For the past couple of months I have been meditating on a “random” scripture from 2 Chronicles from 13.
“Then worthless and wicked men gathered around him to resist Rehoboam son of Solomon when Rehoboam was young, inexperienced, and unable to assert himself agains them.” verse 7
I will trust that you will read the chapter to gain the context while I offer some commentary on this verse
Our young men are being attacked by a worthless and wicked culture like Rehoboam. The writer seems to say that had Rehoboam had the ability to resist them he would have. I believe our young men want to resist a worthless and wicked culture but they cannot confront it for the same reason Rehoboam could not. We cannot do anything about the young part of the equation, but how can we help out in the other two?
Should we give our kids deeper experiences earlier?
I used to wait for a magic age to trust kids with responsibility. Not any more, I try my best to look at middle school kids and offer them the same things I offer HS students, just in smaller doses. I challenge them to step up with ideas, and then I get behind those ideas and create a levee of accountability for those ideas. The more experiences we can give kids through service, missions trips, leadership and other methods, the better I think they will be better prepared to face the wicked and the worthless. What kind of experiences are you offering your young men and are you seeing the fruit of these experiences?
How do we teach our kid to be assertiveness without being aggressive?
Middle school young men can be assertive in all the wrong ways. I see middle school kids be assertive with their sexuality as equally as they are assertive with their Yuh-Gi-Oh cards. This is the bane of adolescence, the inability to tell the difference of what is appropriate and what is not which, by the way, also makes them unbelievably funny. Too many young men know how to parrot biblical verses or religious slogans but without conviction and are false signs that a kid is “maturing” in the faith. I don’t know whether we should be teaching apologetics earlier but I think we can help young guys stand on higher ground, not beyond emotion, but in spite of their emotion. How are you cultivating deeper convictions in your young men?
As always, I have more questions than answers. Share your thoughts.