When I came against the teaching of self esteem 40 years ago, many believers were defending it. While the parents were treating their own parents with a reasonable amount of respect, they were in the process of teaching their children to treat them with disrespect when they become adults.
Pampering and indulging the children to maintain peace in the house only managed to create future monsters, now the adults who are treating their elderly parents with dishonor and disrespect. They feel equal to their parents rather than approaching them in reverence.
There are many parents who are now feeling broken and estranged from their own adult children for two reasons, the first one is the divorce and remarriage problem and then there is the cultural influence of our children in public schools. The teachers treated the children as equals even allowing them to call them by their first names, which is clearly a breakdown in authority. While the parent at home was attempting to teach authority and honor, the teachers at school were teaching them to think of themselves first.
I have read articles written by estranged parents from their adult children that give us clues as to why the children are acting in this fashion. The parents are lamenting the fact that their adult children are treating them contemptuously after they come back home to live when they couldn't make it in the world. Not only are the adult children treating them with disrespect, they show no gratefulness for the charity of their parents. There is a sense of scorn in the adult child's attitude as though what their parents are giving them is a right rather than a gift. These stories indicate to me that many parents have been pampering their children all along or they would not be coming back home to live with an attitude of entitlement and contempt. Godly children seek to take care of their aging parents rather than expecting their aging parents to carry them.
Sadly I believe this attitude toward parents is the mentality that slops over into their view of God, they feel they have the right to salvation and wealth, rather than seeing it as a blessing for which to be grateful. It is difficult for those who feel entitled to ever be humbled in order to come to Christ.
My guess is that many of these parents have been pampering their children all along, allowing them to speak disrespectfully while giving them their desires every time they had a tantrum. Little did these parents realize that pampering and bailing out a naughty child at ten years of age, would result in bratty and immature adults later.
Not all parents who encounter this immense disrespect have been bad parents, even if the children claim they were in some way. Many parents did the best they could, in their humanly imperfect state, but took good care of their children even raising them while deeply concerned about them.
Our culture has lost something along the way, that was important. As children we were taught to treat parents with honor and respect whether or not we agreed with them. We were taught to speak to them with kindness even if their lives were not what we thought they should be. We never raised our voices to our parents as young adults, that was completely unacceptable. And, never did we snap at them to intimidate them.
Now we have children and their spouses who treat us with contempt, acting superior, smart mouthing over the smallest matters, while demanding attention for themselves. They demean and manipulate the parents, working them emotionally because of the love they know their parents have for them.
The moral of the story: because parents were far too interested in being liked by their children, while the culture placed pressure on weak parents to capitulate to the self esteem teaching, we now have an entire generation of disrespectful, arrogant individuals who lack empathy.
This all happened because of the removal of God from our culture. If the Bible had been the rule book for raising our children, we would not be going through this mess now.
The principles of the Bible were what directed the country for many years since it's beginning, so much so that even those who were not born again loved those rules and principles that governed us. That's all gone now! How can we expect to regain it when each day another principle is thrown out, in favor of useless psychological pablum.
Psalm 9:17, ”The wicked shall be turned into Hell, and all the nations that forget God.”
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