The Manstealer and the Runaway Slave

This is a follow-up to my last article, Property Rights and Human Resources.

An issue that has grown in the United States during the last forty years is that of how to prevent and remedy the abuse of children by their parents. A quick web search that anyone can do reveals that the chosen approach, driven by politics rather than a real desire to help, has failed. The laws have created an agency which is itself above the law, with perverse incentives to remove children from good homes while leaving other children to be abused or murdered in bad homes, based on mandatory and often anonymous reports by people whose testimony cannot be challenged in court. The standard of proof for removal of a child is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” as in a criminal proceeding (even though criminal charges may be brought in relation to the removal). It is not even “by a preponderance of the evidence” as in a civil lawsuit. It is rather, “the best interest of the child” as determined by the agency. In practice, this is a standard of “guilty until proven innocent” as the agency’s motives and its characterizations of the family and home under investigation are never questioned.

The agency is able to get more funding and create more jobs based on number of removals, creating a cash cow for foster parents who often (statistically) are more focused on the financial bottom line than on what is truly in the child’s interests. And based on a simple cost-benefit analysis, much more profit can be made by removing good, socially adapted children because they don’t cost as much to care for as children who have truly been abused and carry the attendant mental traumas and sequelae.

There is also significant circumstantial evidence that the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric profession is driving the train. Children, if not traumatized at home, are traumatized by the removal process, and “require medication to cope.” Thus, although most of us in society cannot legally obtain mind-altering drugs if we want to, children under psychiatric observation cannot legally refuse to take mind-altering drugs (and what is most disgusting, is that these are often the same, identical drugs which are criminalized for most of society because they are considered dangerous).

Many good people go to work for the child protection agencies with the best of intentions. They go into the system, stay for a few years, and leave. The workers who are most likely to stay for the long term are the ones whose personal values align with the perverse financial incentives built into the structure of the system.

The family court system is full of cases of children being removed from their families with no evidence of any wrongdoing by anyone. Evidence is unnecessary. Because abuses within the system are so widely known (almost everyone knows someone who has had their rights abused), there have been widespread efforts to reform the system in the past few decades. I believe that future historians will look back on this system in the same way that we today view 17th, 18th and 19th century medical practices. At one time, when people were sick, doctors simply drained their blood until they weren’t sick any more. People entering the new and exciting field of surgery would try to cure people by removing their “useless” organs until they were no longer sick. Many people hoped that enemas would cure all their problems. Mentally ill people had holes drilled in their heads to relieve pressure. Later they had sections of their brains removed until they exhibited no more signs of mental illness. Historically speaking, the cures for diseases have often been worse than the diseases themselves.

We look back on the quaint people that lived back then and feel sorry for them because they naively submitted to what we now view as dangerous quackery, usually in peril of their lives, and often with fatal consequences. But there is nothing new under the sun. Every generation believes that it has made a quantum leap of progress from the previous generation. Every generation deludes itself when it naively expects to receive posthumous approval and recognition from future generations. I believe that future generations will look back on the actions of our child protection agencies with the same sense of tragedy we feel when we look at parents in the early industrial revolution who sent their 7-year-old children to work 18-hour days in factories in search of “a better life.” Of course, future generations will make their own silly mistakes which won’t be recognized for many decades.

What does YHWH’s law say?

Matthew 2:18:  “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”  One of the methods that YHWH’s enemies have repeatedly used to diminish his people has been by attacking their children.  In Exodus we find an edict to kill all the baby boys of the Hebrews so that the people have no strong deliverer.  YHWH was stronger than the Egyptians, and he delivered the Hebrews anyway.  In Matthew, we find a similar edict to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem so that again, the people have no strong deliverer.  YHWH saved Yashua alive anyway, and the last two thousand years testify to his success as a leader (distortions of his message notwithstanding).  YHWH’s enemies know that if they can sever parents from their children using any available means, they can weaken the Kingdom of YHWH.  What they always forget, however, is that YHWH is stronger than their machinations.  They may do tremendous damage, but YHWH’s people will prevail in the end.

The Bible refers to people who kidnap other people and sell them for profit as “menstealers.” I’ll quote the relevant verses:

And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. Exodus 21:16

If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you. Deuteronomy 24:7

Related verses: Mattew 26:15 (Yashua sold for thirty pieces of silver).  Obviously, to be subject to capital punishment, this is a serious crime of the utmost gravity.

Ordinarily we associate a profit motive with the African slave trade of the 1700’s.  But there is no mistaking the financial incentive system which enables people to make a living through the strong-arm kidnapping of people under the age of eighteen from their families.  We mislead ourselves if we think that we are more civilized than the old slave traders.

What about children (and parents) who are truly abused and in peril of their own lives?  The answer can be found in the laws of servants.  Consider Paul’s analysis:

Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.  Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.  And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.  Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Galatians 4:1-7

YHWH’s Law makes perfectly clear that people are to treat their servants well.  How much more, then, must people treat their children well.  But what if they don’t?

And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake. Exodus 21:26,27

If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. Exodus 21:32

Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.  Deuteronomy 23:15,16

Under the law of servants, a child that is maimed, or is in fear of his life, is at liberty to leave.  A person finding the child may not return the child to his parents without the child’s consent.  The society should have mechanisms in place for such children (and battered spouses) to gain support as they transition to a new life.

Significantly, note in these cases that the affected party must take initiative and leave.  If someone from outside comes in and takes the child without the child’s consent, that person is a man-stealer punishable by death.  But if the child leaves on his own initiative, then someone who gives that child a safe harbor is keeping YHWH’s law.  Contrast that with our own society, which has held opposite views.  The fugitive slave law of the 1800’s said a runaway slave must be returned to his master.  YHWH’s law says he must not be returned.  Modern laws say that a runaway child must be returned to his parents.  YHWH’s law at least implies that he must not be returned.  Modern law says that a child may be kidnapped from its parents, as long as the kidnapping can be characterized as “in the child’s best interests” (an absurdity) and as long as the kidnappers receive a government paycheck.  YHWH’s law says that a child must not be kidnapped from his family, and anyone who does so is worthy of death.

We see here Biblical mechanisms which protect the weak from ongoing abuse by people in authority over them.  When we stray from Biblical solutions to problems, the problems don’t go away.  We end up inventing our own innovative solutions to the problems, and invariably assign the wrong tools to the wrong jobs.  Our ways are never as effective as YHWH’s ways.  In most cases, our mistakes are tolerable.  What is absolutely intolerable is the attack on children by the enemies of YHWH.  May YHWH end this abuse of his people.