Dear Editor,
It is with a heavy heart that I write this letter having read the account in the Sunday Observer of May 24, 2015 of the man who "took" 15 phones left by President Obama's Secret Service in a locked hotel room.
His lawyer claims that he "didn't know what he was doing" and so he received a suspended sentence. But, I am trying with all my might to fathom how, by any stretch of the imagination, could anyone in his right mind think that it was okay to take 15 phones that he did not purchase and was not given, and disposed of them.
But while I am alarmed at this obvious lack of conscience and sense of morality, I was even more alarmed to read that they recovered three of the phones from his mother.
I realise with distress, though, that one of the major factors eroding the moral fabric of our society is that some mothers do not teach their children right from wrong. It begins with them turning a blind eye when the child brings home things from school that do not belong to him. Many times these objects will have the names of other children boldly written on them but it is not seen as a crime; after all, it is only a book or a bag or a geometry set. But that is where it starts! Today a book, tomorrow a phone, the next day a goat or cow, then who knows? Sometimes, it is these same mothers who will turn a blind eye at the bloodstains they wash from their sons' clothes because the son is "providing" for the family.
Parents, especially mothers, need to realise that they have a God-given duty to raise up their children in the fear of the Lord. I know that many people now feel that God and the church are irrelevant, but even if there is no belief in God, just one's innate sense of morality should tell one it is not okay to take other people's property, it is not okay to receive goods that you know were not purchased legally, it is not okay to benefit from the proceeds of crime.
May God help us as a society to return to the values and attitudes of our fore-fathers, rich in moral fortitude and the fear of God.
J Thompson
Mandeville
jaqsprat@hotmail.com
Parents are part of the problem
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It is with a heavy heart that I write this letter having read the account in the Sunday Observer of May 24, 2015 of the man who "took" 15 phones left by President Obama's Secret Service in a locked hotel room.
His lawyer claims that he "didn't know what he was doing" and so he received a suspended sentence. But, I am trying with all my might to fathom how, by any stretch of the imagination, could anyone in his right mind think that it was okay to take 15 phones that he did not purchase and was not given, and disposed of them.
But while I am alarmed at this obvious lack of conscience and sense of morality, I was even more alarmed to read that they recovered three of the phones from his mother.
I realise with distress, though, that one of the major factors eroding the moral fabric of our society is that some mothers do not teach their children right from wrong. It begins with them turning a blind eye when the child brings home things from school that do not belong to him. Many times these objects will have the names of other children boldly written on them but it is not seen as a crime; after all, it is only a book or a bag or a geometry set. But that is where it starts! Today a book, tomorrow a phone, the next day a goat or cow, then who knows? Sometimes, it is these same mothers who will turn a blind eye at the bloodstains they wash from their sons' clothes because the son is "providing" for the family.
Parents, especially mothers, need to realise that they have a God-given duty to raise up their children in the fear of the Lord. I know that many people now feel that God and the church are irrelevant, but even if there is no belief in God, just one's innate sense of morality should tell one it is not okay to take other people's property, it is not okay to receive goods that you know were not purchased legally, it is not okay to benefit from the proceeds of crime.
May God help us as a society to return to the values and attitudes of our fore-fathers, rich in moral fortitude and the fear of God.
J Thompson
Mandeville
jaqsprat@hotmail.com
Parents are part of the problem
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