People use social media for a variety of purposes, from sharing family adventures, to selling products and ideas, to venting about politics and social issues. While each person has the freedom to do whatever they like with their personal FaceBook page, sometimes we need to be reminded that there’s a better way. One of the foolish things I see much too often are posts complaining about liberal bias in the media, our leftish education system, the depravity of society, you name it. Crying about unfairness or bad behavior solves nothing. I know, because I’ve been just as guilty in this regard as the next person.
I think the majority feels frustrated with the moral decline we witness every day, and our apparent ineffectiveness to slow it down, much less turn it around. Most of us have children and grandchildren and we have nightmares of them wending their way through the garbage pit that our post-modern culture is spewing out – so we cry foul – perhaps hoping some warrior will step forward to their and our rescue. But it ain’t gonna happen that way folks!
Each one of us has a part to play in the rescue of our culture and our kin. In spite of scriptural warnings that the world would “wax worse and worse,” my generation never anticipated how morally corrupt our society would become, and so soon – so we didn’t adequately prepare our offspring. Now we’re in catch-up mode. Fortunately, at the same time as we face a daily attack on our traditions and morals, God has raised up a number of wise men and women to help us. So we have at our technological fingertips a number of tools to combat those attacks and to prepare our young folks for the challenges they’re going to face as they proceed through each phase of their growth and education, into adulthood.
As a starter, let me recommend an article by Stand to Reason’s student impact director, Brett Kunkle entitled A Practical Plan to Equip the Next Generation. It’s at: http://www.str.org/publications/a-practical-plan-to-equip-the-next-generation-solid-ground-may-2016#.VzSrNfkrL7A
As Kunkle explains in his intro, growing up in a Christian home, a family committed to the local church, coming to Christ at five and baptized at six, the model teenage youth group kid, a student leader and a ministry intern, even committing his life to full-time vocational ministry before graduating – none of this prepared him for the serious intellectual challenges awaiting him or the barrage of moral challenges from an increasingly secular culture. His freshman college Philosophy 101 instructor systematically dismantled the Christianity he grew up with, in class and in front of everyone. And sadly that’s the story for the majority of our Christian kids and explains why the Church continues to hemorrhage its youth out the doors once they experience the outside world.
So stop the complaining and start doing whatever is necessary to prepare your kids and grandkids and other people’s kids to defeat the enemy’s advances on their minds and spirits. Stop sulking about your own mistakes and failures – learn from those mistakes and share them honestly with the ones you most love. If you of the older generation blew it with your own kids, turn them over to God; then start anew with your grandkids – study and share what you learn. It’s never too late to turn things around.