Our Covetous Society

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's."

(The Holy Bible, King James Version, Exodus-Chapter 20)

cov·et
/ˈkʌvɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuhv-it]

–verb (used with object)
1.to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others: to covet another's property.
2.to wish for, esp. eagerly: He won the prize they all coveted.

–verb (used without object)
3.to have an inordinate or wrongful desire.
[Origin: 1175–1225; ME coveiten meaning "culpability"]

forms
cov·et·a·ble, adjective
cov·et·er, noun
cov·et·ing·ly, adverb
—Synonyms 1. See "Envy"
—Antonyms 1. renounce

Thanks to another mother/friend for the idea for this post. We moms are good at detecting those who covet....especially those who covet the child of another person. I am quite sure that all the self-justifying by adopters has effectively diminished their feeling of being covetous, but covetous they are.

I have seen remarks posted such as this one on a board that shall remain nameless (but NOT blameless). "I saw that KID with that baby! She couldn't have been more than 16 and there she was with that baby. That baby should have been mine! She had no business, at her age, keeping that baby when there are people like me, older, married with more money, that NEED a baby!"

Now, if that wasn't a covetous statement, then the Bible needs to be re-written to include, "exception to the commandment on coveting..thou shalt covet thy neighbor's child....God says, go ahead, knock thyself out."

I was young when I gave birth to my raised children. I didn't delay childbearing because I had already felt the pain of empty arms and wanted to fill them again. As a younger mother, I had healthy children from fresh ova, had the energy and stamina to chase down toddlers and deal with the roughest parts of motherhood and I had more years ahead of me to see my children grow and develop and form their own lives. Yeah, sometimes things were rough, financially, but we always managed. WHY do we hate the idea of young women giving birth when that is what nature intends? That "biological clock" thing is REAL.

So, the prevailing wisdom has twisted the concept into a scenario that it is OK to go for the big bucks and the 5-bedroom McMansion and the big 401K first, priority numero uno, and then take a baby from a fertile, YOUNG woman as a God-given RIGHT? Something is rotten in Big Brother-ville. Somewhere along the line, the industry of adoption has blinded this nation to the most sacred bond that exists in Nature...that of mother and child...and used the idea of a "better" society to include eugenics, ie., children being raised by the "right kind of people."

If this trend continues, the natural family is an endangered entity. Read "1984." Read Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." Look back at Hitlers vision of a super-race, pure and powerful as he saw those concepts. People, this is happening! It is happening in the churches through the auspices of the "so-called" Moral Majority, the $1.6-billion a year adoption industry, the political far right and the fear mongers that scare us with the perceived threat of extra-marital sexual activity.

That whole concept is patriarchal in concept, as it is. Those commandments do not say, anywhere, that "thou shalt not have sex while unmarried." It does condemn adultery, but that has to do with married folks kicking over the traces. That unwed sex concept, instilled by a misogynistic St. Paul and the patriarchs of Judaism and the early church have more to do with the assurance of paternity of one's offspring rather than any moral complaint. Property was handed down from father to oldest son. No man wanted his property to go to the son of another man. They took this to extremes in the dark and middle ages with chastity belts, confirmation of blood on the sheets after a wedding night, and theological discussions among clerics of that era as to whether or not women even possessed souls. Women were, for thousands of years, chattel..possessions, with no rights of our own.

Childhood didn't last as long, back in those days, either. Once a girl began to have her cycle, she was ready for marriage. Only modern society keeps our children as helpless, child-like dependents right into their 20's. Then, of course, you have all the "studies" done by pro-adoptionists that brand young mothers as more likely to abuse and neglect...a questionable conclusion at best...and Voila! It's perfectly OK to covet and commandeer the child of the unmarried, young woman. Being covetous allows for a lot of twists and turns to get to justification of the coveting.

The industry banks on that coveting. It is their bread and butter. They cater to that obsessive desire for the offspring of another by painting the coveters as saints and rescuers. The mother is the "Good"mother for surrendering and then she is just another young slut that didn't deserve to raise her own child.

Sunday was my oldest child's 46th birthday. I sat and remembered her birth. I remember having to threaten the nurses in order to get her brought to me on a regular basis until I left the hospital. I remember taking off all her little clothes and checking every square inch of her. I remember the love that surged through me. I remember being in awe of how something so perfect and beautiful could come from me. I remember her sleeping with her head on my chest and my heartbeat being her lullabye. I remember us staring into each other's eyes when I fed her a bottle. I remember saying goodbye....something that should never have happened but for the covetous nature of a wife and husband out there that were unable to naturally produce their own offspring and a system that wanted to "kill two birds with one stone," ie., punish/cure me for having the temerity to have sex and get pregnant while single and to fulfill the covetous dreams of the infertile.

The bitch of it all is that it is still happening...maybe not in the Holocaust-like numbers of my era, but it still goes on. I can hope that other countries follow Russia's lead and start keeping their babies inside their geographical boundaries so that these kids can grow up in their own culture. I want everyone concerned to do all in their power to make it really hard for those who would be so arrogant as to covet the child of another and erroneously believe they have the right to do so. I want the "Ugly American" to look askance at our arrogant assumption that it is preferable to grow up in our society rather than in one's own culture. It isn't right, according to those commandments and it sure isn't natural and in tune with creation.