Unruly Child II

2000-12-28 11:49:00

I open my e-mail tonight to discover that Chris has made twenty postings since my last post a day ago. The worst part is that only one or two of them have been close to being on topic, but even if they were this is an overkill rarely witnessed in the archives of Spirit web. I think the most I have posted in a day was maybe five or six times.

I would expect that if I, being the main teacher of the list, or Rick being the owner made 20 postings in a day that we would receive some just criticism even if we were on topic. We would look like mother hens trying to smother the other posters.

Now, I know there is no rule stating that you can't post twenty or even hundred times and I would hate to see us make dozens of new rules because of over-extending behavior of one member. I think however, the point I am making is illustrated in a past post I made which I quote as follows.

An Unruly Child
A child desired attention from his parents so he started leaving clever notes written on the refrigerator in crayon, thinking that his witty sayings would convince his parents of his beaming intelligence.

The parents saw this and smiled and were concerned, for the mother had to spend time cleaning the unwanted crayon marks off the door.

They sat the child down and said,

"Your writings are very clever and we encourage you to write them elsewhere but please do not write on the refrigerator door any more for it causes us extra work to clean off the marks."

The child listened, but was not discouraged and wrote again upon the door.

The parents were aghast and brought the child to them and said.

"Did we not tell you to cease writing on the door for it causes us problems?"

The child smiled cleverly and said,

"But I did obey you. I did not write upon the door. Look and see - I printed my messages!"

The parents were incredulous and said,

"The printing causes the same problems for us as your handwriting so let us make ourselves clear. Please do not write with crayon on the door in either handwriting or printing. If you desire to write there is plenty of paper available and any family members who are interested can then read them."

The parents thought this would solve the problem but the child was not yet discouraged and wrote again upon the door.

The parents looked once more and were flabbergasted and scolded the child, "Did we not tell you to cease writing with crayon upon the door?"

The child smiled a clever smile and said. "Yes you did and I was obedient. Look again. I did not write with crayon, but used Magic Markers."

Now the parents were becoming irritated with the child and said, "You are being willingly disobedient to the spirit of our commands. You will hereby cease from writing on the door or we will have to ban you from even touching the refrigerator."

They thought that this would finally solve the problem but the next day they were unnerved at what they found on the door. There were about 20 pieces of paper with writing on them taped on the door. The mother did not like the mess they created and removed them and the parents one more time called forth the child and said to him:

"We know what you are going to say. You are going to say you are obedient because you did not write on the actual door but you wrote on paper that happened to be placed upon the door."

"Yes" said the child. "I was obedient. I did not write on the actual door." Then the child started to cry and said, "I have tried again and again to be obedient and I am still not good enough. What do you want of me?"

Then the parents sought to teach the child that the spirit of cooperation is more important than strict obedience and told him that he could not touch the refrigerator door until he learned this lesson.

Note
Hopefully this analogy makes a point to those who disregard the spirit of our rule which involves OT posts and we do not get dissertations on how the child mentioned above is damaged because of psychological abuse from the parents.

End of quote...

In other words, it looks as if Chris sees himself in trouble because of infringement of certain rules so he is now pushing the button in other areas where there are no literal rules.

So please Chris, have respect for the purpose of this list as long as you are here. As it is you are likely to give some a sore finger pressing the delete button over and over. How about keeping yourself to three or four posts a day and spend those extra ten hours of writing time in doing good deeds for some children or serve some soup to the homeless?