In 1951, JD Salinger published Catcher in the Rye. The prep school novel still sells a million copies a year. In 1973, a relatively unknown band called Brownsville Station released the adolescent theme song, smoking in the Boys' Room, and they had a top 100 hit. In 2002, Britney Spears released. I'm not a girl, not yet a woman. And she had a top 100 song and Taylor Swift smashes every movie, song or book about adolescence or teen years in her billion dollar tour this past summer. The adolescent years were fascinated by it, tweens to teens, the bodies changing, choices are being expanded, curiosity of status and experiments in virtue. We can't seem to get enough of these songs and films about it. But when you have to parent this age? It's not always so entertaining.
Ethan:Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture.
Paul:Welcome to Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. The entertainment world has created volumes of films and songs and books on the teenage years. Very little wisdom to go with it. One exception is actor novelist Ethan Hawke. You may remember him from Training Day. His novel, Rules for a Knight has a section that's one of my favorites. The fictional grandfather tells his grandson about war. He says there's two wolves fighting inside of you. One is evil, full of anger and hatred. The other is good, full of love, empathy and courage. The grandson asks, Well, which one wins? To which the grandfather replies, Whichever one you feed. To be clear, the Bible does not teach we have two wolves, but make no mistake. We are told what we feed, the flesh or the spirit, is what grows. And learning to feed the soul, the spirit, is one of the ways to think about adolescence. Feeding the soul involves asking questions and debates and tackling doubts. Adolescence, the very word means to transition. From childhood to adulthood. It is annoying that the language of our day steals words like transitioning and we end up with double meaning. So to be clear, children transitioning to adults is what is historically called adolescence. Sometimes it's called a rite of passage, initiation into manhood or womanhood. And how we navigate through the passage has one huge issue. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted and liked. Harvard professor and best selling author Todd Rose in his book, Collective Illusions, blames conformity bias. As the driver to bad decisions, he says, we become complicit to the crowd. We want to fit in, so we lie to ourselves and make bad decisions. According to Rose, we're wired this way. He calls it the copycat trap and believes it's biological. According to Professor Rose, once we understand the faulty wiring, we can set ourselves free. Once we fix the wiring diagram, that self knowledge and the new worldview that we install is like a circuit breaker that stops our fuse blowing behavior. The flaw in Rose's hypothesis is that battle is more than ourselves and culture, it's spiritual. When my brother and I were growing up, my brother's older than I am, he had a science experiment in the 8th grade in which we had a small white mouse. And we were feeding it, or he was feeding it, small amounts of nicotine in the water. And the mouse started getting sick. And we finally had to, you know, stop doing it and got the mouse back to health and left our basement and went back to the pet store. But years later, we both fell into a season regarding the temptation of smoking cigarettes. A short season, but a season. And my mother was shocked. Don't you remember the little white mouse? Yes, but our conformity bias was stronger. We were not a mouse. We were men. See, the biological hormones and emotions of adolescence, things are going to get storming. And if we accept it for what it is, a season of questions, experiments, and even arguments as our kids cross the bridge from childhood to adulthood. And like any journey to the promised land, there's going to be wars and some fights. But there are two kingdoms that are offering us freedom and freedom that is based on some truth. Which one's true? And which one's false is part of the discovery process, biblical understanding of discipline. We said the last time was training and correction, but as our children entered this new stage of life, we're going to have to modify the tactics. The mission remains the same. We're, we're hoping that by the grace of God, they'll learn to trust God for themselves, to believe and receive the gifts of God, including freedom. But the tactics on this particular point in the mission have to have some flexibility. You can look at the youth of the Bible, Isaac, David, Esther, Joseph, Daniel, Naomi. We see people trusting the promise of God. It all comes down to which kingdom's promises are they going to trust? Do we trust God's promises or are we being pulled into what the world promises despite all the evidence that it's not trustworthy? The reality is, kids are going to fall for some of the false promises. Now Christianity and the Church Fathers help us in these years. I think there are three words that we need to keep in mind. One are questions, the other is memories, and the other is food. The first is asking, what are the right questions? The wisdom of using questions is part of the catechisms. Socrates and Aristotle used it, Jesus uses it, it's sometimes even called the Socratic method. Yes, we're using reason in this, but when we ask questions, it's not just so we can compare answers, but the first step is knowing we don't know the answer. Then the truth can be presented for anyone to trust it, and within that truth is our reliance on God to help us see it. Giving young people a Bible is great, but giving them a summary of what the Bible teaches is better. Every catechism, which means to teach uses the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles Creed, and the Ten Commandments. The Lord's Prayer helps us grasp our relationship, our conversation with our Father in Heaven. The Apostles Creed teaches us what we actually believe from the Scriptures. And then, of course, the Law of God, the Ten Commandments, is God's love, as well as what are we being set free from. The questions, like, what does the First Petition of the Lord's Prayer mean? What does it mean when we say, God Almighty? These are the kinds of questions that begin to build the foundation. So when I hear Christian teachers say, We have no need of creeds or common prayer. I'm not sure they realize the difficulty we are left with in teaching young adults the scriptures. Where do you start? How do you break it down? How do you avoid individualistic interpretation? What does it mean to you? I don't know. What does it mean to me? We use the Bible alone as our authority, having the catechisms, which are based on the scripture, help us have the framework, the themes, and the significant things that we need to know in order to actually study the Bible. The use of catechisms from Augustine, who had his, to Luther, who wrote his, and yes, the Baptists in almost every denomination. The foundation has a catechism, and this is where we're going to be able to fill the mind and build the foundation. Because middle schoolers are going to come with these questions. Well, who did Jesus pray to if he's God? Why is there evil if God is good? And the foundation is going to equip us to help answer those kinds of questions. This is where the debates and the questioning is helping us discover the truth that we need to cross the bridge. Memories are another thing that I think are critical. Memories of when God acted in the life of the child. So if you don't have adolescence, you should be building some of these stories. It might go something like this. Your child comes home, they're disappointed, they're upset about something. And you say, do you remember when we moved to this new town and this new school and you were upset because your best friend back in preschool was left back there? And then you discover that God had given you a new friend? Right next door. It's stories like that of healing of God's blessings that we have to be able to help our kids recall as we move through adolescence, because when I can connect back to my history of being part of God's kingdom, I can then continually pursue it. It helps kind of reinforce the mind that starts to have some doubts about where I am and what I believe. And then lastly, we've got to feed on truth, the food of the soul. Ethan Hawk tells another story in Rules for the Night that I think is kind of interesting. He says, the Knights do not protect the truth. They live in the truth and the truth protects them. Now, we as Christians do defend the truth of the gospel, but we have to learn to live in the truth because the truth protects us, and the truth ultimately is what sets us free, and that's the freedom that we are pursuing, right? I mean, the transitioning. of a child to adult is this search for freedom and freedom that is based on truth. The truth can't be a truth you create for yourself. That's not truth. It has to withstand questions and challenges and arguments. And in that truth, we actually become adults. Because we find our freedom on a secure foundation. And now we're free from the scrutiny of peers. Free from the need to fit in. Free to love and serve, not by compulsion, but by the love of God. I'm not saying we're going to get through this perfectly. We're not. But this is what we're striving for. The world's entertainers, however, will keep trying to take us back to our adolescent search. I think because so many people are still searching for that truth. of what it means to be free. You remember the old eagles song, take it to the limit. You're searching for your freedom. Nobody seems to care and you can't find the door anywhere. Right? This is kind of where people get stuck. The issue is that freedom to make decisions is where most people stop. And this is what we want to make sure we're not doing. The value of your decisions is based on outcome. And who determines and how will you determine the value of the outcome What God says is good. What God says is valuable. What God says is a virtue. It's interesting, I was at the movies this week and there was a trailer by Beyonce in her new movie, her concert movie called Renaissance. And she says, when I'm performing, I'm perfectly free. And then she invites the audience and she says, when you come, I want you to be free. Because here there will be... No judgment. No one will be judged. Now this is an interesting statement. Because it's patently false. It's even ridiculous. When you go leave that concert, the first thing someone is going to say is, How was the concert? Which is a judgment. And all those people that are performing and the production that she has, they're all being judged on how well they dance and the lights and the sound system. It's all a massive judgment. The thing we have to understand is outcome. What is the outcome that God says is good? What is the outcome that God says is truly free? When we are fed the truth, we understand that the one that the sun sets free is free indeed. Who is the sun? He is the way, the truth, and the light. This is what we must build in the bridge from childhood to adulthood. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.