This is a video made years ago (circa 2006). I can’t remember where the idea came from. Probably from how freaky the Boobah show really is. In any case, here is a freshly ‘remastered’ version with subtitles for all those places where we didn’t know how to improve the audio.
A couple weeks ago, I was speaking with someone and we asked each other the question, “If you could go back and meet the 12 year old version of yourself and give them some piece of advice, what would it be?”. This wasn’t my answer, but after having some time to mull around the question in my head, I think this answer may by on the list of things I’d want to say.
Proverbs 1:8-9:
Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
for they are a graceful garland for your head
and pendants for your neck.
If I could meet the 12 year old version of myself and remind him of something, or advise him in some way, I would want to tell him that his parents are on his side. That his parents are on his team, so to speak.
As a kid (and in some ways, as a parent too), it’s easy to feel like the adult authority in your life is an opposing force. That it needs to be circumvented to really enjoy the things you want to enjoy. Kind of how a lot of people have a similar view of the police. This force isn’t benevolent, or acting in your best interest. But rather a challenging ‘obstacle’ in the grand game of life.
This isn’t so, but it’s not something we typically learn until we’re older. But, as Solomon teaches, it is wisdom and prudence to learn this young. To appreciate this ‘pendant for your neck’, rather than resist it.
I sometimes sit and think about how strange a time it is to be alive. In the world of technology, more has changed in the last 200 years than in all the time leading up to it. That’s pretty incredible. It means we have to be willing to look at everything with fresh eyes.
Even though there may be things that were true of the human experience for a very long time, they may very well not be true any more.
I was thinking especially about cameras. They’re less than 200 years old. In terms of an art medium, this is one that is extremely young. Even though we’d have difficulty imagining life without them. Which makes me wonder what kind of affect the advent of cameras has had on growing up.
It wasn’t until 1900 that the first camera was mass produced, and shortly after that it became something of a household staple. Regular families started having pictures of their kids. It wasn’t long before they started having pictures of their vacations, too.
What was it like for the parents seeing their children grow up with this crazy device that freezes a moment in time and saves it forever? It must have been fascinating.
The advent of personal video cameras, I’m sure, was a similar experience. When I was growing up, my family didn’t own a camcorder, but I was fascinated by them. I imagine that it would be a surreal experience for me to watch a preteen version of myself on screen. Yet millions of people now have that experience and don’t think twice about it. It just is the way it is.
Now it seems like something similar is happening again with the introduction of social media. Search YouTube and you will find millions of videos people’s children. There’s practically an entire generation of children that are growing up on YouTube. That’s bizarre.
It seems impossible to predict the effects of a rapidly mutating social and technological culture on Children. But part of me wishes I could start right now and experience it for myself.
A woman in Massachusetts is being charged on murder and manslaughter claims of two children. Both were stabbed to death. That’s pretty hard to read. It’s pretty hard to write too.
Well, today was the annual March for Life in Washington DC where prolife supporters from all over the country come and show their disgust for the brutal legislation.
What does that have to do with a murderous mother of two deceased children? One of those children wasn’t even born yet!
What kind of a ridiculous double standard is this? A woman can walk into a doctors office and have her child dismembered and vacuumed out of her body. In a lot of places, your tax dollars will even help her do it. But, if she walked into her bathroom and plunged a blade through her abdomen into the child, she’d be convicted as a murderer.
Is there a reason our country doesn’t see the double standard? Ridiculous.
The public schools in our area are closed today, so my ten year old niece was home. We ate lunch at McDonalds this afternoon, along with my mother. At the restaurant, my niece ran into a classmate who also happened to be out with his family.
The boy wasn’t someone that my niece was really friends with. Just acquaintances from school. But within seconds of seeing him in the restaurant, she had struck up a conversation and staked out a seat for us next to him and his family. By the end of the meal, she’d asked to invite him over to play for the afternoon.
I spent most of the time amazed at how safe the two of them felt building a friendship with one another. It struck me that that kind of social confidence isn’t something you find very often in adults. We’ve all usually had too many bad experiences, so we keep virtually everyone at arms length until they can prove, in some respect, that being in an actual friendship with them is safe.
It makes me wonder what our personal and corporate ministry endeavors would look like if we threw caution to the wind and simply pursued relationships with one another regardless of the risk.
Because, it seems to me, that ministry and evangelism and discipleship happen both in and out of this kind of relational caution. But when we have our guard up and aren’t honest about it, I think we do a lot more damage than good. It could be argued that it’s from that kind of fear that the church got the holier-than-thou reputation. In an attempt to defend themselves from being hurt by other people, they put on whatever costume is necessary—and it’s totally inauthentic and thus, ultimately ineffective.
Although I’m far from being the one confident enough to lead this charge, I must wonder what it would look like for a small community to decide together that the risk of being hurt is less than the benefit of authentic ministry.
1. The Pace Car
You know, when there are three lanes of traffic, the left most lane usually being the “fast” lane for passing? But for some dumbfounding reason there are three cars driving side by side with no one passing anyone else. The car on the left is the pace car. He drives me crazy.
2. Children’s Television Programming
Yeah, like I need to write more on this topic. Want to know how I feel about Children’s TV, here are a few other posts:
I Loath Children’s Television
Miley Cyrus, MySpace and Our Moral Decline
Sex is Getting Younger
3. Expectations
I think that in a way, expectations are the great ruiner of all things that could be enjoyed. I like chocolate ice cream and I like vanilla ice cream, but if I get vanilla when I was expecting chocolate I would not enjoy it. I don’t think life on a cosmic level is too much different.
I could do without expectations.
This is a topic I would very much like to write about in length. Unfortunately, I haven’t collected all my thoughts about it in a concise enough manner yet. So, I’ll just spend a few minutes introducing my hatred of children’s television.
A few years back, I worked for an organization who made it their responsibility to monitor and review television content. When I arrived on the scene, my first responsibility was a children’s programming study. It mostly focused on programming that aired on networks geared for Children (i.e., Cartoon Network, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc). It also focused on Saturday morning, and after school programming on network television.
The official results of the study were unsettling. The violence content was staggering. The sexual innuendo was, not only present, but prevalent on networks like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Even foul language made it’s way in quite a bit. Spongebob Square Pants had an entire episode devoted to learning to “talk like a sailor”, in which they bleeped to F word somewhere around 40 times, if I remember correctly.
But, to tell you the truth, it isn’t the overt content that bothers me the most. It’s the subtle luring from “harmless” children’s programming into adult themed programming. If you’d like an example of what I mean–consider Brittany Spears, Justin Timberlake and soon, Miley Cirus. These are sex icons, and soon my nine year old niece’s role model will be one too.
What makes this so much worse, is that a parent can easily overlook the dangers in allowing their children to watch more than small doses of television, because in much of the content there isn’t anything obviously dangerous. The child may not immediately exhibit obvious signs of the television’s negative influence. So, parents may go on assuming that their kids aren’t being affected as predicted. However, it’s not the immediate affects that are dangerous, it’s the long term effects.
For example, seeing a cartoon character catch on fire for laughs likely won’t lead to the child lighting someone on fire. However, after three years of becoming attached the Drake & Josh on Nickelodeon, Josh’s sexual promiscuity–and eventual appearance on People Magazine’s monthly cover–will probably ring much louder in their memory than mom’s warning against premarital sex. Unfortunately by that time, it’s too late.
Here are a few statistics concerning children and sexual activity I’ve found as I’ve been doing my research. This came from a study at the University of Michigan.
I’m going to write more about this in the future and something parents have every reason to be concerned about.
