuinely don’t know how to deal with it or how to respond to care, affection or kindness.
God wants to bring healing to those directly and indirectly affected by these issues, and He wants those whom He has delivered from these painful experiences to come forward and tell their story so that others can be healed by their testimony. They must no longer be ashamed, because our mess oftentimes becomes our message and ministry.
Recognise that true and complete healing cannot take place until there is forgiveness. Then your message will have power. Steve Lyston is a biblical economics consultant and author of several books, including 'End Time Finance' and 'The New Millionaire'.