Great Construction

Juvenile Delinquency

     Recently, the tendency of juvenile delinquency is being taken up as a social problem. However, no proper counter-measure seems to have been devised yet. The various kinds of preventive measures against juvenile delinquency which are being advocated today do not seem to me to get at the core of this problem.
     That which is most necessary is to find out what lies at the root of juvenile delinquency. Here must be taken into consideration parent-children relationships, which will be compared to the relation between the trunk of a tree and its branches. It will be almost nonsense to try to prevent a tree’s branches from decaying while neglecting its trunk and roots. The basic condition for this solution of this problem lies in the full understanding of the fact that juvenile delinquency originates with the parents.
     Let me first approach the problem from the spiritual point of view. Parents and their children are connected with spiritual cords. When the spiritual bodies of the parents become cloudy, this condition is reflected on the spiritual bodies of their children through the spiritual cords. This results in juvenile delinquency. Therefore, the best counter-measure for juvenile delinquency is to keep the spiritual bodies of children as pure as possible. And this will be achieved only by keeping the spiritual bodies of the parents pure. Being ignorant of this spiritual law, parents many times are guilty of wrong thinking and commit sins consciously or unconsciously. This is reflected upon their children’s spiritual bodies making them cloudy. Therefore parents should always try to be purified by doing good, and keeping to the right path. In this way they will be attaining their spiritual growth. This is the most effective way of preventing juvenile delinquency.
     From the physical point of view, children usually follow their parents’ examples consciously or unconsciously. When parents think of something wrong or deviate from the right path, their children often become conscious of it, however dexterously parents may try to keep it back from them. Then children must naturally think: “Why must not I do the same?”
     In short, “juvenile delinquency” can be said to stem from “parent delinquency”. Therefore, when parents want their children to be good, first they themselves must try to be “good parents”.

The Glory, Number 021, page 2, July 10, 1958