Modern society does not seek to learn adequately how to nurture and manage juveniles toward maturity. Quite the opposite in that society permits, sometimes encourages, strong negative drags on emerging adults. Errors catering to the juvenile tastes are given some force in both legal and permissive conduct. Education does not sufficiently address the disciplines of life in the context of the private as well as the public needs of the human race. Laws tend to broaden, permitting the young to drink alcoholic beverages at a younger age, to drive vehicles early so contributing to the largest group of reckless drivers, and the list can be extended. It is claimed that finding fault with standards of dress, conducts, and the like seems to violate the spirit of freedom. The worst influence is the conduct of misdirected adults, even parents, failing that they are models to be followed. It is an offer that appeals to a flexing carnality, which in the casual culture offers too casual patterns for youths in forming their lives for maturity. Many youths, principally males, are introduced to illicit sex by a family member. Even sexual content in media is termed Adult. It is the context sought by persons in the processes of adolescence (puberty) development, who look for sniggering ways to communicate sexual interests and drives. Sex in society seems flaunted by puberty dreaming. The prurient interests of human beings are distorted and exploited. For many young persons this is the only education they receive on the topic. All of this is compounded, in negative direction, by diminishing right and wrong (righteousness and sin) found in an orderly spiritual/physical orientation. Society shies away from spiritual concerns as theoretical and impolitic. Decline in spiritual restraints, even by persons believing in spiritual dimensions, has removed some historical restraint on a whirl of problems relating to drugs, alcoholism, sex, greed and other factors. Government and society tend to emphasize assistance to the most troubled for correction, rather than discover a design for society that has sufficient preventive measures to help its generations to cultivate the good and free life to ultimate humane fulfillment.
Most values, for both public and private contexts, have come from religious sources. Education, in much of its latest context, has disavowed values. They say: Values are found and accepted in what we are, and managed on whatever is legal. Values are not made a matter of aspiration, but to be worn with a bit of heaviness, for the sake of society. A matter that may have been moral and legally defended in one generation becomes immoral, but legally defended, in the next – sometimes vice-versa. Permissiveness, usually in the name of freedom, tends to win the exchange until the society sinks, fails, and something other takes over to begin a new cycle. As noted on other of these Pages, Arnold Toynbee addressed rise and decline in his study of world history. Nations arrive at dead ends. They die and are replaced – to die again.
To understand what happened, at least from the direction of the Christian context and youth, we might give attention to such intensive reporting as that of David Hollinger, Professor at the University of California at Berkeley: After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity. Hollinger seems objective in his analysis and the documentation of his assertions. He points out how the young have backed away from ideals, how the mainline churches have lost, and how evangelicalism has gained somewhat – in the growth of diversity in society, and the shifting of political contexts. Some of this will appear on another Page, but it is important here to note that the undirected diversity in general society has influenced the church, affecting decline. Hollinger’s analysis makes clear that the future of the church must, for success, do something about the appeal to youth for spiritual life and values. What will be the consequences of the current malaise about matters that in my youthful years were taken as right and worthy of effort? We had some clarity on right and wrong. We knew when we were wrong. When we were wrong we tried to hide it. Today there is some flaunting of it. The idea of decency is taken by many as goody-two-shoes conduct. Currently, youths work hard to escape that indirect compliment. Even serious collegians follow some conduct they deplore so to be accepted by those with lesser standards. I have been approached by students who openly admitted that they were hypocrites to others about values. Those students, with hidden idealism, miss their own approval. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020