An Unruly Child

2000-11-14 18:33:00

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 one 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.

"The mystery of Godliness; how great it is."
Joseph Smith