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Eye on the world: Preserving childlike innocence
In “Nepal’s earthquake: push to rebuild without the hand of child labor” The Christian Science Monitor reports that exploiting child labor is a common liability after natural disasters in developing countries, such as the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Anti-child labor advocates are trying to reduce the child labor in Nepal’s brick-making industry by incentivizing companies to adopt legitimate business practices. This is “an opportunity to bring pioneering change to one of the world’s most exploitative industries, using the relief aid pouring into Nepal to force kiln operators to stop using child labor…. Whether the earthquake will add to the ranks of child laborers or lead to reformation of the brick-making industry is a question being watched around the world.” With an estimated 168 million children in the labor force worldwide, courageous social and corporate steps must continue to be taken to protect adolescents.
Ideas on this subject:
From the Bible:
The creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
—Romans 8:21
From the writings of Mary Baker Eddy:
Children should be allowed to remain children in knowledge, and should become men and women only through growth in the understanding of man’s higher nature.
—Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 62
Beloved children, the world has need of you,—and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives.
—Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 110
Related articles from The Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel:
In “Protecting childlike Innocence”: “Yet even as we see and hear reports that suggest children’s innocence is being undermined, we can realize that there is an innate innocence in each one that cannot be tarnished or diminished. It is their innate purity as God’s children.” And “Our prayers to better understand this are needed, and we can expect that they will lead to more effective means of protecting children—of valuing, respecting, and guarding their genuine spiritual identity.”
In “Dissolving the darkness of indifference”: “To realize clearly the God-derived power expressed in childlikeness is, at least in some measure, to understand where genuine authority lies—not in wicked, carnal thinking but in Almighty God. And prayer that embodies something of this understanding can certainly help lighten the darkness of the world.” And “The world has need of innocence, of spiritual steadfastness, of our stand for the reality of good. Such qualities can’t be victimized; they must, and will, be victorious.”
The articles above and others dealing with this subject can be found on JSH-Online.com or on CSMonitor.com.