The suffering of children
Thursday January 12, 2006
Subject: To Barbara- re your reply
Thanks for your response to my letters. It is good to write and be understood and thought well of. My signs on my car and in the paper,”Would Jesus spank a child?” was a spurt of speaking out against the so called Christian churches who did not tell people that “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” was not Christian but was old testament, a statement by King Solomon who lived about 900 BC (Before Christ). My encylopedia states “that the older Solomon got the more despotic he got.” And I believe that the bible states that his son Rehoboam was very cruel. So those who are spankers are followers of King Solomon teaching children to be afraid of an authority figure, where Christianity is about children feeling loved.
You see I have a personal vendetta in that respect as my sister(1y, 3m older) and I were taken to Sunday School and Church with our parents, from toddlers and on, and heard about how compassionate Jesus was and how he respected children and we learned to sing “Jesus loves me this I know, For the bible tells me so.” but at home I got the King Solomon treatment by my father as I have told you, and after that my mother spanked some.
So you see I totally agree with everything Alice Miller says in her latest book. Although I would go one step further if one is made to be obedient to a parent, you can’t carry out the first commandment, ‘Have no other gods.’ (Of course I now know ‘god’ to be the true self) Even Christ told the pharisees when asked where or when would they find God, that the Kingdom of God is neither Lo here or Lo there or when, the Kingdom of God is within you. So I say to find “god” you look within. (psychotherapy)
The church has perpetuated ‘sin’ crime by not X-ing out Solomon, 4th commandment. I know how to answer church people who still go for spanking.
I told my youngest daughter winter of 1978-79, that I wouldn’t contaminate the waste basket with the bible. Even the new testament a whole lot of meaningless rhetoric.
More on religious zealots. Living in Canada, in a most southerly town, I am next door to the United States of America, and regularly listen to the USA news. Tonight there was much about President George Bush appointing a new judge to the USA Supreme court. Many good people are afraid that this appointee might be an anti-abortionist and if so would tip the balance of the court in that direction and abortion could again become illegal in the USA, and go back to the dark ages in that respect. These anti-abortionists have no brains.
Thanks for being there and wishing you and Alice the best.
Evan Grant
Kingsville, Ont. Canada
Near the 42 parallel of latitude N.
AM: Dear Evan, I was very moved by your thoughts concerning Schiller and agree with you that Schiller, thanks to the first four years of life on the side of his loving mother, might have had the potential to understand the meaning of his rebelions in Wilhelm Tell and the other Dramas. But in his time the presence of an enlightened witness was unthinkable. Even today, it is rare and their amount is not growing fast. The proof? My last book was published in Germany in 2004, but you were the first reader who was interested in answering the essential question I asked: How can we explain the fact that a man suffers so much, sees so much, and has however not the slightest inkling that his terrible tragedy has something to do with his suppressed childhood and youth? I am glad and very grateful that you try to enlighten religious people. To me, it is so absurd, even in the Christian religion, that people imagine a loving God needs the suffering of children and of his beloved son on the cross. They can imagine this because they have been told very early that they were spanked to please God.