I looked at the clock on Saturday and saw it was almost noon. Oh, no. I hoped I hadn’t missed a new cooking show by an area resident! I flipped on the Food channel, but something else was on. Maybe it was on TLC. No, but here was the insane program of mother’s entering their babies and young kids in beauty pageants. My heart went out to the small contestants. They were so adorable and innocent as they cried and protested at what they were put through to satisfy the vanity of someone else.
“No!” the pudgy three-year-old tot exclaimed. “Don’t wanna be princess!” as her mom relentlessly ran a comb through her wet hair. Greater powers than hers prevailed, though, and the baby was beautified, cajoled and forced into a routine that was sad and disgraceful. Suddenly it was as if something came over the child as she pranced, whirled, did gyrations and posed like a wind-up doll on stage, to the glee of her parent.
“Are these supposed to be blurry?” a 10-year-old contestant said after contacts to change her eye color were inserted with difficulty. She was having trouble with her “clippers”, plastic teeth worn to cover her own gap-toothed smile. This was unreal! Her mother had made her a Vegas-style costume copied after nightclub showgirls. “If I don’t win, I still want to be a show girl when I grow up,” the child announced.
It reminded me of a speaker we heard once in Mississippi whose dad had told her, “If you keep that school-girl figure, you can be a Bunny in Vegas.” She found herself doing just that, but in a miserable lifestyle. She said one day a backslidden Christian, a fellow “Bunny”, came up to her and said, “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re under conviction.” The girl didn’t know what that meant, but it set her on a path to seek God. She prayed to be saved, and with no one to guide her, she decided to baptize herself in her own bathtub. “Yaba-daba-do!” she chortled as she came up out of the water. God took those small beginnings and turned her into a powerful preacher.
Sometimes I feel like Jeremiah, the prophet, when I see what is happening in our world. Everywhere are excesses juxtaposed with deprivation. Food has become such an obsession it has its own channel on television. Sports and entertainment have become idolized. Fashions are immodest and/or indecent, especially for the young, while young girls are sexualized and exploited. The list is infinite.
What happened to the simple lifestyle we used to raise our children? My own kids are under enormous pressures in raising their families. Thankfully, they are guiding them in the right direction. My grandchildren are involved in the wholesome activities of band, football, cross-country running, part-time jobs and youth ministry, but I will not stop praying for them. The stakes are too great.
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