It's a Saturday evening church supper and the Smith and Jones families find themselves together in the food line. Both families are hoping that they do not have to sit together for supper, but alas, they end up sharing the last available table.
There aren't any real problems between these families - it's just they do not understand each other at all!
Let's look around the table. The Smith children are dressed very conservatively and their conversation is about a book they are reading as a family. The children have little interaction with non-Christians because of the negative influence. No modern music is played in their home, and the Smiths do not go to films. They do own a TV, but the children only watch educational programmes.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith operate within a very small circle of life. Mr. Smith works with two other Christian men, and Mrs. Smith's contacts with other women occur mostly within a tiny support group of Christian friends. On the surface, the Smith children look unlike and act very differently from their peers. The Smiths' model for relating to the outside world is: 'Come out and be separate.'
It doesn't take long to see that the Joneses have had a very different response to their culture. Their children are dressed very differently from the Smith kids. For one thing, there is a lot more jewellery and earrings on the Jones children - and that includes the boys! The Jones daughter is wearing her Walkman headset around her neck. The Jones children participate in many school activities. They all have stereos in their rooms and watch lots of TV. The oldest son plays in a Christian alternative rock band. On the surface, the Jones children look and act like their non-Christian peers. The Joneses' model for relating to the world outside is: 'Be in the world, but not of the world.'
Rejection and assimilation
The Smiths illustrate a rejection-isolation response to culture. The basic philosophy is this: 'Evil is in the thing, so avoid the thing.' This strategy usually includes a list of cultural activities to be avoided (movies, music, dancing, etc.). Being separate is interpreted as meaning that the Christian family must avoid participation in the secular world wherever possible. On the surface, this response may not seem so bad, yet it carries inherent dangers and deficiencies.
First, there is in this response a subtle denial of the doctrine of creation, which declares that all that God made was good (Genesis 1.31, Psalms 139.14). This is not to say that God created hardcore rock music. He did, however, create the melodic and rhythmic structures that it employs. Evil is not some organic presence within certain things, but is the result of the way things are used to express the thoughts and gratify the desires of sinful man.
Second, this response tends to miss the core issue of the human struggle with evil. The core of our struggle is not with evil outside us, but with evil within. There is a war being fought: it is the war within, fought on the turf of the heart. Peter says that God has given his children everything they need to escape 'the corruption in the world caused by evil desires' (2 Peter 1.4). As parents, we need to teach our children that avoiding external temptations alone does not restrain sin because it does not deal with the sin already in the heart. We want to teach our children that avoidance is not a cure, though it can be used of God to limit the damage of sin in our lives.
Third, the isolation response tends to promote a dangerous self-righteousness. Righteousness gets equated with keeping 'the list'. People who keep it are considered righteous and mature and people who don't are considered carnal and immature.
The Joneses would say that they have found a better way - assimilation. The philosophy of assimilation is this: 'Things are neutral, so there is no harm in participating in the thing.' This approach, too, has defects.
Scripture teaches us that nothing is ever neutral. In this world, things always carry some kind of moral baggage. Christ said it very plainly: 'He who is not with me is against me.' (Matthew 12.30). So there are certain things we must acknowledge as we think about the institutions, relationships, media and products of the culture around us:
* All things that God created are good.
* All things that we encounter have been put together, or are used, in a way that carries meaning.
* Things can be used for good or evil.
* Everything in culture expresses the perspectives of the creator and/or user.
* We never find things in the culture around us in a neutral context or setting.
Just as the rejection-isolation response to culture has its weaknesses, so does the assimilation response common in the evangelical church.
Our children need a third way to respond to the culture around them, one that is the result of good biblical thinking. They need to understand what culture is and the nature of its power and influence, and form a biblical plan for living within it.
What is culture?
In the beginning, God created people with the capacity to interact with their world, and he gave them the responsibility to do so in a way that imaged him. God never intended for people to have a passive relationship to the world he made. He meant for them to 'dress' the world around them. He made people in his image with creative abilities that no other creatures were given and he commanded them to use them .
God placed people in the primary environment of the world he created, but we never live in that environment alone. We are always living within the secondary environment as well - humanly created culture. Thus, the struggle with culture is inescapable.
How then do we define culture? People made in the image of God interact with the world God made, and culture is what results. Where there are people, there is culture. If a family isolates itself from the surrounding culture, they will not have escaped the cultural struggle, because as people made in God's image, they will form a family culture. We always live all of our lives in this secondary environment.
The Fall
Something more needs to be said here: the Fall is the reason for this cultural struggle. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve interacted with the world God had made. But tragically, another voice, the Serpent's, came on the scene to give another interpretation to what God had made and said. In following this voice, Adam and Eve created the cultural struggle. Since the Fall, people build culture on the basis of many varied and competing authorities. Gone are the simple days of Genesis 1 and 2. Now the cultural canvas is stained with sin and until eternity, human culture will never again perfectly reflect the will of God. That is why responding to culture is so important. It is one of our primary moral struggles. Teenagers need to grow up understanding this.
The struggle with culture is in-escapable and is always moral. People always interact with the world in a spirit of submission to God or in rebellion and dependence on their own minds. The cultural struggle is always about right and wrong, true and false, and human desire or God's will. Isolation is impossible. Assimilation is really capitulation. So we need a better way.
The need for protection
Like the air we constantly breathe, culture is the spiritual air that our hearts constantly absorb. Many of the pollutants in the physical air are unseen. The same is true with culture. I think that we as parents have made a great error in our tendency to emphasise the obvious (sex, drugs, violence, abortion, etc.) while neglecting the more deceptive, unseen pollutants in the cultural air around us. The result is that although our children may not participate in the 'biggies', they end up serving the idols of the surrounding culture like individualism, materialism and victimism. Surely these idols are more to be feared because they creep up on us unseen.
Another error we have tended to make as parents is to blame the vehicle rather than focus on the idol themes these vehicles promote. A variety of vehicles - government, music, movies, magazines, education, television, and the idle talk of people on the streets - all transmit and promote the philosophy of the culture. None of these vehicles are in themselves bad or dangerous. The danger is in the way they are used to promote the things they promote. And even in a fallen world, they will be used for both good and evil. The point is not to slay the messenger.
This is where the pollution metaphor helps us. When there are poisons in the physical air, people wear protective equipment that filters them out. In the same way, our teenagers need spiritual filters against the unseen poisons in the cultural air. Our children need the protection of a biblical world and life view, and as parents we want to begin giving them one from the very earliest moments of their lives. We also want eyes of faith to see that every situation, relationship and problem in their lives is an opportunity to rethink and carefully apply a biblical view of life to concrete situations.
Talking to your teenager
In light of this, don't be hesitant to talk, talk, talk to your teenagers. This cannot be a time when our relationship grows distant. They need our parenting as much as ever before, so we must seek them out. Let me suggest some strategies for these talk times.
* Don't wait around for your teenager to talk to you.
Seek them out in a way that is warm. Teenagers who are on the defensive won't talk freely and won't listen well.
* Don't settle for non-answers.
Ask questions that your teenager cannot answer with a yes or no but that encourage him or her to disclose what he or she is thinking, feeling and doing.
* Be positive.
Don't be like a detective hunting for what is wrong. The purpose of these talks is not to 'catch' the teenager, but to help him to understand, desire, and do what is right.
* Lovingly seek to expose the faults in your teenager's thinking without making him feel ignorant or stupid.
* Become a partner in struggle with your teenager by sharing your own struggle to live a godly life in an ungodly culture.
* Admit to the places where you have been influenced. Ask your teenager to pray for you, as you pray for him or her.
* Always point your teenager to Christ, who daily gives us mercy and grace in our moments of need.
* Always keep in mind that you cannot protect your children from culture.
* Finally, model the character of Christ. Don't beat your teenager with words, but win him with Christ-like love.
This is an extract from Age of Opportunity: a biblical guide to parenting Teens by Paul Tripp, Presbyterian & Reformed, and available through Evangelical Press.
