This past week as our family was sitting in the living room listening to a video rendition of God Bless the USA, my 10 year old son’s eyes started welling up with tears as he said, “It makes me so sad that people died for our nation and even for the people who are trying to tear it down.”
As he saw a flag being handed to a soldier’s widow, he asked “What if that was Spencer (our oldest) who would have died? Don’t you think that would make us want to love our country and our flag even more?”
Over the past month, we have seen a surge of young people take to rioting in the streets, tearing down meaningful statues of our nation’s heritage, and blasting vitriol towards the very people in authority who have sworn their lives to protect them. They have demanded that they get their way like children throwing a tantrum, and they have done it all in the name of ‘justice’.
As a result of their justification of ‘justice’, violence and homicides have been on the rise in many major cities across our country. And it seems as if the evil bottled up within the hearts of a generation have been given an ‘excuse’ to explode. And so we see Ecclesiastes 8:11 come to fruition yet again… “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.“
Every time we hear of more rioting, increased murders, or that another mass shooting has taken place, the majority of people are sitting back watching and wondering, “What in the world went wrong… again?”
And while many will argue about where the problem lies and what the real enemy is, there is one thing that cannot be denied… we are raising a generation of broken kids. Children who have scars so deep that the world doesn’t even know their depth as of yet. In many ways we are reaping the planted seeds of a previous generation whose fruits are simply now budding and coming to light.
And how did this problem come about? How do we explain why we are raising a generation of broken children unlike what we’ve ever seen before?
The answer is simple… broken children are the result of a broken society and broken homes. And here are some of the reasons why:
1) We have devalued human life
Life is no longer sacred. It is disposable.
- From the womb where we can remove life before we have to hold it in our arms and be confronted with it face to face…
- To the television and video game screen where nameless people can be murdered and their blood splashed all over the screen all in the name of entertainment…
- To where the death of some is promoted because it helps advance an agenda, while the death of others is downplayed for not being convenient.
We are a nation that is confused, and that has confused our children concerning the value of life.
2) We have blamed everyone and everything else but ourselves
There is a lot of blame being thrown around in our country for why terrible things happen, but one thing we’ve yet to see is anyone accepting responsibility for the brokenness we see all around us. Broken children are the result of a broken society and broken homes.
Billy Graham once said, “We have taken God out of our educational systems and thought we could get away with it. We have sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind. We have laughed at God, religion and the Bible… We are beginning to reap what has been sown for the past generation. We have taught the philosophy of the Devil, who says, ‘Do as you please.’ Many of our educational leaders sneer at the old-fashioned idea of God and a moral code. Movies feature sex, sin, crime, and alcohol. Teenagers see these things portrayed alluringly on the screen and decide to go and try them. Newspapers have played up crime and sex until they seem glamorous to our young people.” (Spoken in 1955)
If there is anyone to blame, we should start by looking inward.
3) We have become increasingly more influenced by inanimate objects than by people
I was talking to a youth pastor recently when he said this, “Today’s teenagers are being more influenced by objects than they are by people.” Wow. After a day at school, the average teenager goes to their room, shuts the door behind them, and often enters an entirely different world for hours on end that their parents have very little if any clue about. Young people’s values and world-view are often being shaped and molded more by what they see behind closed doors on a screen than by what they see lived out or talked out in front of them in their own homes.
And this happens with children as well. Parents wrongly assume that as long as their kids are staying quiet and calm with a device in hand or a tv screen in front of them, that we must be doing okay in our parenting because our children aren’t tearing anything apart. When in reality, we are inadvertently allowing other things and people to plant seeds of influence in our own children more than we do. We have gradually allowed the numbing of their minds towards truth and morality right in front of our eyes. The enemy is tricky, and I believe he often laughs at us and how easily we are fooled by his schemes.
4) We have forgotten what it means to genuinely love
True love within the framework of the family has been replaced with sports or screens or all the things that money can buy. No longer do families genuinely have time for each other because they are often too busy running themselves ragged with their busy lifestyles. And in the middle of it all, we have forgotten how to love. We have failed to love. And other lesser important things, sometimes even evil things, have replaced that void.
And sadly, many of the times when our children pick up a device, they are being taught a version of love that is contradictory to everything that we believe to be true about love, but we’re too busy to notice. They are inundated with wrong and unbiblical messages of love – that love is conditional, and based upon appearance, and anything that ‘feels’ right. Our children not only desperately need us to show them love, but they need us to teach them what true, biblical love looks like.
5) We have removed Jesus
In addition to removing statues, there are some in our nation who have called for the removal of Jesus in any form (statues, images, etc.) that others may find offensive. In reality, Jesus was already removed long ago from the lives and families of many, and we are currently reaping the consequences.
Billy Graham went on to say that the best way to influence your children is to set a good example because “the majority of children acquire the characteristics and habits of their parents. Very seldom do parents have trouble with children when the Bible is read regularly in the home, grace is said at the table, and family prayers take place daily. Most trouble with teenagers comes from children reared in homes where prayer is neglected, the Bible is never opened and church attendance is spasmodic. Christ gives the moral stability, understanding, wisdom, and patience needed to rear children. Christ in the home, in the lives of the parents, is the only permanent solution to the menacing teenage social problems in America.”
And that, my friends, is the true answer to repairing broken children – CHRIST… Christ in the home, starting in the lives of mom and dad.
