The Mystical Belief

From Dostoevsky's "The Brother's Karamazov", in which the lawyer Fetyukovich remarks:

"...there is another concept of fatherhood, and, according to that interpretation, a father may be a monster who treats his children viciously, but who must nevertheless always be respected as a father, because he has conceived his children. But that is a mystical attitude that my reason does not understand, that I can only accept on faith, so to speak, just as we are asked to accept many things that we do not understand, but that our religion orders us to believe.

Well, let the son face his father and ask him: 'Tell me, why should I love you? Prove to me that it is my duty to love you.' If the father gives manages to give him a satisfactory answer, it is a normal family, a family not based on some mystical prejudice, but founded on reasonable, responsible, and strictly humane premises. But if, on the other hand, the father fails to prove to his son that he is worthy of love, he does not deserve to be his father and the son is free to consider his father as a stranger or even his enemy."

Of course, this extends to mothers as well, and you have no idea how many people hold to this "mystical" concept. I still do hold to it in a certain form, but this is something worth thinking upon.