Become like a Child

I wrote this a little bit ago.  It's not very Thanksgiving-y, but it will do.

After I went to the very informational fireside done by Kristen Jenson on porn proofing our kids, thoughts have been rattling around in my head.  Her presentation was amazing because it delved into the science of why children and pornography are such a dangerous combination.  Her message was basically this:  children have undeveloped brains that are in two main parts-- the thinking brain and the survival brain.  The thinking brain develops last-- cognitive thinking-- and in a normal, functioning person that finishes around 26 years old.  It is the reasoning center and helps a person make judgments.  The rest of the brain keeps the body going-- survival, pleasure, emotion. When a child's brain is exposed to images or ideas that are pornographic, the non thinking part of the brain does it's job. Unfortunately, their cognitive thinking isn't there to help them make judicial decisions about what they are seeing.  My older brother was in a terrible accident when he was 17.  It damaged his frontal lobe.  He could learn the difference between right and wrong all day long, but when faced with a decision, he routinely chose wrong.  Why?  Because he lost his ability to reason through things.  Now he is a fully grown man with the reasoning skills of an 11 year old.
All this got me to thinking.
Why did God destroy (or command/allow to be destroyed) the people at the time of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jaredites, Nephites, and the peoples that the Israelites were supposed to clear out of their Promised Land?  Why did massive and great cultures like Greece, Rome, Babylon, Aztec, and Mayan fail?  I'm not foolish enough to think that they fell because of a solitary reason, but most of these civilizations embraced immorality to a consuming degree.  How does a civilization get to this point?
It's all about the children.
Everyone is born with the light of Christ.  Everyone.  God said it.  That can be trusted.  It puts all of us on equal footing as we pass through the earthly gate into mortality.  Humanity can and does lose the ability to access the light of Christ.  The two great sins are sexual impurity and murder.  I've always understood the reasoning behind this is because it is mocking God's power to create and end life.  As I've done some minute research here and there on the subjects it has become clear to me that the acts of sex and (we're going to boil it down to) anger, change the brain.  The science behind Kristen Jenson's presentation was phenomenal.  We become addicted to these things because we are human.  It is in our very nature to want sex so that our gene pool survives.  It is in our nature to be angry when things go wrong or when someone hurts us-- it also enables our survival in a very basic way.  There's this idea that only certain people are "natural" addicts.  I don't think so.  We are all a few sprays of dopamine away from a behavior that starts as a habit and moves towards full blown addiction.
It's bad enough when these things hit adults who have a developed frontal cortex, but what about when it starts affecting children?  What then?  Well, then we have a generation of people who never learned to control themselves who now have addictions.  When those addictions are sexual or violent in nature, and especially when they are mixed, there is a generation without hope of self redemption.  But we know we can repent!  Ah, but who will help them if there is no one left to help?  When Abraham spoke with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah (as recorded in Genesis 18), he begged the Lord to spare the city for 50 righteous men, then 45, then 30, then 20, and then 10.  If there had been 10 righteous people in the two cities, they would not have been destroyed.  Yes, it was the depth of their sin, but it was destroyed because that society could only perpetuate the sin.  There was no one to teach the children otherwise and the light of Christ born in each child could not overcome their very natures when they went so far awry.
It is the same story in the time of Noah in Genesis 6.
5 ¶And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

 11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

 12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.  

The cycle of violence was the downfall of the Jaredites, the Nephites, and the two South American superpowers.  It affected the Greeks, the Romans, and the Babylonians.  The Greeks and the Romans (at least-- I haven't read up on the other civilizations) also fell full on into sexual sin.  They embraced homosexuality, pedophylia and had an overall pretty loose definition of moral conduct.  

That's why this is all about the children.  That's why we can't (as adults) be okay with immoral behavior because it doesn't affect us personally.  It does.  It creates a world where immorality becomes the norm.  Who will teach the children if there is no one left?  Who will help them to make the decisions that they are not prepared to make, before they follow a path which will not lead to happiness and will lead to destruction.
Our prophets have counseled us to be kind to one another and to keep ourselves pure.  That's not a good idea or even a great idea.  It is essential.  We have to overcome the natural man.  He is an angry guy who loves feeling good in the moment.  If we want to save our children and the future generations, we need to be educated on what happens when violence and sexual sin enter children's lives.