Christain parents and the blame game.

By Lord Jereth

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that especially christians will
go to place the blame of their own innadequacies as parents on someone
or something else. Just as gawd is the eternal father figure that human
nature seems to need to fathom it's universe and it's place in it, so
is the devil the guy they blame everything else on. The desperate need
to be able to pin blame on anyone else other than one's own self is as
much a part of the human psyche as self preservation. In fact, they are
two faces of the same instinct. The idea of gawd and a devil make it
easy for the religious person to place blame on anything that they can't
understand or don't want to have to take the responsibility to control
and no one does this better than the typical christian. Anything that
doesn't fit into their idea of how the universe should be run is
automatically the work of Satan.

In my day it was heavy metal music. Bands like OZZY Osbourne, WASP, Led
Zeppelin, Iron Maiden (who's lyrics stemmed almost exclusively from
history and classic books including the bible itself) and many countless
others were incarnations or at least helpers of the Low One. But before
this there was Elvis with his girating hips who was going to send all
our daughters straight to a sexual hell, Chuck Berry who's guitar was
the very instrument of the devil, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and so
on. These bands and artist are thought of as extremely "white bread"
now and many christians listen to them on a daily basis now as music from
a more innocent time but in their day they were supposedly paving the
highway to hell and blamed for the all the troubles of the youth.

Parents of all walks of life play the blame game but none do it better
than the christian zealot. The 'Trenchcoat Mafia' school massacre and
many others - "What were they listening to?" or "What movies did they
watch" or "Was it the television violence?" were some of the first
questions that were asked - How about "Did the parents not take the time
needed to keep control over their little gun toting maniacs?" How many
parents sat with their kids and explained things like gun control and
responsibility with firearms? How many listened to the cries of their
teenagers for help in dealing with their problems? How many took the time to
disciplain their brats as young children so they would grow up to be
responsible teenagers and adults? How many explained that what happens in
movies and the TV isn't real and should not be copied as a way to solve
problems - and especially -WHY-? How many parents actually TALKED with
their children and spent time with them inspiring a bond that would
ease their child's lonelyness and frustration?

Before you, the reader, get all high and mighty on me, yes I have two
children of my own - and they are well adjusted little kids even though
- or maybe because - I don't promote some sorry religion as an excuse
to my own shortcommings. I sit down with my kids and talk with them
about these things and my wife and I are very active in their schoolastic
and emotional lives. They are still highly rambunctious and just as
mischievious as any other two boys would be but they know right from wrong.
They understand what sex is about and the dangers that game can bring
them at their age, what drugs are and why they aren't healthy, firearms
and their dangers, and they have a healthy outlook towards
entertainments such as TV, movies, books and music. Funny, if I had a dime for
everytime someone has remarked about what well mannered kids I have ....
must have been the luck of the draw - a fluke I guess, right? Admittedly
that's quite possible, but my kids aren't knocking the next door
neighbor's daughter up, going on a killing spree at school or walking around
being drug enduced zombie drop outs. I don't mean to imply that they
are perfect or that we're perfect parents - far from it - they have just
as many problems, and in some ways more, than the average kids but -WE-
deal with them as a family.

Today it's the Power Rangers, Pokemon, digimon and Harry Potter. It
seems anything that becomes popular with children is automatically a
vehicle for the devil - ever notice that? Could it be that it takes the
kids' attention from their parents' being the center of their universe and
those same partents need someone to blame that on? If so, could it also
be that is because the parents themselves don't take the time to
inspire their children into that kind of relationship with themselves? Harry
Potter being the newest craze and taking the world by storm is a work
of the devil because, as the christians see it, little Harry promotes
the use of "witchcraft". As good an excuse as any, I guess. Hello!!!!
It's a kids book for crisakes! If you'd take the time to teach your kids
the difference between fiction and reality maybe ... - oh wait,
christian in general don't have a good enough grasp of that themselves now do
they?

My bad - never mind.