{"id":1415,"date":"2010-09-22T07:21:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T14:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=1415"},"modified":"2010-09-22T07:21:05","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T14:21:05","slug":"the-girl-in-the-dog-cage-the-lion-and-the-lamb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2010\/09\/22\/the-girl-in-the-dog-cage-the-lion-and-the-lamb\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl in the Dog Cage, the Lion, and the Lamb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhere in America right now, there is a little girl locked in a dog cage.\u00a0 A man will bind her with duct tape.\u00a0 The man will sexually abuse her while another takes pictures and videos.\u00a0 The men will distribute these materials over a vast network of child pornography file sharing servers.\u00a0 Tens of thousands of other men will look at the pictures and videos, discuss them in chat rooms, use them as masturbatory tools, and demand more.\u00a0 And they will get more, much more.<\/p>\n

I know this is true because I\u2019m teaching a course this semester on \u201cCybersecurity Law<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Most of the course focuses on commercial and public espionage \u2013 hacking, data theft, and so on.\u00a0 This week, however, the topic has been online safety \u2013 cyberstalking, harassment, obscenity and child pornography.\u00a0 Our guest speaker yesterday was the Brian Sinclair, Chief of the Computer Crime Prosecution Unit in Bergen County, New Jersey.\u00a0 While he mercifully didn\u2019t show us any of the volumes of child porn his unit has seized over the years (it is technically a felony to display such materials even in an educational setting), he described in general terms the sorts of things that commonly appear, including what he noted as\u00a0 \u201cdisturbing recent trend\u201d towards the literal caging<\/em> of victims.<\/p>\n

It is nearly impossible to theologize about something like this without becoming either morose or trite.\u00a0 Bergen County is a wealthy suburb of New York City, and most of the perpetrators of child pornography and child cyberstalking here are educated middle-aged men.\u00a0 I could write about how the corruptions of wealth and power tempt these men to think of themselves as above any sense of law, morality or decency.\u00a0 Or, I could write about the perversion of the mainstream entertainment media, and how it feeds into far darker \u201centertainments.\u201d\u00a0 I could explore how these sorts of practices explode whatever reticence I might have about the personal reality of the \u201cdemonic.\u201d\u00a0 These are worthy topics.<\/p>\n

But I feel compelled to write today about the victims.\u00a0 The girl in the cage is rarely rescued.\u00a0 As Assistant Prosecutor Sinclair explained, in the rare cases where the prosecution is able to obtain a victim statement, the victim usually has already grown to adulthood.<\/p>\n

Where is \u201cJustice\u201d for these victims?<\/p>\n

This is a piercing theological question.\u00a0 Any wise theologian will first admit that he or she cannot really offer anything like a satisfying answer.\u00a0 As a Christian, I cannot offer a satisfying answer.\u00a0 I can offer a Lament. \u00a0I can offer some action, even the meager offering of a law school course that maybe helps raise awareness.\u00a0 \u00a0And I can cling to a glimmer of hope, which I know with the heart of faith is more than a glimmer:\u00a0 Christ will return and make this right.\u00a0 Indeed, I can pray for these victims, and as I do so I can strain forward with the Church and the saints throughout all the ages towards the day when Christ will bring final justice into this world, the day of his return.<\/p>\n

We Christians have lost, I\u2019m afraid, the \u201cblessed hope\u201d of Christ\u2019s return (Titus 2:13).\u00a0 On the one hand, this is because the dispensational \u201cLeft Behind\u201d theology has perverted this hope into a wish for me<\/em> to be \u201craptured,\u201d leaving the world \u2013 including the girl in the cage, if she has not made a \u201cconscious decision for Christ\u201d (and how could she, being locked up and tortured?) — to burn in dramatic High Definition and Dolby Surround Sound.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sort of parousia porn.\u00a0 On the other hand, the this-worldly rendering of the parousia popularized by figures such as Jurgen Moltmann and N.T. Wright, while offering a valuable and necessary correction to dispensationalism, at times seems to mitigate the drama and decisiveness of Christ\u2019s personal return.<\/p>\n

The Biblical drama of the parousia is that it is a final unveiling<\/em> of what is truly<\/em> real<\/em>.\u00a0 Evil and injustice and the powers of this world are to be unmasked and shown for what they truly are.\u00a0 Christ is to be shown fully for who he truly is.\u00a0 The Church is to be shown fully for what it truly is.\u00a0 All will see and know.<\/p>\n

The girl in the cage will see and know.<\/em> If the Bible\u2019s claims about God\u2019s unwavering compassion for the poor and oppressed are true, then I have a confident hope, indeed a kind of certainty, that the girl in the cage will recognize Christ the Lamb<\/em>, will be drawn into his blessed presence, will be welcomed into the company of the saints who have held her in their prayers, will be marvelously healed.<\/p>\n

The men with the duct tape and cameras will see and know<\/em>.\u00a0 I won\u2019t presume to know the fate of any such individual person.\u00a0 Yet I am certain, based on the Biblical witness, that many of them will gape in terror and hatred at Christ the Lion<\/em>, and will justly be devoured.<\/p>\n

None of this is comforting to the girl in the cage right now \u2013 again, how could it be, while she is locked up and tortured and unaware of her own hope for redemption?\u00a0 None of it excuses the work that must be done right now<\/em> to free her.\u00a0 But it should compel Christians to echo on of the concluding prayers of the Christian scriptures, without which no Christian account of \u201cjustice\u201d is complete:<\/p>\n

He who testifies to these things says, \u2018Yes, I am coming quickly.\u2019\u00a0 Amen.\u00a0 Come, Lord Jesus.<\/em> (Rev. 22:20-21.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere in America right now, there is a little girl locked in a dog cage.\u00a0 A man will bind her with duct tape.\u00a0 The man will sexually abuse her while another takes pictures and videos.\u00a0 The men will distribute these materials over a vast network of child pornography file sharing servers.\u00a0 Tens of thousands of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-and-policy","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-mP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}