This morning, I heard my one-zillionth report on cyber sexual predators lurking on My Space and other places, this time on NPR.

Let’s get real, folks:  the threat to our children is not found online.  It’s found in our homes.  Consider these stats (found at: http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp).

• 30-40% of child sexual abuse victims are abused by a family member.
• Another 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.
• Approximately 40% are abused by older or larger children whom they know.
• Therefore, only 10% are abused by strangers. The median age for reported abuse is 9 years old.

Given that the median age for children who are abused is 9 (and I don’t think there are any 9 year olds on My Space), the whole thing about the huge threat of cyber sexual predators just doesn’t hold water.  But if we can imagine the threat is just online, we can ignore the fathers, brothers, uncles, and family friends who are the real danger.  But confronting that truth is just too scary, so let’s keep it all out there in cyberspace.

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While in Germany and Poland I visited not only the Jewish Museum in Berlin but also the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, which of course was emptied in the Holocaust.  I was struck by how, generation after generation, century after century, these people kept their faith despite pogroms and persecution, with no “light at the end of the tunnel” that they would some day be free.  I wonder how many of the evangelicals who so proudly proclaim their faith today would have the same consistency and dedication, generation after generation, century after century, if they were put in the same position  as these people who never “found their Savior.”

At Auschwitz a group of what I assume were Israeli teenagers were entering just as my group was departing.  They had draped themslevs in Israeli flags, a sort of defiant “screw you, we survived” gesture at the site where the Nazis had tried to wipe their people off the face of the earth.  I smiled and thought, “Good for you, kids: keep the faith.”

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