Last of three parts
The biblical answer begins with the value of life
FOR Christians, the starting point cannot simply be telling children to behave better. It begins with understanding what a human being is.
Genesis 1:27 declares that humanity is created in the image of God. That truth speaks with extraordinary power into the moral confusion surrounding these tragedies because it addresses both the child who is angry and the child who is hurting.
To the angry child it says: “The person who hurt you still bears the image of God. His life is not yours to take.”
But to the bullied, rejected, humiliated or despairing child, it says something equally important: “You also bear the image of God. What somebody has done to you cannot determine your ultimate worth. Your life is not disposable either.”
James 1:19-20 tells us to be “slow to anger,” because human anger does not produce the righteousness of God. This does not mean denying anger or pretending injustice does not exist. It teaches something our children desperately need to understand: “Being wronged does not make every response right.”
And Galatians 6:2 commands us to “bear one another’s burdens.” That is not merely a private spiritual virtue. It describes the kind of community we desperately need to rebuild around our children, because a community becomes meaningful when somebody takes responsibility for what everybody else has noticed.
The harder question is directed at us
Perhaps we should therefore resist asking too quickly, “What is wrong with our children?”
That question conveniently puts the problem entirely upon them.
The harder question is directed at us adults: What kind of children are we forming?
What are they learning about anger by watching us? What are they learning about human dignity from our public discourse? What are they learning about conflict from their homes? What are they learning about revenge from the entertainment they consume? What are they learning about worth in a culture increasingly obsessed with attention, followers, virality and achievement? And when they are hurting, have we built families and communities where they believe someone will actually listen?
Children do not automatically become the hope of the nation simply because they are young. They must be formed into that hope. They must be loved, disciplined, listened to, guided, corrected and given meaning. They must learn how to suffer without destroying themselves, how to become angry without becoming cruel, how to seek justice without becoming unjust and how to experience rejection without believing that either their life or somebody else’s has lost its value.
This is why the safest school will never simply be the school with the highest walls or the most guards. It will be the school surrounded by families that know their children, teachers who notice them, churches and communities that refuse to abandon them, responsible adults who keep lethal weapons beyond their reach and a government that recognizes strengthening the family as part of strengthening the nation itself.
When a child kills another child, therefore, we are witnessing more than the failure of school security. We are being confronted with the consequences of what a society forms and what it fails to form.
And for a country that so proudly professes faith, family and the value of life, perhaps that is the most painful challenge of all: whether the values we repeatedly proclaim have actually become the values by which we live, govern, parent and raise the next generation.
The Filipino family is called the foundation of the nation for a reason. If cracks are appearing in the lives of our children, we cannot simply reinforce the school gate while ignoring the foundation.
We must strengthen the family. We must recover the formation of conscience. And we must teach every Filipino child, again and again, two truths that must never be separated: Your life has immeasurable worth, and so does the life of the person who has hurt you.
