One slap..!
Robert Clements
Sunday, June 24, 2012 - I have no doubts whatsoever that police brutality only makes criminals out of people and children. A police officer reveals in an interview how nearly twenty years ago, a criminal who was then a frail, skinny young boy was caught by the police for inciting hawkers to strike for their rights. He was nabbed, taken to a police station where according to the police he was ‘roughed up and given a slap.’ That so called roughing up and the subsequent slap which must have been more than just a slap turned a boy fighting for justice into a vicious criminal! The rest is history.
We create monsters out of our children. Homeless children who wander the streets of our cities are often called ‘vermin’. They are branded as such because they beg, steal, sell their bodies; and if they survive they grow up to be hardened criminals. To eliminate this social cancer unscrupulous business men in Argentina even hired people to kill them. Imagine killing homeless children because they are a social problem! How ever can children be called vermin? How could they be killed?
If this is our attitude to these poverty stricken children can you blame them for turning to crime? They owe nothing to a society except returning the hate which had been showered on them! And then the other day I heard the loud booming voice of my friend Lawrence Hardinge. “Bob,” he said, “you should come on Friday and see our Pavement Club.” What a club! Certainly not a club that the elite would want to visit, but surely one where God is a Life Member!
Two hundred and fifty street children, first entering the gates dirty, disheveled and filthy, within minutes jumping with joy into tubs full of clean water, scrubbing and soaping themselves and then when clean and feeling good they troop into the hall which was once a church where their hair is oiled and combed by volunteers. Then the little ones are given a good wholesome meal with a huge dose of love thrown in for good measure! What a club!
I am reminded about the incident in which the Lord was talking to the senior men and women of the community two thousand years ago. Suddenly there was a sound somewhere behind. The people looked back annoyed. “Go away,” they shouted to the bunch of little children who had come to have a glimpse at their Lord. The Lord looked up from His preaching, beckoned to the little ones and gathered them into His arms. Maybe that is exactly what we are supposed to do.
Not using our hands to slap them and make them criminals, nor trigger fingers to gun them down, but arms that will gather these little homeless babes and hold them against ourselves like the Lord did..!
—Email:bobsbanter@gmail.com
We create monsters out of our children. Homeless children who wander the streets of our cities are often called ‘vermin’. They are branded as such because they beg, steal, sell their bodies; and if they survive they grow up to be hardened criminals. To eliminate this social cancer unscrupulous business men in Argentina even hired people to kill them. Imagine killing homeless children because they are a social problem! How ever can children be called vermin? How could they be killed?
If this is our attitude to these poverty stricken children can you blame them for turning to crime? They owe nothing to a society except returning the hate which had been showered on them! And then the other day I heard the loud booming voice of my friend Lawrence Hardinge. “Bob,” he said, “you should come on Friday and see our Pavement Club.” What a club! Certainly not a club that the elite would want to visit, but surely one where God is a Life Member!
Two hundred and fifty street children, first entering the gates dirty, disheveled and filthy, within minutes jumping with joy into tubs full of clean water, scrubbing and soaping themselves and then when clean and feeling good they troop into the hall which was once a church where their hair is oiled and combed by volunteers. Then the little ones are given a good wholesome meal with a huge dose of love thrown in for good measure! What a club!
I am reminded about the incident in which the Lord was talking to the senior men and women of the community two thousand years ago. Suddenly there was a sound somewhere behind. The people looked back annoyed. “Go away,” they shouted to the bunch of little children who had come to have a glimpse at their Lord. The Lord looked up from His preaching, beckoned to the little ones and gathered them into His arms. Maybe that is exactly what we are supposed to do.
Not using our hands to slap them and make them criminals, nor trigger fingers to gun them down, but arms that will gather these little homeless babes and hold them against ourselves like the Lord did..!
—Email:bobsbanter@gmail.com
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