You see a lot of statistics in today’s world.
Thanks to the availability of computers and the Internet and a record number of people being paid with your tax dollars to collect data on everyone from cradle to grave, there is a lot of raw information out there.
A lot of times, there is so much data being shoved at us that numbers start to blur and details get lost. Most assuredly, people and their pain is lost on us as we grow to be nothing more than another number.
But there was a statistic story this week that Americans dare not allow to become statistical, because it represents such incredible pain and such a terrifying risk to our very future.
The Associated Press story went like this:
“The U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas says it’s on course to file a record number of child pornography cases this year.
“The federal indictments of two men on child porn charges this week brought the statewide total for the year to 19.
“U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom says that compares with 36 federal prosecutions in all of 2010, and 20 the year before.”
This is July.
Unless someone has changed something, we have almost half of a year still ahead of us.
This is a challenge.
Part of the problem is that Americans simply do not take pedophilia seriously.
If you have children, or grandchildren, or if you just care that children are not abused, this should concern you.
There are, today, operating in America, people who want to normalize pedophilia, who suggest that they are inherently “wired” to crave sex with children, and there are those in America today who are suggesting that is not bad for kids, that it just makes them feel loved.
This is real.
This argument is being made in this culture. Today.
These are not just statistics. There are real children’s lives being destroyed and Americans had better begin to take the situation seriously.
This isn’t about numbers.
It’s about brutalized, terrified children who are being tortured, whose lives are being destroyed.
We cannot legitimize that horror.
We dare not treat it as a statistic.
— Chuck Smith