This, they have not done. And the paterfamilias grieves. Heaven knows, he has tried. He has done his utmost to teach his children. His is a firm, even-handedly instructive method. He does, mind, demand respect, both for himself and his uncompromising values. There is right and there is, most decidedly, wrong, and the choice between the two cannot be compromised. He demands justice.
The father stands in judgement of his children, he exhorts them to conform, willingly, eagerly, to his edicts and commands. This is the responsibility of a father, to guide offspring reflecting the best that can possibly be, always aspiring to reach a pinnacle of highly developed sensibilities and respectful of the civil code their father has taught them.
Their father is also a strict disciplinarian. Although quite capable of compassion and loving kindness. So he says. When the occasion demands. The occasion, unfortunately, is too frequently demanding of discipline, to bring his errant children back to the path of the righteous way their father expects of them to tread with humility.
How can he be kind and loving when they insult his expectations for them? He mourns his children's growing propensity to bitterness between one another. Their constant fault-finding with one another. Most of all, it grieves him to see that child that was most gifted with original revelation of their father's divine presence, scorned and victimized and tormented by his brothers.
An unpleasing sight to a father wishful that his progeny behave as he would wish them to. All the more so that he has spent so much eternal time patiently attempting to teach them the way. They pretend to listen, then find innumerable reasons why that way is not amenable to their aspirations. Forgetting who it is that gave them life and opportunity.
Pity the father. His investment in humane instruction has gone awry.
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