Gospel Prism

I read this article in USA Today this morning and I thought I’d give you snippet of it here:

Julie Beasley looked out her window one morning and saw a teenager changing clothes in the middle of the street.

“She opened a passenger side door and dropped her pants. She took her pants off and reached in the car and pulled out a skirt. Then she put the skirt on and pulled off her sweatshirt. She had on a camisole with spaghetti straps with her midriff showing,” says Beasley, 46, of Iowa City.

Living less than two blocks from a high school gives Beasley a bird’s-eye view of teenagers — and a startling view, as well.

“I’m not a mother,” she says. “All of it surprises me. I think they’re oblivious to adults, period.”

To baby boomers and other adults of a certain age, young people may seem rude, disrespectful and generally clueless about established social mores.

But to social scientists, the phenomenon is more complicated.

Raised by parents who stressed individualism and informality, these young people grew up in a society that is more open and offers more choices than in their parents’ youth, says child and adolescent psychologist Dave Verhaagen of Charlotte.

Unlike their parents, they have never known anything but a world dominated by technology. Even their social lives revolve around the Web, iPods and cellphones. So they dress down, talk loose and reveal their innermost thoughts online.

I do not think this is someone else’s problem. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the kids in my church one day either being tempted to do the same thing or doing the same thing. The fact is, that unless there is a real emphasis on the power and identity of the Gospel BY PARENTS in the lives of their children right now even as they are only little children, there is nothing that would stop a teen from doing such things. After all, so many of us were teens before. I didn’t have my parents embedding biblical truth and the freeing power of the Gospel into my heart and soul. I learned about life mostly from my friends and television. And this led to a life of sin by trial and error, many errors. I am afraid that this same dreadful pattern is reliving itself in the next generation.

It is outright foolishness to say, “My child is only 4, he won’t be affected by such things later,” or “Let kids be kids, they’re simply innocent.” When I stroll the malls or the movie theatres, I can’t even count how many kids I see where the girls whose clothing suggests that they want to have a hormone-crazed boy, sexually fawning all over her. What stems the tide of such things happening, of actually having your daughter go outside not to change clothing to wear far less than what parents want? What stems the tide is a gracious, loving, caring, teaching and living out of the Gospel through love and discipline. Colossians 4:6 says: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” We tend to view this verse in light of adult non-believers. But this should be the hearts of parents toward their children. We need to be parents of grace, flooded with ideas and thoughts as to how to interact to kids on their level, so that we can answer them. I think the social scientists are right. Kids in this generation are moving away from cold individualism. They long even more for relationship today than ever before. If parents aren’t willing to give them that, and are too busy making money and coming home too tired to talk, then get ready moms and dads for girls to leave home dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, only to be out of eyesight from home, and then to undress to wear the low-cut, bare midriff, short skirt that every teenage boy fantasizes about.