A little over five years ago (Thursday, November 13, 1992), Love 97 hosted a town meeting in St. Agnes School room on Cockburn Street. The meeting was convened as a result of the high level of crime and other anti-social behaviours facing the country, or more specifically New Providence , at the time. Murders were on the rise, until it reached an all time high of 64 in 1999; and so were crimes of passion and abuse of people and property. Five years later and still believing that the politicians can solve our myriad of problems through legislation, we find ourselves still stuck, still talking, still hoping that government will solve it all, still fearful and angry at the status quo.
Yours truly was invited to share some views on a panel at that meeting that was supposed to put emphasis on social re-construction. My presentation was titled, “Focus on Children” which is most necessary, along with “Focus on the Family”, if there is going to be any significant success at social reconstruction. At the time we stated that too many of our children were falling through the cracks to a life of crime and violence, and our society was not accepting the responsibility of the situation as a responsible Bahamian village.
The trend, we said, would continue to escalate because conditions were ripe for producing more and more angry, dislocated youngsters, and our social agencies of character formation appeared deficient in their ability to impact the problem in a positive way. Has anything really changed?
We said it then and we say it now. For children to grow into healthy and whole adults, they must be born into and nurtured in a healthy, safe and loving environment. They should be conceived as expressions of the love that reflects the Fullness of Love – God, who has blessed us with this wonderful ability to procreate.
Unfortunately, far too many of our children are being conceived only because of the strong biological urges which we have in common with the lower animals, and oftentimes in the unbalanced home of a single, immature parent. Children need the security and love of two loving parents in order to grow into stable, responsible adults; and even then we are going to have some prodigals, which are necessary in the scheme of things. Otherwise we would not really appreciate the forgiving, compassionate side of God.
Children do not ask to come into the world. They come as a result of older persons, oftentimes too greedy and concerned with the gospel of materialism and money. As a result they oftentimes take second place in the family environment. The ingredient needed for their social and spiritual development are neglected, and so we reap the bitterness of the seeds we plant and don’t plant.
The family is the most potent vehicle in the building of a society. When it disintegrates, our society will disintegrate. We can pass all the laws, build all sorts of prisons and talk about prison reform; we can provide all the attractive educational and recreational programmes, but they will all go for naught without greater focus on children and the family. The church and state, if they genuinely care about the temporal and spiritual development of our communities, must put more emphasis on family values of love, respect, loyalty, faithfulness and the like, in words and action.
If we want our society to change for the better, then each and every responsible adult – parents, preachers, teachers, politicians and businessmen – must commit himself to change and begin, not only to tell children to behave, but to consistently teach and model the kind of good, responsible and respectful behaviours we expect them to display. We cannot nor should we expect of them what we ourselves are not doing.
The challenge to change is not always easy, especially for adults, but in this regard, you can rest assured that the benefits to our nation would be well worth the effort.
Viewpoints, The Bahama Journal
