Changing Priorities Regarding Safety

I was born into a large family in a small town in 1960, and when I was four, my family moved to another small town in another state. This was at a time (and in places) when kids, including me, spent a large portion of our non-school time outdoors. Any concerns about our physical safety seemed to center around occasional scrapes and bruises, and in some cases more serious injuries, like broken bones. My father was a pastor, and it seemed like most people back then went to church, where people’s spiritual safety was the focus. Admittedly, a lot of the preaching seemed to be focused on “don’ts,” such as those found in the ten commandments. However, even though I didn’t become a Christian until I was twenty, I think that even when I was a young boy, I had a vague understanding that these commandments promoted spiritual as well as physical safety–including avoiding physical punishment if I said taboo words! Looking back, it seems that spiritual safety was regarded by church leadership as at least equal to, if not greater than, physical safety.

Jumping ahead a couple of decades to the early ’90s: when my wife and I came back to the U.S., toddler in tow, after teaching English for a few years in a Third World country, it seemed that the landscape of American culture had changed in some ways. One thing we noticed was that there were not a lot of kids “roaming” the neighborhood, at least not compared to my experience growing up. Admittedly, we were not in a small town, but my wife, who had grown up in a good-sized city, noticed the difference as well. As time went on, I began to wonder what some reasons might be for this change. I vaguely recalled hearing a horrible story about a boy who had been “snatched” and murdered several years before; his name was Adam Walsh, and it happened in 1981. Digging a little deeper, I found that there were other child abductions in the 1980s as well. As a result of these, faces of missing children began to appear on milk cartons in 1985, and after Amber Hagerman’s abduction and murder in 1996, the first Amber Alert was made.

I came to believe that these child abductions were one factor in causing parents to be more careful about their children’s safety, and understandably so. I came across a quote that supports this idea: Richard Moran, criminologist at Mount Holyoke College, said a few years ago, “The Adam Walsh case created a nation of petrified kids and paranoid parents. Kids used to be able to go out and organize a stickball game, and now all playdates and the social lives of children are arranged and controlled by the parents.” This is in spite of the fact that abductions by strangers are rare and have, in fact, been decreasing over the past two decades. Increasing parental caution and the commonality of cell phones among kids probably have a lot to do with this.

I don’t “blame” parents for being overcautious about their kids’ physical safety. I remember, for example, the panic of my brother-in-law when he couldn’t find his young son at a popular beach in Michigan in 1981. He and I were loudly calling out the boy’s name as we went further and further down the beach, and my brother-in-law was even looking in the lake. Thank the Lord, when we finally found him, he was safely with a police officer far down the beach. In a previous post, I have written a similar story about my daughter, who was “lost” for an hour or so after school one day; I had forgotten that it was a minimum day, and she had wandered into a nearby neighborhood, where she was playing with some girls.

On the other hand, I have seen examples of parents who seem to have very little, if any, concern about their kids other than physical safety, and even then, only of a certain kind. Here’s a vignette from about 20 years ago that encapsulates a strangely twisted notion of safety: I have a friend who had gotten divorced, and he had a son. When the son became a teen, my friend told me that he was vexed because his ex was providing her house as a place for not just him, but also his girlfriend, to hang out after school. When my friend (who’s a Christian) expressed his concern to his ex, she said that if their son and girlfriend were going to have sex anyway, why not do it in a safe place? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the ex had also provided their son with condoms! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what is twisted about this so-called notion of safety; compare this with most parents’ concern that their kids not engage in sex back in the 1960s.

Jumping ahead to the present, in the child sexuality realm: a federal judge ruled just three months ago that California is not violating parents’ rights by requiring public schools to accept students’ gender identities and to let them decide whether to inform their families. Compare this with this requirement from the CA Dept. of Education: “You must supply the school with all medicine your child must take during the school day. You or another adult must deliver the medicine to school, except medicine your child is authorized to carry and take by him or herself.” And then there are the LGBTQ activists and some in the medical establishment who have been pushing for “gender-affirming care” for those kids who want to transition to the opposite gender; I have written more about that here: https://keithpetersenblog.com/2022/02/23/clarity-and-compassion-for-the-transgendered/ In Spain, minor children as young as 16 are now allowed to legally change their gender without parental consent, including sex reassignment surgery (also known as genital mutilation); is that safe, and do you think that won’t happen here? Again, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand these twisted and inconsistent notions of safety in the realm of childhood sexuality. This is also obvious, for example, in laws in some states allowing kids to use the restroom of the gender they “identify” with.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add a couple of examples about safety in relation to society at large. You will find differing numbers depending on which source you consult, but what is clear is that since 2019, there has been a significant surge in crime in the U.S. One of the reasons for this is cashless bail, which can be seen by the fact that a comparatively small number of criminals commit a large proportion of violent crimes, and over a relatively short period of time. If you’re interested, you can check out this article by Brad Hamilton from last year: https://nypost.com/2022/08/06/why-a-small-number-of-criminals-perpetrate-the-worst-crimes-in-america/

One more example: in late 2021, the FAA held a summit focused on inclusive language–and then another one early this year. Chew on this: in the FAA, inclusion (think DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion) is now regarded as equivalent in importance to air safety, meaning that they are striving for this equivalency. (This is from a video from the summit.) Do you remember at the beginning of this year when all flights were grounded for several hours because of a corrupted computer file? Following that fiasco, many pilots blasted the FAA’s 2023 budget because of its inclusion of tens of millions of dollars for “environmental justice” along with, you guessed it, equity and inclusion. My guess is that 99.99% of Americans would rather have the FAA focus on air safety and allocate its finances accordingly.

Safety of all kinds is important, including physical safety. However, as a Christian, there is another kind of safety that is more important to me: spiritual safety. Here’s how Jesus defined love for Him, in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” And in 2 Thessalonians 3:3, we are told, “But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.” Regardless of what may happen to me, when I live in obedience to Jesus, I am protected spiritually from Satan. In contrast, secularists have a hard time being consistent, to put it mildly, in their ever-evolving notions of physical safety. If you’re not a believer, may this be the day you put your trust in Christ; when you do, He will keep you safe in the way that matters most.