Stop the Violence

Stop the Violence

  Today is Stop the Violence Day. Even in writing that it seems ridiculous to have to say. As children we are taught, from an early age, to be kind to one another. We have religious books that will tell us to be kind to our neighbors, and to want for our brothers and sisters what we want for ourselves. And since I doubt that anyone wants death and destruction brought upon themselves or those that they love...I doubt we are thinking of it in that way.

  Violence has become a way of life for most of our world. And to support the violent action we are often making excuses for it to continue...both on the domestic and global fronts. We will often hear an abusive person making excuses for his/her behavior stating that they were led to that dark place...often by the victim. When we hear such an outlandish statement, we often shake our heads. And we react in this way because it is juvenile for us to believe that another person could lead us into such violence. After all, we are individuals. We have our own minds and thought patterns. We certainly can not be led astray by another individual...can we? We couldn’t become so angry that we would want to strike someone that could be considered weaker than us, could we? We couldn’t actually hope for people to believe that a child could do something so awful that they would need to be battered or bruised...but do we?

  Tempers flare, but we are responsible for those actions. And if we can not control the actions of our bodies or mouths...we should reach out for help. I learned some startling statistics that I wanted to share with you, so that we could see this problem in black and white.

1.   In South Africa 1300 women are raped everyday

2.  In the United States, 683,000 forcible rapes occur every year

3.  Child abuse is reported every 10 seconds

4.  Every 9 seconds a woman is beaten

5.  5-6 children will die from complications of abuse every day

6.  Most Rapists commit 10 rapes before they are caught

7.  4 million women a year are seriously abused every year

8.  1 in 5 high school girls are sexually or physically abused by a partner

  These statistics, while startling are completely factual. There is nothing worse than being abused. This violence has to stop. We are literally killing each other...every single day.

  No one...has the right to put their hands on another living soul. We do not have eminent domain over another person. People are not property. We can not be held or contained and if we are...it is a violation of our civil rights. It is criminal to make anyone do anything against their will...whether spoken or implied.

  I pray that we use this day as an example of how we are supposed to live. We need to learn to live in harmony, with ourselves and others.