We should not allow teenagers to exist. All teenagerism must be stamped out and eradicated. There should be no teenagers in the church of God. It's either boy or man, girl or woman. There is nothing in between. At least, that's the impression I get from the Scriptures, from multi-cultural experiences, and from history. Where did this notion of ˜adolescence' come from? There are theories floating around. Perhaps industrialism + property taxes have driven us from the land and, therefore, have driven children from a natural context wherein they can "safely" mature through work. Perhaps inefficient government education + the over-valuing of bureaucratic "licensing" has introduced a window of pseudo-adulthood into our children's lives. Maybe our faith in the psychobabble that children are innocent has caused us to romanticized childhood and equate "innocence" to "immaturity." Or maybe all this is an excuse for lazy fathers not to cultivate manhood and womanhood, preferring the titillating distraction to the sober numbering of our days.
Did you know that in Peru an eight year old girl can cook anything mother can cook? That a ten year old boy can run a farm is his father dies? That a five year old boy can lead a bull, by himself, across the mountains (I saw one)! Our boys are really good first person shooters. I'm not bad myself.
Elizabeth Elliot talks about "thresholds" that ought to be in place so that, when they are crossed, a boy can be called a man (see Mark of a Man). So what are some "thresholds" that we need to have in place? It's a difficult question. But I agree with Mrs. Elliot. I think that, as a church culture, we need to have such institutions. Right now, about the only things we've got are a driver's license, high school graduation, the right to vote, and college graduation. Better to have them be memorization of the Larger Catechism, building your first tractor (which a friend of mine's father made him do at age 14!), and killing and cleaning your first deer, then feeding the whole church with it. I don't know. But our boys (and girls) are floundering. I'm thirty-six, and I'm still floundering. Of course, I'm not married either, and I hear that marriage stabilizes a fellow. On the other hand, who wants to marry someone who's not stable?
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