An ongoing discussion....

in our household concerns who left out the syrup. Or the pickles. Or the butter. Or insert your food of choice here. I am often called in as the negotiator for those who eat in this house to answer the question who should put away the syrup, pickles and butter.

What will bring quickening wrath to the table is when any boy declares that he did not use said syrup, pickles or butter as his reason for not being responsible to put the item away. To which I reply, "I don't eat syrup, pickles or butter so perhaps I should not buy them anymore."

Making the point that putting away the table things is not on a you use it, you bus it work ethic. If that were the case then moms all over the nation could rejoice with the ever growing list of things we no longer have to do. Think about it.

I do not wear boxers. So therefore I will not wash them.
I do not wear camouflage pants. So therefore I will not mend their buttons.
I do not play the Wii. So therefore I will not make sure the games are easily found within their cases.
I do not eat tacos. So therefore I will not buy the ingredients or spend the time making them.
I do not eat on plastic plates. So therefore I will not load them into the dishwasher.
I do not drink orange juice. So therefore I will not pour it into glasses.

And so on. Think of the self serving freedoms available to us, ladies, if we lived our days according to these standards? Perhaps bon bons and soap operas are now within my grasp.

I understand that with my boys this is part of the character and work ethic training that comes with the territory of teaching them to be responsible adults that look beyond self serving needs so that they become servants.

I desire that the boys would see the truth of the matter, stewardship and responsibility for whatever needs to be put away, as indivisible from their experience, whether they ate the pickles or not.  Their experience does not absolve them from their responsibility.

Unfortunately, many people today either did not learn this same truth while younger or have since become self-deceived in similar matters today. Perhaps the poisoning of relativism has invaded their thinking and therefore, their actions. Unable to discern truth as truth, they instead see a truth of their experience as divisible from a truth of the matter.

This logic would wreak havoc in the courtroom. Imagine a jury of peers all declaring a defendant innocent of a heinous crime, in the face of overwhelming evidence proving the defendant's guilt, with the jury's explanation being that the defendant had not committed the crime personally against each of them? Is that how injustice should be fought? Is that how the innocent are protected?

It is childish when the boys try to get out of what they know to be true and right. It is reprehensible when an adult behaves in the same way.