Self-destructive behavior is now defined as an achievement

Facing down crises has always been a measure of reaching adulthood. How a youth responds to peril, especially when they display courage in challenging circumstances, is the line that is crossed to gauge maturity. Rites of passage vary among cultures but the one aim they usually share is the acquisition of skills needed to provide for and raise a family. Historically, the skills included proficiency with tools used for these purposes such as knives, spears, hoes, picks and axes to hunt, farm, mine and log. Or, on the homemaking side of family needs are mastering the skills of preparing and storing food, clothing construction and training children.

Now kids have eaten colorful packets of laundry detergent and are snorting condoms

Albeit a quick and simplistic run-through of how social standards were met in pre-Renaissance or Industrial Revolution eras, the fact remains that claiming adulthood meant passing tests of endurance and knowledge. Somehow that standard of achievement has degenerated over the centuries to the opposite of developing and perfecting useful abilities. As youngsters approach their majority, as we used to call it, they have less and less concept of what it means to be an adult and, so, no proper way to demonstrate reaching that milestone. Why is it that learning skills meant to protect and provide for a family have been lost, replaced with pointless personal challenges that foolishly place youths’ lives at risk? It’s not that this debasement of teen challenges is new. There have always been misguided tests of strength and courage posed from one foolish youngster to another, daring one another to perform some outrageously stupid act. It could have been leaping off a 30-foot cliff into the surf below, bingeing on alcohol or ________________, you fill in the blank. But the level of idiocy has begun to reach depths that baffle anyone with an ounce of sense. In the last couple months some moron stepped beyond reason, devising tests that are life threatening. No longer are folks meeting ice water challenges to raise funds for a good cause. Now kids have eaten colorful packets of laundry detergent and are snorting condoms. The real question is: to what purpose are teens performing acts of self-destruction for public display? We’ve seen people who cut themselves, try to change their physical make-up and drug themselves into oblivion out of depression, delusion and self-hate. Is this a symptom of the same malaise or is it a bigger cultural failure to give direction to youth swimming upstream, drowning in a current of influences over which they have no skills or knowledge to resist?

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The answer isn’t found in some deep well of social wisdom or perched on a craggy peak

The answer isn’t found in some deep well of social wisdom or perched on a craggy peak. Actually, it’s something I and others have addressed before because it’s not a fresh phenomenon; it comes in waves each time society thinks it’s outgrown the moral direction of biblical truth. Uh-oh, now I’ve done it… brought everything back to religion, the one abhorrent factor to humanity’s secular viewpoint, which isn’t exactly the case. Religion in itself cures nothing. It’s just another set of rules to be abandoned by people who despise rules. Mankind is disposed to rebellion, be it from parents, laws or God. Authority is to be bucked even if it leads to self-destruction. What’s really lacking in the lives of the kids who swallow poison, inhale rubbers, try any designer drug at a rave or run away to fight with ISIS is spiritual guidance, not religion and not legal constraints. They are floundering without a life jacket in a sea of visual and aural waves flooding their eyes and crashing around their ears. The fault lies with those who should know better but either don’t or haven’t bothered to grow up themselves. When adults squander their life experience by chasing phantoms, thinking accomplishment is reaching an emotional high, whether that entails conquering a mountain, building a business empire or compelling others to accept their opinion, then the next generation has little chance of reaching adulthood. Youth will sink to any level seeking an avenue of achievement even if it means voluntarily exposing themselves to pointless danger. Youth never have a realization of the fragility of life until they’ve encountered a life-threatening situation, even if they bring it upon themselves. And if they are not raised to see the complexity of the world at large and supplied the tools of faith to confront it confidently, they’ll hunt up a way to prove themselves worthy of attention – any kind of attention. When social pressure dictates the definition of achievement, including self-destructive behavior, the culture at large is in trouble. Agree or not, but the only answer is a moral answer, and moral guidelines can come from only one source – a good and moral God in whom you can trust. Otherwise we’re on our own, and man isn’t half as smart as secular society thinks.