Recently I heard on the radio that 20 percent of the girls in a Memphis, TN high school either had children or were pregnant in an out of wedlock fashion. What were they thinking, the girls, their partners in fornication, their parents, the school officials, and everyone else in the community? Fifty years ago I was just finishing my teen years and we never saw or heard of anything remotely close to this. Why??
In 1969, 10 years after I graduated from high school and three years before Roe v Wade, 68 percent of Americans said premarital sex is wrong. Today only 32 percent say it is wrong. What are we thinking, and why? Ten percent of American babies were born to unwed mothers in 1970 and today that figure is 40 percent. More than 1,500,000 babies were aborted in 2008 in the US. That quantity is equal to about half of the entire population of my home state of West Virginia. What are we thinking? And Why?
After the terrorists attack on American soil on September 11, 2001 we saw film footage of Muslims in the Middle East cheering and dancing in the streets. What were they thinking, and why?
Because of a certain level of shame, I hesitate to tell what I saw on TV (CBS) a few nights ago, but I earnestly desire to make a point. I watched a cops and robbers show and observed the following. (1) One of the stars of the show casually got up to go to work while his girlfriend stayed behind in his bed. (2) An unmarried pregnant teen and her boyfriend killed a pharmacist during a robbery to feed their drug habit. (3) A side story in the episode that had absolutely nothing to do with strategies to solve the crime, involved a young man who had just broken up with his lover (?), another man, and proceeded to tell how he was born a homosexual. Make no mistake about it, the little side story was a political statement letting the viewer know that homosexuality is normal, and you are not normal if you believe otherwise. What were they thinking, the writers, producers, actors, and sponsors of that show? And why?
If the example here about Muslims dancing in the streets seems unrelated to the other things written here, let me explain. Muslims who cheered when Americans were killed did so because they were raised in an environment where hatred was learned from adults in that society. If children are taught that people of another culture are evil and should be exterminated, then we should not be surprised that some become terrorists while others cheer them on.
To a large degree people of all cultures behave according to what they have been taught while growing into adulthood. If children get the idea that sexual activity, perverted or otherwise, is for recreation and that babies can be legally (man’s law) killed while they pass through the birth canal, and then thrown in the trash, then “Hello, we have problems!”
What were they thinking? People behave in relation to their worldview. They don’t necessarily have to give a lot of conscience thought to all the ramifications of their worldview.
Why? Their, your, and my belief systems, or our individual worldview tends to be learned by what we see and hear over a period of several years.
Suppose an average American teen is awake 16 hours per day. Can you speculate as to how that time is spent? Influences during that 16-hr. block of time will shape their worldview. How much do you think is Christ centered and/or Christ influenced? Now the most important question: What are we, you and I, going to do to make a change in how our children view the world? Do we live a life that accurately reflects a Christian worldview? Do we even know where to begin? Hint, hint; it will take more than 2-4 hours in a church building each week to make an impact.
Dennis
Rowan
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