WHEN HISTORY TURNS CHILDREN INTO ENEMIES

WHEN HISTORY TURNS CHILDREN INTO ENEMIES

There comes a moment in every troubled age when history grows heavier than the human heart.

The stories of yesterday pile upon the shoulders of the living. Old wars speak through new voices. Ancient fears walk through modern streets. The wounds of grandparents become the anxieties of grandchildren. Memory, which was meant to teach wisdom, begins to demand repayment.

Then a child appears.

A child carrying no rifle. A child writing no policies. A child planning no battles. A child whose first language is not ideology but hunger, laughter, tears, curiosity, and hope.

Yet history looks upon the child and sees not a human being but a prediction.

The face disappears behind a narrative.
The name disappears behind a category.
The child becomes a symbol, a demographic, a future threat, an unfinished enemy.
This is one of the oldest tragedies of humanity.
Before violence reaches the body, it reaches the imagination.

People are first transformed into abstractions. Neighbors become strangers. Strangers become opponents. Opponents become enemies. Enemies become less than human. And when humanity vanishes from sight, conscience soon follows behind.

History has walked this road many times.

It has marched through empires, crossed borders, entered villages, and stood beside battlefields. It has whispered the same dangerous promise: that peace can be secured if only enough fear is obeyed.

But fear is a poor architect of the future.
It builds walls that become prisons.
It plants seeds that grow into new wars.
It leaves behind memories that future generations inherit like scars.
The child condemned today becomes the story remembered tomorrow.

And so the cycle continues.
Yet there remains another way.
It begins with the courage to see what history cannot fully explain.

To see a child before a category.
A person before a narrative.
A human soul before a political identity.

To recognize that every child arrives in the world not as the carrier of ancient guilt but as a bearer of untold possibility.

For civilization survives not when it remembers every grievance, but when it remembers every person.

The future is not protected when children become enemies.
The future is protected when humanity refuses to let them become so.

And perhaps the measure of our conscience is this:

Whether we can still see the child standing before us when history demands that we see only the enemy.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
June 10, 2026