Sacrificing children

In some ancient religions it used to be the practice to sacrifice children. Our minds recoil at the thought! Who could do such a thing? It isn't possible to contemplate it in this day and age! Anyone doing so today would be hunted down amid a media fury, condemned and imprisoned, with the key thrown away.

We don't sacrifice children any more, but instead we do the following:

• We use up the world's natural resources that took millions of years to lay down, in just a few tens of years, without a care for our children's future.
• We use carbon resources as if they were renewable, when they are not (within any reasonable timescales).
• We mess with the planet's climate to such a degree that within our children's lifetimes there will be irreparable change.
• We drive cars and ship goods from one side of the world to the other, in order to gain the materials goods we like, and so pollute the planet for our children.
• We put our own happiness and sexual lusts first, lightly putting aside any commitment to marriage and family and the care of our children.
• We over-fish the seas to the degree that our children will have little left, when so many populations depend on the sea for food.
• We live in debt, not just personal but national, to enable us to live the lifestyle we desire in the present, without a thought for our children, who will have to pay this debt back - financially and in terms of their lifestyle - in decades to come.
• When economic downturns occur and unemployment rises, we allow this to particularly hit the young, so that we can continue to maintain our comfortable lifestyle.
• We assume in the West that equality and fair trade is about enabling the developing world to rise to a Western lifestyle, rather than living our lives much, much more simply in order to sustain the planet's resources for our children.
• We argue and protest about our rights, never for a moment thinking about the needs of our children.
• And meanwhile most of our churches squabble over minutiae but say nothing about greed, colluding with all the above.

And in these ways we rape the world and steal from our children, sacrificing them on the altar of our greed, smiling all the while and saying how much we love them.

Maybe this doesn't apply to everyone.
But I'm ashamed to realise that much of it does apply to me...

What about you?