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If It Feels Right


GeorgeW

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Neon, I'm a product of 60's and 70's. Believe me when I say I know the difference between trash and immorality. :rolleyes: I did not always make the correct choices.

It also seems a double standard to me today that we blame young people for the immorality on American TV yet ignore the fact that it's the older generation of adults producing these shows and starring in them for young people to watch. It just seems to me that TV is all too often the go to punching bag for all the problems with the morality of young people when grown ups don't want to take responsibility for their own bad parenting.
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Somewhere a while back, I posted a view from a Jewish perspective that in order to hold an adolescent accountable the parents and the community would first have to have been perfect ... perfect in understanding, no double standard between mother and father, no double standard between "do as I say" and do as I do", etc. So just how old is this problem?

 

Myron

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Why do we humans have such a need to blame? Identify someone to be held at fault, accountable, for every problem, everything we don't like or feel comfortable with?? Why do we so assume everything is someone's fault? Perhaps we are so prone to look for a cause, someone or something at fault, to be held acocuntable, so as to seek absolution of any responsibility or guilt on our own part.

If we get inside the adolescent's head and heart, what we find is simply confusion and uncertainty. Babies aren't born with fully finctioning brains with programming in place, and don't come with instruction manuals for parents. Blaming, holding accountable, looks only backward for a cause, absolution of ourselves and our own actions,resolution can only be found looking forward,for a solution.

 

Jenell

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Well, yeah, sometimes that, too....but I was talking more about when its really someone else's problems...I think we just tend to think someone might blame us even if we had no part in the cause, or that we know of, anyway..maybe that's part of it, we don't know of any, but fear we, or someone else, might find we did after all, even if unknowingly.

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Myron wrote: "the parents and the community would first have to have been perfect ... "

 

Problem is, there is no one-size-fits all that's perfect for everyone in every situation. I've considered upon how things my parents did and how they did it with me and my siblings, and then myself with my own children, also considering upon other influences in our environment and other relationships and experiences acting on us, and the plain simple matter is, the very same things have very different effect of different individuals and under different circumstances. What works well with one does't another. The results with one are different with another. There's no possible way to find that perfict fit between doer and done to...

 

Jenell

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Myron wrote: "the parents and the community would first have to have been perfect ... "

 

Problem is, there is no one-size-fits all that's perfect for everyone in every situation. I've considered upon how things my parents did and how they did it with me and my siblings, and then myself with my own children, also considering upon other influences in our environment and other relationships and experiences acting on us, and the plain simple matter is, the very same things have very different effect of different individuals and under different circumstances. What works well with one does't another. The results with one are different with another. There's no possible way to find that perfict fit between doer and done to...

 

Jenell

 

That is the point. Perfection is not for humans.

 

Myron

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A couple of comments.

 

First, I am not sure that anyone has blamed anyone, particularly adolescents. What has been discussed is descriptive not judicial.

 

Second, to demand perfection on the part of parents before they can instruct or correct their children is an impossible standard and it would necessarily follow that children would never receive any moral instruction. I think they should. Of course parents should endeavor to practice what they preach, but perfection? In fact, that may be part of the lesson: There are rights and wrongs and we sometimes fail, but we always should try to do what is right.

 

Perhaps, there is not enough moral instruction and the culture is teaching the principle, 'If it feels right . . .'

 

George

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Myron wrote: Perfection is not for humans.

 

Perhaps we are trying to apply the wrong standard of perfect.

 

What makes a perfect apple is not the standard to which we would evaluate an orange.

 

Perhaps we are trying to apply the standard of perfection in our God image to humans.

Perhaps in merely being human, we are perfectly human.

 

Jenell

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(snip)

Perhaps we are trying to apply the standard of perfection in our God image to humans.

Perhaps in merely being human, we are perfectly human.

 

Jenell

 

I think the second sentence speaks to the core of things and says a lot.

 

Added.... PS, AND leaves a lot of room for forgiveness.

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