"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).
C. S. Lewis married late in life and never fathered a child; however, he lived in the world of academia as a professor. Lewis had a lot of wisdom, the old-fashioned kind that makes sense in a senseless world. He said simple things which are so profound that most people dismissed them. Like what? I often think of his insistence that you can't know what a crooked line is until you know what a straight one is.
In other words, without knowing the truth, you don't know what a lie is. Unless you know right from wrong, wrong may be just as appealing or even more so than that which is right.
So what does that have to do with our kids today? Since World War 2, many, if not most, adults have given token acknowledgement of God's existence but have really lived as though He didn't exist at all. But the next generation has bought into what we practiced, and without being convinced that God is there, that He has a will and purpose for our lives, that He also says, "Do this!" and "Don't do this" because He loves us too much to let us destroy ourselves, our kids--teenagers and even young adults--have little hope for the future.
What I have just described is part of the fabric and culture which surrounds a generation who is now the offspring of men and women who believed in God theoretically but lived as though there were no God.
What's important to kids today?
1. Feeling good about yourself. Drugs, alcohol, sex, any experience that makes you feel good gets included in this one. How kids feel about themselves is important--very important.
2. Acceptance and identity. They struggle with the question, "Who am I? Do my friends like me? Can I relate?" Like it or not, tattoos, body jewelry, clothing, hairstyles, and fads are all part.
3. The media. While kids want to be independent, they end up being quite homogenous when it comes to the music they listen to, the entertainment which they like, and the movies and CDs they see and listen to, over and over again.
4. Independent thinking. What's wrong with this? Rejecting moral absolutes, the reality of truth, and standards of society, the mentality of many kids today is that just about anything goes. "Who can know what truth really is?" they say. Seven out of ten kids admit to lying to their parents, says a new survey. Why not? Everybody does it, they contend.
5. Designer, whatever-I-want-to-believe, religion. That explains why George Harrison, the lead guitarist of the Beatles could say, "Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait," and rejecting Christianity, wandered through Eastern religions to Hare Krishna, a long way from where he started. Lewis was right. You have to know what a straight line is before you understand what a crooked one, is otherwise crooked lines look pretty straight.
The greatest tragedy today is not what our kids are doing, but what we as parents have failed to do. When they asked for bread, we gave them a stone. When they asked for light, we stumbled in darkness. When they wanted to know what a straight line is, we mumbled with uncertainty, not being able to walk one ourselves. For many it's too late to change, but for you who still have influence in the lives of your kids, better put some distance between your home and the culture which David John Seel, Jr. calls, "Deathwork logic." What the writer of Proverbs said 3,000 years ago is still true. "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."
Resource reading: Proverbs 18.
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