While I was growing up there were many times when people threw insults at one another. Some were just childish slang and others mean-spirited epithets designed to cut deeply. We have all heard or experienced such insults, either toward ourselves or someone we love. But there is one insult that in my opinion tops the list; one that is more insulting than anything I have ever heard and consequently more dangerous to the unprepared mind than any other.
Imagine if you would, a child raised in a loving home; happy, content and well cared for. This child wants nothing more than to please his parents and live to be like them when he is grown. His father owns a small business into which he has gradually introduced his child and the child willingly learns about what his father does and daily takes on more responsibility in the hope of one day taking over the business for himself. His parents teach him their beliefs, how to live, how to treat other people and how to be successful.
Now, imagine if you can, a character introduced into this idyllic little scene who visits this home on a regular basis. This person wants to be helpful by giving the family some extra information by which to guide their business. The family decides to hire this person because he seems to have a wealth of knowledge about the business and about other things. He is hired not to work in the business but merely to inform the family of important knowledge and events that will effect them.
While the child is still quite young, the parents decide to go on a vacation, leaving the hired man to mind the store and watch over the young child. As soon as the parents have departed the hired man changes the business. The prices are raised to reflect the greed of the hired man and his jealousy of the store owners. He plans to make himself rich from the profits gleaned while the owners are on vacation. The man and his wife, into whose care the parents have left their child, now take great pains to correct what they believe to be a false sense of freedom in the child's mind. Instead of being invited to learn and help in the business, like with his father, the child is forced daily to fulfill a large list of requirements, chores, rules and behaviors laid down by the couple in order to meet the profit quotas they have set for themselves in running the business.
Time passes and the parents have stayed away longer than they planned, being delayed by travel difficulties and bad weather. The hired man and his wife rejoice in the extra time and renew their efforts to extort as much as they can from the owners. However, by this time the child has begun to rebel at the force and coercion that has been applied to his life. He has begun to hate the business and now wishes only to be free of those who have thus abused their authority. After one particularly hard day, the child in exasperation and disgust throws down his work and exclaims, “I quit! And I'm telling my parents about you. You are not helping them, you are making things worse. They would not want you to do all these things with their business. I've been watching you and I am going to tell my Dad when he comes back and you won't have a job here any more!”
At this the couple look knowingly at each other, smile and say, “It's time.” Calmly, softly and with many flattering words, the man and his wife take the child by the hand and lead him outside and with manufactured tears in their eyes begin their sad tale. “You have no parents,” they sob. “They simply do no exist. You grew out of the ground. And if you still want to think that your parents used to exist, then you must admit that they are dead now. Do you see this building and everything around it? Well, when it grew out of the ground we decided that it wasn't a really good place for a building, so we are taking it down and...”
By the time the man and woman finished talking, the child knew that they were crazy. But he was only a child. Who would believe him? Sadly, no one did. Every day that his parents delayed their coming, the child was drilled in the rudiments of his new life. “You have no parents; you grew out of the ground; you have no parents; you grew out of the ground; over and over and over until finally one day, the child began to believe it. After many days his parents came home and to their great dismay the child did not recognize them. “You-cannot-be-my-father-because-I-grew-out-of-the-ground,” the child chanted. “That's absurd!” shouted the father. “Who has done this to my child?” Slinking out of sight were the man and his wife. They had a big bag of money and were headed for the door.
Can you imagine such an insult to a child, such an outrage, such a scenario! Of course not. No one could be so cruel and surely no child so stupid as to believe it. It's a good thing it's just imaginary then, right? Right.
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