Lookimg Back
Ministerial Meandering
Looking back
The more I hear of other people’s lives, the more amazed I am that there are any real families out there at all.
Having just finished watching a series on the FTSA (Federal Transport Safety Authority) called ‘Departure’, I was struck by line that I’ve heard many times before, although not quite in the same context. An old mentor, given a terminal diagnosis, is telephoning his erstwhile protégé, and saying wistfully, “You are the nearest thing to family I’ve ever had.”
For the most part, our little congregation has had some family experience. Not many are adopted. Adoptions are not always successful either, as I know from speaking to friends who have found that out first hand.
Childhood is an exceptional part of our adult formation - any two-bit psychologist can tell you that - but the experiences of those childhood years can make or break you later on. Rather like dogs.
Of course I would bring up dogs; they are, after all, here on earth to teach us about unconditional love, which we find so incredibly hard to give.
But a dog’s formative years also dictate to a large extent how the dog will behave in a given circumstance. As an Animal Behaviourologist, I am acutely aware of the signals our hounds give us. A traumatized animal is a challenge, as is a previously traumatized child.
But there is another form of abuse which we commit upon both our dogs and our children; and that is ‘carte blanche’. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’, as Samuel Butler wrote in his poem, ‘Hudibras’.
Today - especially in North America - and it would appear for possibly the last 50 years, society has seen fit to allow the child to have the final say in any dispute. To deny this is to (apparently) abuse the child’s ‘rights’. One might be hard-pressed to pinpoint exactly what those ‘rights’ might be until this minor is actually contributing to his or her upkeep, and even providing for the household.
Until such time, the child is a parasite - albeit a dearly-beloved one. He or she contributes nothing, and requires everything; and when those requirements go beyond what is actually needed, then those desires are also met - because society says you should deny your child nothing. How insane have we become?
Parents are now taxi-drivers who turn themselves into pretzels (ghastly invention!) to meet the demands - note; no longer ‘requirements’, but ‘demands’ - of their offspring, all in the service of the ‘god’ of youth. What happened to children doing chores, earning their pocket money, helping out neighbours, painting the fence, cleaning their shoes, ironing their clothes, doing the shopping? - oh, I could go on and on, but so can you.
Abuse isn’t always with the rod, deprivation, and humiliation; sometimes - indeed, more often than not - it is in giving in to the child, accepting the absurd and upside-down customs of modern society, and becoming - as adults - so unimportant as individuals, as to almost invite elder abuse from those offspring we so doted on in their youth. So now, when we reap the whirlwind, why should we be surprised?
Philip+