The father was right.
There must be rules around the house.
Children must obey their parents.
Speak when spoken to.
Come when they’re called.
Pick up their toys.
Clean their room.
Do their homework.
Don’t run in the house.
Do their chores.
Don’t talk back to their mother.
Eat their vegetables.
Ask for permission.
Stop crying.
Or they’ll get something to cry about…
—
So, the father ruled with an iron hand.
No stepping out of line.
The kids were duly punished for each infraction.
They were beaten, deprived of food and water, locked in closets.
But there were a few exceptions.
What father doesn’t have favorites?
The children tried to bargain.
Bargaining failed.
No one may question authority.
And the house fell into chaos.
—
The father wanted absolute control.
He found resentment and resistance.
One can be right about the need for rules
And one’s rules can be mostly right,
But the application of them,
The enforcement of them,
Can be wrong.
Being a father doesn’t give a man the right
To be cruel,
To lack understanding,
To be merciless,
To be brutal,
To make everything about his power.
—
Children learn that too much control
Leads to chaos.
That the object of chaos is often more control.
These two are not opposites
But monsters that feed on each other.
Eventually all the good intentions in the world
Will not save the children – or the father.
Yeats wrote “things fall apart.”
Sometimes it’s not about the rules
But how they are enforced.
—
A loving father leads through example and compassion.
His children want to be like him.
The rules grow out of his being.
There is hardly any need to enforce them.
Control is the desire of self-centered men
That create chaos to seize control.
The just man knows that control of others is a myth.
The only control that counts is self-control.
Children learn this,
Not by rules,
But by how the rules are applied.
In the 1960’s, the spy farce, “Get Smart,” portrayed the good guys as C.O.N.T.R.O.L. and the bad guys as K.A.O.S. The acronyms reflected the two-sided world view of the Cold War era. We’ve labored under this notion for most of human history. Our side is good. Their side is bad. We must control others to prevent chaos. There can be only one right way. Any other way is evil.
It seems to me the coldest war of all might not be between communists and capitalists, democracies and dictatorships, or even religion and atheism – as strange as this sounds – but between rationality and irrationality. The fight between “us and them” creates its own kind of chaos which calls for more control which leads to more chaos. This war can only end in hardship or bloodshed. And once again the winner will write its history.
In my little poem, the father isn’t necessarily the father of a family unit, and the children aren’t necessarily the only people under the father’s thumb. I’m reminded that “He judges the world with justice; He governs the people with equity.” [Psalm 9:8] This contrasts with the human father, or the human ruler, who must exert control, or else. If we want a more just and equitable world, maybe we need to reconsider what it means to be a leader as well as what the rules are for in the first place.
May all people unjustly imprisoned or injured find healing and those who were killed rest in peace. May their families and friends find solace. May the world wake up before it’s too late.
MurrayWorks 