What can you do about them? Don’t just complain and do nothing. You have the solution.
Who is to blame? Do we really understand what is affecting our young people in society? There is the peer pressure which we all understand but there is the social pressure which is indeed a major cause of the problems the youth are facing. What can you do?
To say that the youth in our nation face many problems is not to reveal anything new. Every generation of youth has faced problems. Everywhere we see the young confused, frustrated, involved in riots, rebellion against authority, steeped in crime and the age is characterized by suicide. Certainly this is not true of all the youth, but it is true of a distressingly large number of them. This is a sad commentary on the youth of the land. But we are inclined not to place the full blame for this deplorable state of affairs on the young.
Genesis 42:22
Reuben broke in. "Didn't I tell you, "Don't hurt the boy'? But no, you wouldn't listen. And now we're paying for his murder." (MSG) Reuben had urged his brothers not to mistreat their younger brother, Joseph, but they paid him no attention. It is possible for those who are older to sin against the younger. Those who have the responsibility of caring for the young are often guilty of sinning against the very ones for whom they have the watch care. A child is not born into the world wicked, evil and delinquent. He learns to be that way. He is taught to become that way. It does not come from within himself.
We have many fine youth
We first need to emphasize that all young people have not gone and are not “going to the dogs.” Experience with young people over the past many years convinces me that many are fine, strong, serious and well-intentioned Christians. True, even some of these are misled by others into ways that are not for the child of God. But there are those who shall stand for the faith as much as any adult.
But many have serious problems and guidance is sorely needed, if they will give it a fair chance. We who are older need to consider more closely the problems of the young and work for them and with them to overcome them rather than simply hope that everything will work out all right. For the sake of the good young people we need to do something to correct the trends of godlessness that have come so heavily upon the youth of the land. We need to treat the sources and causes of these problems rather than simply wail over the symptoms. While the problems are sometimes complex and not easily resolved, the major causes of the problems are not really that far beneath the surface.
Let’s locate some of the present day sources of problems affecting the young people.
1. The Home
The number one source of youth’s problems is the home. Where there ought to be security, love, provision, guidance, standards, discipline, hope and example, there is often just the opposite. Respect for this divine institution has been undermined by many. The proverb, “Train up a child in the way that he should go ," is primarily directed to parents. “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” is the medicine needed (Ephesians 6:4). Children are learning to disrespect their parents and many times it is because the parents have not been respectable. Parents are too busy making money, reliving their own youth, and having a good time to be parents. The modern idea of motherhood is to have a career outside the home and leave the rearing of the children with somebody else. In most cases where there is trouble with children you will find mother was outside the home, being the “liberated and modern” woman, but one who has sacrificed her primary role for the paltry offering of a sinful world.
Children learn disrespect for authority in the home. It carries into the school, against government, against God. Keeping the home is the noblest work of women and because that has been smeared in the minds of so many, the children suffer.
2. Parents
It is rather difficult for a child to grow up with stability when the two people the child loves most hate and despise each other, and show it. Divorce has created problems for youth that can never, ever, be erased. In homes where father and mother and child learn to love God and each other and are regular in worship, there are few cases of indiscipline. Children that come from divided homes suffer all kinds of maladjustment, unhappiness, confusion, insecurity, and build resentment and frustration. The parents have not taught them, set the right example before them, considered their inconsistencies of no consequence, and as a result, son and daughter either never become Christians or leave the church shortly after leaving home. Any child that is not taught the way of the Lord, and does not have parents that try to live the way of Christ before them, is a neglected child. We can all be grateful for the homes where God reigns supreme.
3. Schools
Problems are caused for the young by the schools. While we have a great appreciation for school teachers generally, there are those who are servants of the devil. This is not because they are unfair, or poor teachers, but because of what they teach and promote. While many can credit their teachers with a large measure of their personal success, many others can credit their teachers with their problems also. Many teachers on nearly every level make fun of religion. They have often been trained in humanism, atheism, and they teach this in their classrooms. Many teachers consider religion just a haven for the weak and timid of the world. Some textbooks even state such. False theories are taught as truth, theories that contradict Biblical teaching. Great effort is made by some teachers to destroy any confidence the young may have in the Bible. Evolution and humanism are the primary guiding principles governing education in most schools.
Morality is scorned, drug use is prominent, peer pressure is detrimental, and so often the social events are designed to promote the worldliness that the Scripture condemns, such as drinking, dancing, lasciviousness, etc. Even the emphasis for getting an education is to get more money rather than be able to be of more service.
4. The Media
None who are informed doubt the harmful effects of radio and television on the youth. Freedom of the press has been so abused as to include every kind of glamorization of sin. Pornography has become a present-day rage. The movies appeal to the young with all manner of vile and corrupt pictures. What appeared as obscene and of ill-repute are now blatantly and openly placed on the screen publicly.
The writers wallow in the mire of murder, rape, brutality, sexual immorality, theft, etc. Their minds must be “garbage pits” considering what comes out of them. The criminal is exalted, the divorced are the heroes, fornication is the norm, drunkenness is everywhere, and you cannot hear a program almost anywhere without profanity and obscenity. The addiction to television has about destroyed the thinking capacity of many people. What we think comes more from what we see than any other one source. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” From what we are seeing in movies, on television, in magazines, etc., we can understand why the thinking of so many is so morally degrading.
5. The Government
The government must assume some blame for the problems of the youth. The ambitious and unscrupulous politicians have so fouled up much of the business of the nation that the young are “turned off” from being responsible citizens. The greed, graft, and personal gain of the nation’s leaders have set a terrible example before the young. Power, popularity, and profit have dominated the careers of governmental leaders. Wars are even provoked for the sake of gain, and the lives of the young are disrupted, if not totally sacrificed. Government has too long set the example of living beyond its means. It has for too long rewarded the immoral with support. All such things complicate the lives of the young.
6. Churches
The churches have become worldly and the world has become churchy. But where you would expect to find solutions to the problems facing the young, you often find another source of problems, and that is religion, even the church. Can it be that the churches in our nation are causing the problems many are facing? Yes, the confusion, compromises, division, inconsistency, modernism, social gospel advocates, have so polluted what is called “Christianity” until those who have any sense of decency and consistency are repulsed by it.
Men have loved their churches, creeds, doctrines, power, money, etc. more than the revealed will of God. With all the varied voices shouting this and that, what are the young to think? What is anybody to think? God is not behind all this, but is opposed to it. What exists is not what God has commanded. Men are going their own way, not the way of the Lord.
Churches have so changed their doctrines to accommodate sin, like divorce, drinking, immorality, etc. that the churches are more governed by the world than having an influence in the world for good.
7. Worldliness
Immodest dress, smoking, drinking, cursing, multi-marriages, empty pews, have even invaded the Lord’s church in large measure. Whereas churches of Christ were once known for their opposition to sin, in so many places there is such a compromise with it you had just as soon not have anything to do with such congregations.
8. Permissiveness and Tolerance
It is the responsibility of Christian parents to make sure that their young people know the difference between these sinful ways of the world and the way of Christ. Permissiveness and tolerance toward such things is going to cause many young people to degrade themselves and so stain their hearts and lives that only hell can burn away their evil.
Finally
Problems, problems, problems everywhere in our nation. Indeed problems. Distressing to consider them, isn’t it? But the solution is still God’s truth. Yes, we have the solution. We cannot answer for every home, school, media, government, and church. But we will answer for what we do, and don’t do. Why we keep placing these stumbling blocks before our young is hard to figure. But we have the task of paving the way as much as we can, removing the stumbling blocks when we can, and teaching and showing the young how to avoid and overcome such things that cannot be totally removed from the scene.
Young people are not just little adults. They are young people that need the love, guidance, training, discipline and security that those who are older are obligated to provide. Once given those things it is up to them to walk accordingly. God has given the young parents for some reason. It is past time for many of us to find what those reasons are and get on with the divine task of rearing the young in God’s way. It is not enough to simply tell the young, “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” There must be the provision for the good that they can and should do. The problems are too big for the inexperienced and untrained youth to handle alone. Every child deserves the teaching of Christ and a Christ-like example. That is the only solution to youth’s problems.
Be a “solution,” not a “source” of problems. Yes you can do something. The onus is on you. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE A MAN.
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