A question I received: A twelve year old child was stabbed yesterday by another child. How do you explain it when such young children have a desire to hurt someone?

My Answer: The cruelty in children’s relationships comes from our common nature – the desire to receive. This desire is always growing and there is nothing anyone can do about this. In the past, children were more naïve and better disciplined, so it was possible to control them. But it’s no longer possible, and therefore people aren’t even trying to control them.

While in the past teachers were able to control children by shouting at them and giving them orders, now they are afraid to enter a classroom since they don’t know what awaits them there. This isn’t a fault of the teachers or the educational institutions, because they lack the right method. They are trying to create an educational system, but man’s egoistic desires cannot provide them with the correct solution, since we are just as bad as the children.

Education happens only by example, but we lack the proper model of existence ourselves, so we can’t set an example for them. What do we show them on TV and on the Internet, and all the other places they get their information from? I think the world is already beginning to understand that it has no power over the next generation. The process is already out of control and it’s impossible to do anything about it. However, it’s a good thing that the evil is being revealed, because people will now be able to hear the right explanation. When the education crisis really breaks out, people will be ready to listen.

We must explain to people that the young generation is unable to exist within the boundaries of the old educational system. Similarly, we are unable to correct the economy, family relationships, culture, and education within the boundaries of the old systems. People must hear that the entire gamut of problems has a single solution. So what is that solution?

People have to study the Upper Governance, which comes from absolute goodness on the one hand, but strictly defines our behavior on the other. This is education: It is teaching those who are just starting their lives about the connection with the Creator or the Upper Force, because the Upper Force is the only thing that influences us. This is what we need and what we have to give our children: a plan, a program, a science, an understanding. We have to teach them about how to achieve success in the reality they are living in.

People have to be taught about the most important thing: how to live well! And they will be able to live well only under the condition that they reveal the Absolute Goodness. And this is the essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah: to enable a person in this world to speed up the revelation of the Creator.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of Religion and its Purpose,” on 02.17.2009)

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