It was
Saturday afternoon, April 2, 2016. Yuyun, 14, was walking home from her school,
which was about a mile away from her home in a small village in Bengkulu
province, Indonesia. As she was passing by a rubber plantation area, she was
blocked on her way by 14 young men who were drunk and sitting by the pathway.
And then the tragedy began.
This
innocent girl was beaten, tied up, choked and alternately raped to death by these men, who were reportedly 16-23
of age. Her dead body was then thrown down to a gorge about 5 meters deep, and
covered with fronds. She was found 2 days later.
This is
just one of a long series of sexual abuse cases toward underage girls in
Indonesia, and considered by many as the worst so far, when this writing is
made. A year earlier, 9-year-old Engeline made a major headline when her dead
body was found in her stepmother's backyard in Bali province. Evidently she was
sexually abused before killed. Besides, there were countless incidents reported
almost daily in the media where underage girls were victimized by sexual
predators who were mostly closely related to the victims: fathers, uncles,
neighbors, even teachers.
What does
the Bible say about sexual abuse toward underage girls?
Our Bible
does not clearly mention the sin of
pedophilia. Leviticus 18 does mention some sexual activities which are
strictly forbidden by God, but makes no clear mention of sex with underage
girls. Some have taken this fact as a clue that pedophilia is allowed in the Bible, but this assertion
cannot be farther from the truth. God said in verse 24,
"Do
not make yourselves unclean by any of these acts, for that is how the pagans
make themselves unclean, those pagans who lived in the land before you and whom
the LORD is driving out so that you can go in."
We can
conclude from this verse that the list of sexual sins in the preceding verses
6-23 contains all sexual activities commonly practiced among pagan nations in
Canaan. The absence of pedophiliac activities in the list rather implies that
this kind of perversion were unthinkable even for those pagan nations. What
does that mean? It means that what we see today in our modern world of how
young girls are sexually abused on a regular basis is much worse than what was
practiced in the world of pagans.
The Bible
often speaks of little children with great compassion. Lord Jesus, Who is our
main example for everything, spoke this way of little children when He said:
"Let
the children come to Me, and do not stop them, because the kingdom of God
belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14)
"I
assure you that unless you change and become like children, you will never
enter the Kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3)
"If
anyone should cause one of these little ones to lose his faith in Me, it would
be better for that person to have a large millstone tied around his neck and be
drowned in the deep sea." (Matthew 18:6)
"See
that you don't despise any of these little ones. Their angels in heaven, I tell
you, are always in the presence of my Father in heaven." (Matthew 18:10)
Those
perverted people who have sexual desires for children, had better take notice
of these words of our Lord! He spoke strongly against despising the "little ones", which surely includes
looking at them as mere sex toys. The act would mean despising their angels in
heaven, and in turn, despising the Heavenly Father Himself.
Sadly, our
society has fallen so deep in godlessness and immorality, rejecting the
absolute truth and moral standard set by God in His word, that not only His
prohibition of despising little children is purposely trespassed, even the
"unthinkable" act is now added to it, namely, sexual abuse.
Looking
back to what happened to that poor Yuyun in the opening of this writing, it was
mentioned that the men doing that sexual crime were under the influence of
alcohol. Of course, some would make it an excuse and put the blame on the
alcohol, not the men. They did it because they were drunk at the time. Get rid
of the alcohol, and you get the problem solved. Well, such people miss the fact
that alcohol doesn't make evil men, it merely causes the inherent evil ALREADY
in men's heart to jump out into action. Say you have a secret desire toward
that little innocent child, but social norm restricts you from doing anything
unacceptable to the society. So you keep that desire to yourself and behave as
normal as possible. But, soon after you take that alcohol and lose control of
yourself, suddenly you do the unacceptable without shame. So, it's not the
alcohol's fault, it's your desire which did it. It's like having an active bomb
within you, and the alcohol is only the trigger. Sound-minded people will blame
the explosion on the bomb, not the trigger. The trigger will be useless if the
bomb is not there. Right? In order to avoid any explosion, it's the bomb you
ought to get rid of.
So you can
conclude that these men who did the terrible act toward an innocent 14-year-old
girl were inherently EVIL from the beginning, and they just waited for the
trigger to get into action. The question is, where did that evil come from? And
how did it get its way to infiltrate young men as young as 16?
It is said
that on the spot where the crime occurred, the internet signal were
significantly strong, whereas the most surrounding areas were blank spots.
Young people used to gather there, supposedly to get anything from the internet
into their gadgets, among which are (most probably) porn contents. It's no
wonder that the very spot where the tragedy happened had been an "evil
spot" for quite some time. Of course, you can't blame that on the
internet, either. While the internet has so many, many things to offer, these
men obviously chose to access certain contents to feed their evil and twisted
desire for sex.
And then
there came that poor young girl. Wrong time, wrong place. And it turned deadly
for her.
The
Apostle Paul gave a clear hint to where such evil might come from.
"Because
those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge of God, He has given
them over to corrupted minds, so that they do the things that they should not
do." (Romans 1:28)
Living
outside God and His will, it is easy to fall victims to "corrupted
minds". Why? Because God give them over to it.
Unfortunately,
this has been more and more common pattern in our society and our world today.
When people choose to reject God and the true knowledge of Him, the
"corrupted minds" are allowed to conquer them, which make them more
and more evil, doing things which formerly were even considered bad and
improper, as if they are now normal.
That's the
reason why sexual abuse toward underage girls are "common" today as
well.
If we are
going to do something to keep our young girls away from perverts and sexual
predators, it is certainly obligatory in the short term to set precautions like
persuading these girls to stay away from isolated places, not to go out alone
at night, and so on. And of course, harsh penalties should be applied to those
who did such cruel acts to underage girls, up to death sentence if possible.
But in the long term, it is unavoidably necessary to make sure that the true
knowledge of God is preached incessantly, using any possible means. This world
is lost and in desperate need of Divine salvation which is only found in Jesus
Christ. Only in Him, humankind can be saved from sin and its deadly sting,
including the "corrupted minds" which causes nothing but harm to
others, especially the children.
God bless
us all, Amen!
