Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 11 A procession of angels passes before each human being wherever he goes, proclaiming: Make way for the image of God! — R a b b i J o s h ua b e n L e v i (Deut. Rabba 4, 4) Diane Levin, a child advocate, highlights the source of much of this contamination: A decline in social skills can be amplified when combined with the media’s message of violence, aggression, and mean-spirited behav- ior as well as sex, sexualization, and focus on appearance. The media culture frequently sup- ports a stereotypical view that, for girls, the basis of relationships is how they look and the things they have, rather than their connection to others. And media culture teaches boys to judge themselves and one another based on how strong, independent, and ready to fight they are, not by their positive connection with others. In a sense, both boys and girls are made into objects. Objectification of self and others makes it much easier to act in mean and uncar- ing ways in relationships.2 When children sense that they are being treated as objects, why shouldn’t they respond accord- ingly? It’s as if all that is wonderful, unique, and miraculous in each life is brought down to the lowest common denominator: gender. Without a clear sense of self, they can have no appre- ciation of who they are or how they came into being. Then they are fed a new, perverse inter- pretation of what it means to be male or female. This promotes the formation of cliques, which often leads to bullying. Boys tend to take on a false manliness, a macho swagger that hides (at least from themselves) collective cowardice. Girls’ cliques can be equally damag- ing in their exclusiveness and cruel pressure to I n a so ciet y overwhelmed by count- less problems, the dangers to children are obvious: poverty, violence, neglect, disease, abuse, and countless other ills. But what can any one of us do to overcome them? In an essay on the question of social renewal, Hermann Hesse suggests that the first step is to recognize their root cause: our lack of reverence for life. All disrespect, all irreverence, all hardhearted- ness, all contempt is nothing else than killing. And it is possible to kill not only what is in the present, but also that which is in the future. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a child or young person. Life is waiting everywhere, flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and trample much of it with our feet.1 Hesse touches on something that endangers children more than anything else in the world today. Irreverence for children pervades almost everything in a culture that glorifies sex and violence at the expense of innocence and gentleness. While no one is unaffected by this destructive bent, the greatest victims are children. Often it seems that they are not given the chance to grow up at all–they are thrown into adult life before their hearts are able to distinguish between what is good and what is glamorous. They end up copying the worst of adult behavior without knowing what they are doing. They may not be grown up, but they are no longer truly children either. Johann Christoph Arnold is senior pastor of the Bruderhof and the author of twelve books, including Their Name Is Today: Reclaiming Childhood in a Hostile World, (Plough, Novem- ber 2014). This article is taken from that book. www.theirnameistoday.com