Sacrificing Children to Molech |
The tradition of sacrificing children is deeply rooted in most cultures and religions. For this reason it is also tolerated, and indeed commended, in our western civilization.
Naturally we no longer sacrifice our sons and daughters on the altar of God, as in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. But at birth and throughout their later upbringing, we instill in them the necessity to love, honor, and respect us, to do their best for us, to satisfy our ambitions -- in short, to give us everything our parents denied us.
We call this decency and morality.
Children rarely have any choice in the matter. All their lives, they will force themselves to offer their parents something that they neither possess nor have knowledge of, quite simply because they have never been given it: genuine unconditional love that does not merely serve to gratify the needs of the recipient.
Yet they still continue to strive in this direction because even as adults they still believe that they need their parents and because, despite all the disappointments they have experienced, they still hope for some token of genuine affection from those parents.
Excerpt from pp 37-38
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting
WW Norton, New York, NY (2004)