If you were the devil, and you wanted to destroy what God was doing, where would you start? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. You start with kids. Where else would you start? My question: If you decide you want to fight back, at long last, where would you start? With kids; the same place.

Solomon, a man who gave great attention to wisdom (and who managed to lose it in his old age) learned something from his father. He said in Proverbs 4,

Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

What does that mean, They eat the bread of wickedness and they drink the wine of violence? In our language, don’t we have an expression that we use for a person’s total immersion in what they is doing. We say they eat, drink, and sleep music. He eats, drinks, and sleeps writing. He eats, drinks, and sleeps whatever it is that a person is obsessed with. What he is saying here is that these people eat, drink, and sleep (or don’t sleep, in this case) whatever it is that they are obsessed with. And their obsessions are wickedness and are violent.

Kids today eat, drink, and sleep mischief, wickedness, and violence. It is with them all the time. They are totally immersed in it in our society. It is on television. It is in the movies. It is in books that they read (if they happen to read any books). It’s in their music. It’s in their entertainment. Unless they get too far away from it, they plug into it.

And one of the things that has really struck me is that what all of this is (including the pornography that they see)…it is ugly! It is a denial of beauty. It is a denial of love. For it takes love to produce beauty. And when the love is gone, the beauty is gone, and what is left is just plain ugly. Why, when the kids are immersed in it, in our society day and night, should anybody be surprised that it breaks out in school shootings? I am not surprised at what I see. What worries me, what dismays me is that there are so few parents who seem to have a mind to fight back.