Thursday, February 12, 2009

The world's best parent...

"Western civilization's first parenting story is contained in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. Its theme, in a nutshell: the only perfect parent there is or ever will be creates two children who disobey his first instruction. What, pray tell, did God do wrong that caused his first kids such pronounced obedience issues? Freud might have said that Eve resented that Adam was created first, that he was obviously the favored child. Tempting Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge was an expression of this resentment, a passive-aggressive means of lowering Adam's image in God's eyes. Grandma (previous generations) would've scoffed at this. She knew there was no psychology behind the Fall. It happened because human beings possess what animals do not: freedom of choice, including the freedom to choose wrongly. If a perfect God could not raise perfect children who were perfectly obedient, what chance do you have?

The Adam and Eve principle: No matter how good a parent you are, your child is still capable on any given day of doing something despicable, disgusting, or depraved."- p. 36, "Parenting By the Book," by John Rosemond

Now, don't you feel a lot better about things? Does the load of parental guilt feel just a teensy bit lighter? =) Have a nice day!

1 comment:

Brandy Vencel said...

Well, today I have seen despicable, disgusting, AND depraved...

So I guess I'm doing pretty good. ;)

Thanks for the encouragement.