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Commentary
REGARDING CHILDREN: Story of 'Precious' told too often Audrey Ward, Mar 10, 2010
Audrey Ward
By Audrey Ward Special Contributor
Four of us from our congregation saw the matinee show and talked about it later over dinner. Are we just sheltered? Do people live like this? Really?
The girl’s name alone—Precious—twists a tiny peg into your heart with its awful irony. Yet director Lee Daniels has the power to tell the dark story of a child’s deep physical and sexual injury with a strangely enlightening dimension.
At first, I listened and made an effort to be still. But not for long.
Girls and boys like Precious are everywhere. More isolated, perhaps, in big cities within confined spaces, but not limited to any economic or racial lines. All with differing details; all hidden in a silo of the silence they must keep.
Using the young and vulnerable for the personal gratification of adult compulsions secretly devastates small and large communities, and hides within the walls of homes, schools and churches.
One thing I like about Jesus is that he sees deeper than our questions, and according to him, there’s no place better to lift up a child than in the pulpit.
If we trust the Christian story, we believe that God chose to be known to us in the human form of a baby—messy for sure, and the most vulnerable among us. I’d say that’s where Jesus secured his audacious attitude in welcoming a child, saying, “In truth I tell you, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter God’s realm” (Matthew 18:6).
As for baby Jesus, he grew “in wisdom and in favor with God and all people” (Luke 2:52). That’s how children are meant to mature. As parents we don’t underestimate what hard work it is to create an environment that provides strong structure yet is careful not to trample the child’s boundaries.
When children who are being hurt manage to tell their truth, they fear a response of disbelief that is like pouring acid on their wounds. They fear the shame of “damaging the reputation” of a “good man.” Or being blamed for fissures in social and family structure. Or perhaps the suspicion of “asking for it.”
Of course there is another side to Jesus’ words: “It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones” (Luke 17:2). Jesus turns tough when it comes to crimes against kids.
Some attempt to find a way out, like Y, a 15-year-old girl whose parents asked the pastor for the name of a family lawyer. Her father was under arrest after Y told her story to a school counselor who believed her. But her mother was furious and said this child had been a problem for years. When Y was 13, she’d made a serious attempt on her own life.
Seven years is the average time a child is molested in his or her family. Boys almost never tell and as a result, the statistics skew toward girls. “A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW,” says Andrew Vachss, a New York lawyer whose clients are children. “There is no Geneva Convention for kids.”
But still, here’s Jesus, who continues to lift up our children. Every one of our children, including the child now grown who never told. It is not too late for healing from the deep trauma, guilt and shame. I am convinced that the suffering of every Precious is as great a grief for God as it is for us.
The question is, can we hear? How are we making a difference for the children around us—now? Sure, it gets complicated. But it’s worth it to work through every tangled detail.
The Rev. Ward is pastor of the United Methodist Church of Saint Helena (Calif.).
Audrey Ward
One thing I like about Jesus is that he sees deeper than our questions, and according to him, there’s no place better to lift up a child than in the pulpit. 
