Saturday, September 16, 2017

Learning the difference between a terse and precise answer and an elaborate explanation!

God's Boys will be good boys!
When I was a child, we were constantly discouraged from giving elaborate details about any circumstance whatsoever! We were told to answer, yes or no and no other specifics were required. We were beaten, based on the evidence and we had no lawyer or recourse. Your best advise was to lie and deny, because the result wouldn't change, regardless. I don't think that is the right way. Neither do I think that you should engage children in long discussions when they are guilty of some wrongdoing. Their perceptions are childish. They will not understand the severity, until their maturity. Suffice it to say that was wrong and this is the consequence. That is enough. We give them tools to judge right and wrong and bring strong discipline based on those rules. Hopefully, this will mold their behavior to live within the light of conscience.
From what I see in the South, there is an element of specificity that is neglected in this way. In New York, we look at that as taking up too much time and energy. What else is more important, my southern friend reminds me, than to give greater tools to the conscience to do what is right? Oh dear, my NY mind says, this is too much work and we wouldn't get anything else done, if we took every step to the right and left to task by the word of God. New Yorkers ridicule the expressions of conscience that seem too fastidious to us. Take a half an hour to tell us that you went here or there, when I asked you something else. Is that an oversensitive conscience? Was the journey started at 8 or 8:30? Did you have to return for 2 or 3 items? I didn't ask you that! We get frustrated and our minds wander and we hear nothing of that story for frustration at wading through the details. Was it completed or not? That is all we care. God cares for both! God wants to knead details into the completion and completion into the longwinded. I hope that our children will learn the art of a direct answer and the sharpening of conscience that our Southern Brethren know.
Love of Genuine Honesty!

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