Thesis: The Problem and the Solution

I hate teen culture. It’s true. Call me crazy, but I tend to avoid people and things that are completely out of touch with reality, so it follows that I absolutely detest the stupidity that is teen culture. Unfortunately, I find myself surrounded by it. It is everywhere; to find it in schools is expected (though still disappointing, as stupidity is a disappointment wherever it is found), but teen culture is so ingrained into so many teenagers’ minds, that it follows them even to church.

When I denounce teen culture, I am not denouncing the musical styles that define it or any other such superficial thing (though the lyrics to the songs are often detestable and worthy of strong criticism), but rather I am criticizing something that goes much deeper. When I criticize teen culture, I am criticizing the heart issues that so define and pervade our culture that every teen is at best affected by them and at worst engulfed in them.

Unfortunately, teens in general today tend to have little positive influence. They spend hours at a time in front of the television, beaten over the head by images of illicit sex, drugs, immorality, and vulgar language, none of which is discouraged by the little glowing box in the corner, but rather glorified. The kids see the illicit sex making its participants happy and without regret. They see the drugs without the consequences. They hear vulgar language so frequently that one would think that it is not only common and accepted, but encouraged and healthy. They are shown immorality, but not taught that the wages of sin is death.

Upon being affected by the media in such a way, the more weak-minded in society go out and imitate what they have seen (monkey see, monkey do). Since misery loves company, the weak-minded legions (for they are many) attempt to pressure their peers into joining them in their sinful pastimes. Some consent, and thereby assimilate into the masses of immoral teens, increasing their numbers, and thus their influence over non-assimilating teens.

Over time, the depraved masses have grown in number and influence to the point that they nearly hold a monopoly on the minds of teens across the country. Even the teens who choose not to participate in the pastimes of their immoral peers have a tendency to be overly accepting and lax toward immorality and sin. Rather than calling sin as it is, they operate on the doctrine that has been pumped into them by the school system and the media, and they believe that sin is a personal choice, something subjective rather than objective. Rather than holding their peers accountable to a higher power, they tend to brush off the sins of their peers, again operating under the pretense taught to them by society, that if many people are committing a sin, then it ceases to be a sin and becomes a matter of personal choice.

If anyone should find my analysis to be incorrect, they need only look at some teenagers to prove my points. The media glorifies gangsta rappers, who wear their pants about ten sizes too large. The village idiots (which are unfortunately great in number) proceed to imitate their role models both in manner and appearance. They then lose all fashion sense (perhaps the least of their offenses), they lose their respect for women, and they begin to act with all manner of immorality in order to become like those who have been deemed cool. They then begin to collectively apply pressure to the non-idiots in society, and force them to conform as well to the standard placed before them by such trendsetters as Nelly and Eminim. Unfortunately, many teens don’t realize that they shouldn’t conform to standards which require them to crouch to new lows; instead they only see that if they conform, they will be accepted by those “cool” peers who have shunned them of late.

If guys wear clothes that are too big, girls just refuse to wear clothes. Some of the things that girls wear today wouldn’t have been fit to be underwear in saner times. In their attempts to please guys and get attention from them, they imitate the objects that the guys rave about. I’m sorry, but Playboy is not a good place to get tips on how to dress. Whereas fashion sense is one of the lesser offenses of the male gender in the quest for acceptance, it is among the worse offenses of the young ladies. It is wrong to lead other people to sin, and that’s exactly what girls are doing today. The problem is sort of a vicious cycle; girls wear such clothes because that’s what the guys like to see, but the girls could have the self-control and simply dress modestly and the problem would be over. At the same time, if guys stopped pressuring girls to wear such attire, the problem would likewise be fixed. Neither party is innocent.

These are only a few examples of the destruction the media has wrought. It is slowly desensitizing us to sin, and encouraging us to participate in it. It is taking the minds of our peers captive, and using them to pressure us into conforming and becoming cool. It is destroying our society, starting with our Christian heritage. When sin is portrayed as something of personal choice, it opens the door for things like gay marriage.

Unfortunately, the devil’s hand in this world, the media, has ensnared many of our peers. They now subscribe to the destructive, relativistic worldview that defines what has been the downfall of so many nations before us. Teenagers are the future voters, the future leaders. If we cannot win them back before adulthood, our nation will be lost, and our causes with it. Teenagers, as I have shown, take on the characteristics that they are shown by the media and by their peers, and the media is blatantly anti-Christian on every subject imaginable, leading many teens to be of similar convictions. With our young people being taken hostage and brainwashed, the future looks bleak.

There is only one antidote for this, and that is the Gospel. We would have a hard time convincing television stations to change their programming, especially since the majority of their audience is simply enthralled by sin. Instead, the task is ours to be salt and light to the world. We are in the world, and there is no way around that; we must strive to not be of the world.

I say this so often, and that is because it rings so true. As Edmund Burke said,

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’

We must fight the generations of good men’s apathy toward the spread of evil. Those good men in the world neglected to put out the sparks of pluralism and progressive education, and now they have grown into raging fires. Good men failed us in earlier times, but that is no excuse for us. Surrender is not an option. Co-habitation is not an option. Good and evil cannot coexist, and I don’t plan on going anywhere. Though we suffer from lesser numbers, we have the truth on our side; we have God on our side, and if God is for us, who can be against us?

There is a crisis at hand. We are good men, and let us never be accused of doing nothing. If our predecessors allowed evil’s cause to gain a strong foothold, we have no cause to blame them. Instead, our call is to fight the evil tooth and nail. Let it be so that, no matter what was done before us and no matter what is done when we have passed, we can always say that during our watch, evil didn’t gain an inch. The Gospel must be spread, and righteousness must now replace the sinfulness that the world idolizes. We must win the hearts and minds of our peers, thus retaking territory that we should never have lost in the first place.

America must experience a revival, and that revival must be strongest in the hearts of the young people, for as has already been stated, on the young people rests the future of America. Revival will not start itself, but the fervent prayers of righteous men availeth much. We, as good men, must fight inaction and pray. We must then take action on our prayers and win the souls of the hopelessly lost who populate our schools and our neighborhoods.

Let it never be said of us that we, in our selfish apathy, allowed evil to triumph in our time. Instead, let us fight for Truth, “…for albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng troops of beautiful, tall angels to enshield her from all wrong.” (James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis)

Instead, let us be remembered as those valiant few who effected worldwide change by simply placing their faith in God and acting upon it. As good men, if we can’t be remembered for that, let us not be remembered at all.