Monthly Archives: October 2025

October 26, 2025 · 1:00 am

Population Decline

File:バス座席のステッカー (6451369381).jpg

Elderly couple in Japan, Source flickr.com, Author Jordi Sanchez, Teruel (CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic)

Developed countries are experiencing a significant population decline [1].  

The size of the workforce in developed countries is shrinking, while the proportion of older men and women is rising due to longer life expectancies, lower fertility rates, and lower birth rates (this last attributed in part to a rise in LGBTQ identification).  Reliance on social services by an aging population is meanwhile on the rise.

This is impacting national economies, defense, housing, education, and culture [2].  There is, also, a potential impact on child abuse/neglect, domestic violence, and elder abuse.

Japan

Japan’s population has been shrinking for the past 15 years [3][4].  The stress of urban life is taking a heavy toll.  Technology can only replace human beings in certain labor sectors. 

A growing number of businesses in Japan now cater to parties of one:  restaurants, bars, karaoke clubs…even wedding chapels.  So called “alternative romance” is highly in vogue among the young, with robots replacing human beings in relationships and marriage to inanimate objects seen as acceptable.  

Meanwhile, the elderly are being left behind in the digital revolution [5].  There is a widening rift between tech-savvy youth and digitally challenged seniors.  Only 54.2% of Japanese aged 65-74 use smartphones, compared with 85% of American seniors. Only 7.2% of Japanese over age 80 use the internet, compared with 44% of Americans of similar age. 

This is greatly increasing social isolation among the elderly, as well as a deepening the generational divide. Continue reading →

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October 19, 2025 · 1:00 am

Mercy, Justice, and the God of the Old Testament, Part 2

“Padre Eterno (The Eternal Father)” by Giovanni Bellini (1500-1505), Civic Museums of Pesaro, Italy, Source https://www.pesaromusei.it, (PD)

WARNING:  Graphic Images

The relationship abuse victims have with God is, as they say, complicated.  Since we see God through the filter of our own experience (a lens which can be distorted), victims both of childhood abuse and domestic violence tend to view Him as harsh and punitive [1]. 

Though God does not cause evil, we may well blame Him for our pain.  There are those who have rejected Him because of that. 

In considering the nature of God, however, we must not overlook the fact that He is forgiving.  That idea may seem at odds with the picture of God presented in the Old Testament.  But it is central to God’s character.

Forgiveness

Out of His great love, God created a world in which His children are given freedom to sin.  They are not, in other words, required to love Him.  The Old Testament tells the story of how Israel repeatedly abandoned God, repented, and was forgiven.  

“But You are God, Ready to pardon, Gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, Abundant in kindness, And did not forsake them” (Neh. 9: 17).

The Book of Hosea brings this down to a personal level.  The prophet is instructed by God to take a wife who is a harlot.  She betrays him with other men.  Yet he takes her back and treats her kindly.

Many, of course, point to the people God instructed the Israelites to kill.  These critics conclude God must be an angry and heartless god.  But God’s motives should be considered.  This is where His justice comes in.

A.  Egyptians

The ancient Egyptians worshiped a vast number of gods, i.e. demons (1 Cor. 10: 20), estimated to be over 2000 [8].  During the 400 years the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, they served as witnesses to the Egyptians concerning the one true God.  God then gave the Egyptians 10 more chances (the biblical plagues) to turn away from idols.  They chose not to do that.

B.  Canaanites

The Canaanites (among them the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the people of Ai) were involved in practices abominable to God, including child sacrifice and sexual immorality. 

  • Children were burned alive to the Canaanite god (demon) Molech to ensure their parents’ prosperity [2A].  Music was used to drown out the pitiful screams.
  • The Canaanite goddess (demon) Ashtoreth (known as Ishtar in Mesopotamia, and Astarte in Phoenicia) had male and female prostitutes who performed erotically, and engaged sexually with worshipers [2B]. 
  • Gender-bending was one of Ashtoreth’s characteristics [2C][3].  So parades in honor of the goddess (demon) not only featured temple prostitutes, but lesbians, homosexuals, and transvestites (sexual orientations and gender identity not in accord with God’s intention for humanity) [2D][4].  
  • The goddess (demon) Ashtoreth was, also, deeply involved with magic, the occult, and the casting of spells (practices abhorrent to God) [2E][5]. 
  • Mind altering substances like opium, cannabis, and the blue water lily are thought to have been used in worship [2F][6].

Idolatry is not harmless.  It corrupts the heart [7].

Canaanite children who were not sacrificed themselves would have been brought up in this depraved culture, and have followed in their parents’ footsteps.  Such indoctrination could, itself, be considered a form of child abuse.

The Canaanites were given ample time to repent, as an earlier Scriptural reference to the sin of the Amorites (another Canaanite group) not yet being “full” (Gen. 15: 16) implies. Like the Egyptians, they chose not to do that.

God wanted to prevent the Israelites from adopting similar idolatrous practices (Lev. 20: 1-8; Deut. 18: 9-11), and He wanted to protect their children (Lev. 18: 21). 

C.  Ninevites (Assyrians)

The Assyrians in Ninevah (notorious for violent and terroristic tactics like torture, dismemberment, and decapitation) repented after hearing the word of God from the prophet Jonah, and God stayed His hand of judgment [9].  God then explained to Jonah that His forgiveness was motivated by love even for these wicked people (Jonah 4: 10-11). Continue reading →

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October 12, 2025 · 1:00 am

Mercy, Justice, and The God of the Old Testament, Part 1

“Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Ten Commandments” by Gebhard Fugel (c. 1900), Source https://freechristimages.com/bible-stories/ten-commandments.html, (PD)

While it may be surprising to find the Old Testament discussed on a blog about abuse, spirituality and abuse are closely entwined. 

Satan attempts to use the abuse we suffered as a weapon to destroy victims’ faith.  Many of us do lose our faith as a result, seeing God as harsh and cruel, if we continue to believe in Him at all.

Even those who were never victimized may have difficulty reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament.  God, of course, has never changed.

Because of this confusion, it is worth examining God’s true nature.

Mercy and Justice

God described Himself to Moses in this way:

“And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation'” (Ex. 34: 6-7).

God is, therefore, both merciful and just.  These two qualities are in tension with one another in human beings.  Not so with God.

  • The Hebrew word translated as “mercy” or “merciful” is associated with the love of a mother, with compassion from the very womb [1A]. 
  • Graciousness refers to undeserved favor or grace [1B].
  • Longsuffering refers to patience with our mistakes and sins [1C]. Indeed, God is not only willing to forgive our sins, but desires to take them upon Himself [1D].

The phrase “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children” will have special resonance for abuse victims, since it conveys the idea of generational sin or abuse.   Children are not punished by God for the sins of their parents [2].  Patterns of sin often, however, continue from one generation to the next. Continue reading →

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October 5, 2025 · 1:00 am

Shame and Our Response to Trauma

Public shaming: “For being born somewhere else” by Francisco Goya (1810-1811), part of a series about victims of the Inquisition, Museo del Prado (Accession No. D04052), Madrid Spain, (PD)

Many of us who suffered through childhood emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and/or neglect carry a great deal of shame.  This is, in part, because we feel on some level that we deserved the abuse; in part, because of our reaction to it.

There are numerous articles explaining that the abuse was the fault of our abuser; that we were wholly innocent victims.  We may accept that, at least intellectually.  There are fewer articles, however, addressing our response.  So the shame lingers.

An Impossible Standard

As adults, we look back and hold ourselves to an impossible standard.  Whatever our response may have been as children, we feel it was insufficient.  We should have known enough to avoid the situation.  Somehow, we should have gained control, found a way out.

  • We should have screamed, never mind that we were so confused, stunned, or terrified we could not speak and did not think anyone would help us.
  • We should have run, never mind that there was no means of escape.
  • We should have fought back, never mind that the abuser was more than three times our size and had the power either to end our lives or abandon us.
  • We should have told someone, never mind that we had no way to describe what was going on, that are loved ones were threatened, that we were actually concerned for the abuser, and/or that we did not expect to be believed.
  • We should have left home, never mind that we were too young to live on our own, had no ability to support ourselves and nowhere to go.

We should have ____ .  You fill in the blank.

Limitations

None of this self-criticism takes into account two vital things: 

  • First, that we were children with limited means, if any, of confronting such evil.
  • Second, that the human body is only engineered for a limited number of responses to trauma. Those are fight, flight, freeze, and surrender [1].

Continue reading →

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