Prophetesses of the Age

It's Not My Fault

As chutzpah goes, this was as big as it can ever get.  A despicable woman had systematically tortured and abused her children in the worst way--including ripping off toe nails and pouring salt and boiling water on the wounds--and justified herself by saying it was the fault of the state.  The government had not helped her enough. 

This grand effrontery was taken up publicly by the woman's lawyer, Lorraine Smith:

At her sentencing yesterday, the mother's lawyer Lorraine Smith criticised Mr Key and Ms Bennett, from whom her client sought help with her daughter months before police discovered the badly abused girl.  "The Prime Minister and the Minister of Social Development failed both [the girl] and her mother.  "CYF was not engaging with the family at all."

To correct the record, we would lay down a few more accurate observations justly arising from this cowardly monstrous behaviour:

Firstly, it illustrates that human depravity is alive and well on Planet Earth.  The one group of people who will have mixed emotions about the woman will be Christians who well know that the same depravity on display lurks in their own hearts.  This does not lead to excusing the woman in any way.  Rather, it involves an attitude spoken about by songwriter Eric Clapton, "Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself." 

Secondly, it exposes the feminist lie, so often promulgated in the eighties and nineties heyday of feminism, that men were more violent and depraved than women.  We were told that women were more sensitive, caring, loving, nurturing--well, more human really--than men.  An evidence was the preponderance of men in jails.  No, women are not more deadly, but as deadly as males.  Depravity is not gender specific.  All men and women, descending from Adam by ordinary generation, are born in sin, under sin's reign and dominion.  That is why we all desperately need a Saviour, the Saviour.

Thirdly, it shows where our culture and established religion are heading.  Cowardice prevents our people from facing up to the truth about our moral condition.  Ever since the Garden of Eden, man has sought to shift the blame from himself on to others or circumstances.  When indicted by God after his rebellion, Adam lamely said, "The woman Thou gavest to be with me, she . . . ".  For her part, Eve did precisely the same, "The serpent . . . "  Fast forward to this very hour.  Both the depraved mother and her lawyer agree: it was not her fault.  "The government we have over us failed . . ."

Here is the problem.  Our culture systematically and formally and ideologically agrees with the woman's proposition.  Everyone is now a victim.  The government, the Great Redeemer, is at consequently fault and blame for everything wrong.  The monstrous mother and her lawyer are actually prophetesses.  They proclaim the spirit of the Age.  It is arguably a bigger act of chutzpah not to acknowledge them as such. 

When Social Development Minister, Paula Bennett reacted so powerfully and viscerally rejecting the allegations that the government had failed the "poor woman" we doubt not that the vast majority of the country's viscera moved in approbation.  It was the mother that had failed that child.  

But a sometimes emotional Ms Bennett vehemently dismissed Ms Smith's claims yesterday.  "That child was so deeply failed by those parents that were supposed to protect her," she said.  "So it's fine to sit back now and try to blame someone else or a government while in the meantime you are dehydrating, starving and beating your child.

"I don't stand up and take responsibility for that. She should stand up and take it herself."

Bennett was asserting something not often heard today: that parental responsibility trumps government authority over children almost every time--until parents start abusing their children, and then the state--as the ministry of justice to punish evildoers--legitimately intervenes.  Nevertheless, despite the gut-reaction of both Bennett and the nation as a whole--she presides over one of the largest ministries of government which implicitly denies and undermines parental responsibility. 

It asserts that social development (including parenting and family life) is the responsibility and purview of the State--a proposition our forefathers would have found bizarre.  If she were consistent with the very responsibilities and existence of her office, she would have agreed with the allegation of failure.  So, sadly the abusive mother and her lawyer have a point, albeit it noxious and poisonous and ultimately false.

Finally, we are thankful that the Judge in sentencing the woman pulled no punches.  He categorically asserted that there was nothing, no mitigating circumstances, no government failures, no background of abuse suffered by the mother that could justify what he called, "sustained abuse, amounting to torture.''  The buck stopped with the parent.  If only our perverted, blame-shifting culture consistently thought the same.