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 | Jonathan’s Resource Ezine |
Weekly Resources, Ideas and Articles from The Source for Youth Ministry
Tuesday, February 22, 2000
| In This Issue |
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| YOUTH CULTURE 2000 |
from CPYU President Walt Mueller
Thomas, Seann and Chris speak about their faith in terms that would make any youth worker or Christian parent proud. Eighteen-year-old Thomas Ian Nicholas attends a Bible study and plays in a Christian band. He writes his music “with God,” “for God” and “about God.” Seann William Scott, also 18, says his family “lived for our trust in God: even in junior high people used to call me Church Boy.” The third member of the trio, Chris, isn’t afraid to tell people that he, too, is a Christian.
You’d probably assume Thomas, Seann and Chris, like all Christian teens and adults, wage the daily battle to obey God and conform to His will while being faced with the constant barrage of temptation thrown at them by today’s culture? and from time to time they might even mess up. Consequently, you might not be surprised at the trio’s attraction to last summer’s sexually charged teen blockbuster comedy American Pie, a film about four average high school guys who face the dilemma of their virginity by making a pact to “get laid” during the three weeks remaining before their prom.
What should surprise you about the trio’s attraction to American Pie is not that they would pay to go see the movie, but that Thomas, Seann and Chris were paid to star in the film. Even more alarming is that none of the three saw any inconsistency between following God and taking lead roles in American Pie, a movie void of redemptive qualities. Sadly, it’s a film that “treats” its young audience to an extreme dose of in-your-face immorality (intercourse, oral sex, masturbation, etc.) including one of the film’s main characters masturbating into a hot apple pie.
Welcome to youth culture at the dawn of the new millennium, a confusing world where an increasing amount of consistent spiritual inconsistency and glaring contradiction socks committed Christian parents and youth workers right in the stomach while the same things roll unnoticed right off our kid’s backs. It’s a world where those who lovingly challenge immorality and sin may get a “so what” response, even from kids who profess to follow the narrow road that leads to life.
Known as “millennial kids,” the generation of young people born after 1980 are more diverse and pluralistic than any generation before. As children raised in the information age, they are growing up surrounded by an unprecedented rate of societal and cultural change. Their place as the second generation steeped in the postmodern world view has led their collective soul to regard truth as relative. At the level of adopting moral and religious belief, it’s the individual “freedom” of “every man choosing for himself.” Decisions are made not on universally acknowledged and transcendent standards of right and wrong, but on personal feelings at any given point in time. Emotion takes precedence over reason. In a world like this there’s nothing wrong with three Christian teens inviting millions of their peers to sit in a dark theater and watch as they celebrate and indulge their sexuality in American Pie.
Walt Mueller, president of Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (CPYU), publishes a quarterly newsletter about youth culture. The rest of the above article, as well as other articles in past newsletters are available on the CPYU web site. This is great site with lots of useful links to help us keep current with where youth are today. Check it out:
| A PRIDE FUNNY |
February 22, 2000
Ray Johnston, teaching in one of our recent training workshops, told us a joke that his son told him- a great lesson on pride:
Two Canadian geese and a frog wanted to go south for the winter. For the geese this was no problem- they could just fly. But for the frog, this was going to be a great feat. The frog knew that he didn’t want to stay in the cold, so he thought and thought and thought.
“I got an idea!” the frog said. He found a long stick. “You two hold this stick in your claws and I’ll hold on to the middle.”
“With what?” the geese asked. “Your little hands could never hold on to a stick!”
“With my mouth” said the frog, proud of his idea.
So the geese put the stick in there claws, the frog clamped on with his mouth and they began to fly south successfully.
A day or two later, a crowd of people looked up and saw the two geese flying overhead, holding a stick with a frog holding on in the middle with his mouth. Someone in the crowd exclaimed, “What a brilliant idea- I wonder who thought of that?”
The frog proudly exclaimed “I did!”
Jonathan McKee
Jonathan McKee is the author of over twenty books including the brand new The Guy's Guide to FOUR BATTLES Every Young Man Must Face; The Teen’s Guide to Social Media & Mobile Devices; If I Had a Parenting Do Over; and the Amazon Best Seller - The Guy's Guide to God, Girls and the Phone in Your Pocket. He speaks to parents and leaders worldwide, all while providing free resources for youth workers on TheSource4YM.com. Jonathan, his wife Lori, and their three kids live in California.