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Young People Today: Where Are They Headed?
I don’t subscribe to the theory that the young people of our country are “going to the dogs.” In fact, I firmly believe that today’s young people are the most intelligent, articulate, and well informed ever to live (some seemingly have thumbs faster than my mind). The great availability of money, modern teaching methods, the rate of accumulating and distributing new information, and the ability to store and instantly recall almost any bit of knowledge, has given our youngsters the best instructional education ever. Funds don’t present a problem to learning in this generation. Couple that with the mass media’s and internet’s ability to make these young persons actual eye-witnesses to history and you have the best informed and most affluent society of young people the world has ever known.
But let’s be realistic. With every blessing there is a corresponding obligation. Along with the affluence and opulence, all the education, and observation, along with all the leisure and recreation, there are accompanying problems–problems that not only demand our recognition, but actions as well. If such actions are not forthcoming, we must be prepared to watch as a decadent and irreligious society takes more and more of our young people down to road to infidelity and practical atheism, eventually immersing them in a veritable pit of putridity.
Look at the problem of:
Sex. While accusing past generations of over protection of young people–even of puritanism–the present generation has loosened even the natural restrictions regarding sex until that which was before rightly considered abhorrent has become altogether too commonplace and in many instances, acceptable. Promiscuity, chastity, virginity, adultery, pornography are words which have meaning only to a small, “bigoted and narrow-minded” group which still entertains such antiquated ideas as “marriage is for life,” “faithfulness to one mate,” and “we must make it work if we are to keep our vows to God and to one another.” Such moral libertines openly espouse the right to what they call “an alternate lifestyle,” recognizing homosexuality as an acceptable, normal, and healthy way to live. Young people today are bombarded with such notions at a regular and highly effective rate through television and movie productions where moral looseness forms the very thematic for almost every episode. Furthermore, the internet and social media today is chock full of filthiness of every sort. In many instances immoral and illicit sexual encounters and other such moral insanity is actually glamorized. (Read II Timothy 2:22; I Corinthians 6:18)
Drugs. Radio sings songs with a vernacular developed in a drug-oriented society. They wrap listeners with rap, and rap on about drug use as if it is normal, even preferred. Television humor is laced with remarks which make light of those critical of regular drug use. Government officials who gained office by promises to deal strongly with the problem of drug abuse, one elected suddenly have little or nothing to say about where the drug culture is headed in this country. Newspapers quote the teenage idols (rock stars, rap artists, movie and sports personalities) as attaching no significance to medical reports that show the harmful effects of even short-term use of un-prescribed drugs, and even further complicate the situation by admitting to flaunting the law by using pot or pills (sometimes even stronger stuff) themselves. The use of drugs by young people is a problem often too volatile to be discussed in many families and so is many times ignored in the hope that by some as yet undetermined means, it will disappear. Believe me–“whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Read Galatians 6:7-9; Romans 6:12-16)
Disregard for authority. Parental respect has taken a nose-dive in our generation. It is not offered because it is not demanded. The father in many homes today is only a bread-winner, possessed of no say in the affairs of his offspring. How sad! How very sad! And part of it is his fault for abdicating his position as head of the house. The mother is a glorified (sometimes not even that) maid and is expected to desist from meddling in the business of her children. Besides, she has to work so as to keep things going. And so the young rule. Do they ever rule! Parents in many homes are little more than slaves to a cult of youth. Age is demeaned, inexperience exalted. Youth is elevated, wisdom ignored. Discipline is ridiculed, control scoffed at. And truth lies amid the rubble of the young’s mismanagement and most us pass by unconcerned, seemingly afraid to challenge this government of the young which has come to wield an almost totalitarian control.
Time is running out. We must begin again–and now–to help our young people. We must teach them the value of self control, the worth of self discipline, the joy of a spiritual familial relationship. One way we can do that is to show them in our lives the advisability of living for God, the sheer pleasure of being part of His spiritual family. We must cultivate in them a healthy respect for truth and right, as was as an abiding respect for our God, and for His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Read Deuteronomy 6:6-8)
