All Grown up

So I’m reading a boy-hood classic, The Adventures of Tom Saywer. I was never able to get through it when I was a kid, I was too busy chasing/killing things, so I figured the best thing to do as an “adult” was to read it.  What I like the most is that it reminds me of when I was a kid. Growing up in Oregon my friends and I went on crazy stupid adventures, like setting booby traps for our unsuspecting enemies (there weren’t any) or playing war in the woods with pine cones and sticks. If done right a pine cone is a perfect grenade and a stick, depending on size, is a great rifle or grenade launcher. We would also fish, catch crawdads, tromp through briar patches just to follow a stream, sneak around on peoples property, or really anything else that was remotely dangerous or just plain stupid. However, my favorite thing was jumping bikes in the backyard, not a lot has changed.

Although it’s fun to read and reminisce about how it was when I was a kid, I’m haunted by something, and I think it began with my generation. The children of the 80’s took a weird turn in middle school, a turn that I don’t think our parent took. Although it’s true that my parents were faced with the sexual revolution and all that came with it, their life in middle school and even high school was pretty tame. Drugs were present, and sex could be had, but it was considerably easier to avoid than it was when I was in school, and especially now for my brother and sister.

The 90’s saw the rise of grunge rock and a subsequent spike in depression and teen drug abuse. Divorce crashed on the shores of many marriages, leaving chaos and destruction in its wake. Many of us grew up in homes that were split, or on the verge of splitting, and we didn’t know how to deal with the pain and emptiness that was left. Many turned to drugs, sex, alcohol, aerosol paint cans, really anything that would numb the pain we didn’t know what to do with. All this came crashing down while we were still children, we made decisions that our parents didn’t have to make until they were in their late teens or early twenties.

Where am I going with this? I have watched my brother and sister deal with crap that has absolutely stolen their childhood from them. No longer do kids hang out and play with sticks and pine cones. Instead they get locked into a weird virtual world with video games and computers. Although it doesn’t seem bad, I think they have destroyed our ability to communicate, to really live with depth in a community of people. How can we live in community if we never talk? How can we uphold society if our only conversation is during a video game or through text messages? I want kids to climb trees again. I want to see kids play some ridiculous game that they made up, that doesn’t make any sense and lasts for hours. I don’t want America, or the Church for that matter, to be consumed by the junk we set in motion, I don’t want my kids to fall into the same crap I did.

So I pray that Christ will restore the hearts of children, I pray that He restores families so that children can be children. I don’t want life to be about video games that are detached from reality, I want life to be about Christ and drinking in the wonderful world that He has created. I want my kids to live deeply, I want them to understand their depravity, but I also want them to understand Christ’s mercy so they can fall on it. Basically, I want kids to love Jesus, and I want them to be free to be kids. I don’t want them to worry about which parent they will stay with, or who is sleeping with who. To worry about such things destroys the soul. Father I pray that Your Holy Spirit will renew our minds, I pray that we will submit ourselves to You, I pray that would free us from our junk so we can follow and love You.

~ by Brent on March 15, 2008.