Where Is the Outcry?

I was riding through the slum one day, just looking out the window at the people passing by, when I noticed a little girl. She looked to be about five years old, with her hair shaved close to her head and carrying a small tattered backpack over her tiny shoulders. She wore the characteristic uniform of a school girl and I instantly knew she would be walking home from a day in class.
Now looking back I can't imagine what it was that made her stand out. But I'm sure I'll never forget it now.
She walked with her head bent low, as if trying not to draw any attention to herself, but as she passed by this man (who looked to be about 25 years old) he stepped partly into her way and stroked her cheek in a sexual gesture.
No one said anything, no one noticed, and in a moment he had moved on and she was on her way again.
It took me months to realize why that had disturbed me so much. I had heard stories of young girls who had lost their lives because they had bled to death after being attacked on the way home from school. I talked with girls who slept in the same bed as their mom's "guests".
If a man could make a gesture such as that in public to a girl who looked to be about five times younger than he was and get away with it, then I could only imagine the horrible things that went on in secret, in the dark when no one else was watching.
And since then I have wondered often to myself, where was the outcry? Did it become so much a part of their culture that they saw nothing of it? That though some might acknowledge it as wrong, nothing could be done about it?

Just in this one year alone there have been 17 suicides in our valley, all under the age of twenty-five. Afew days ago there was yet another one, a young boy from East Wenatchee.

I was talking with someone from our church about it and she said something that really hit me hard. She said, "What I find hard about all of this is, where is the outcry?" Instantly my mind went back to the image of that girl in the slum so far away. I again felt the injustice and the great sadness I had felt when I saw that a culture could become so twisted in its views and its ways that its very own children suffered for it. And that those who survive suffering would become twisted themselves. They would become a mere product of their culture that would ultimately help to shape their culture even further.

And then I saw it.

We are the same.

Our children are suffering too.

And in an instant my heart broke for our culture. Where is the outcry for the child who felt it was okay to take his own life? What is being done? What can we do?
When did it become okay to take God out of our schools? I know many don't believe in God but let me word it this way. When did it become okay in our culture to take positive influence of any kind out of our schools? When did it become okay to take out any BIT of good for our children, knowing that there is so much bad taking place? Why are we not equipping them better?

How many of our children are going to suffer before we start to cry out for them? To cry out against the culture of suicide?
I have mourned for the culture of Kibera (the slum I did ministry in). I have mourned for the children there. But I have not mourned for my own, or the children here. And I am sorry for my part in the silence I have helped to make.

It takes more to speak out against a culture of depression and suicide then just to say that it is wrong. It takes doing something about it.