Q:
Is it always a kindness to do anything that someone asks you to do?
A:
Certainly not. Suppose a person is standing on the edge of the roof and he says to you, “I’m disgusted with it all. Give me a push.” Run away as fast as you can! Run away as fast as you can!
If you would yield chas v’shalom, you would be a murderer. If a person takes his own life, he’s a murderer. He has no right because it’s not his life – his life belongs to the One who gave it to him and if you would help him, then you’re a murderer too. And therefore, it’s certainly not a kindness to do whatever someone asks you.
Kindliness many times means saying no to your child! That’s the greatest kindliness! Your little boy wants to go out on the street after sunset? “Stay home. No going out at night on the street. You’re a little boy – stay home!” Even your big boy or big girl. “Stay home! Unless you want to go to the beis hamedrash. Otherwise, stay home.”
Deny them things that they would like to have. Expensive things; deny it to them. To say no to a child who wants expensive toys is a pleasure to the child’s soul. He learns to say no to himself later, when he gets older and he wants forbidden things.
And therefore, most of the kindnesses are in the form of denying kindness.
Here is a boy who would like to go out, let’s say, in the street and play with other boys in the street. But they’re bums. Now, he would enjoy their company. But the best kindness is to say, “Nothing doing. Stay home.”
We are most kind by means of guarding our children and forbidding them many things. No permissiveness! Permissiveness is not kindliness! You see what happens as a result of permissiveness. The world is being ruined by permissiveness!
Is it kindness to allow a boy to drink booze and then they go out at night driving in the car and in the morning as you pass by on the sidewalk and see the car wrapped around the lamppost? Was that a kindliness that his parents bestowed on him? And therefore, certainly it’s not kindly to be permissive.
You have to know that most of the forms of prohibitions of the Torah are things that are intended for our benefit. Sometimes there’s a prohibition that may not be for our benefit right now, but eventually it’s for our benefit. But almost all of them are for our immediate benefits. And therefore all the things that the Torah forbids are kindnesses of Hashem.
TAPE # 659
