Parenting Teens Part VII

In my last post I laid out some of the theological emphases in our circles.  We don’t have a truncated and narrow-minded Christian tradition.  A Christian and classical education is one of the things I failed to list, but alas the post was getting long.  In parenting teenagers, we want to raise them in such a way that they understand that Christians have the real culture.  When we love and exude the grace not the law of the doctrines I stipulated in my last post coupled with a Christian classical education all wrapped up in a genuine love for God, you have a home that a teenager will love, not hate.  

What does a Christian and classical education have to do with it?  Of course for a mom and dad to be wonderful parents they don’t have to teach in the Christian classical tradition but it helps to fill out the questions and the identity of the teenagers view of the world.  As we’ve talked about already, young people are always interpreting life around them.  They will get answers one way or another.  It may come from a home that provides articulate and well-read views towards history and its meaning for life today (i.e. a classical ed.) or it may come from the cheesy and lame pop-culture teachers that flood your teenagers head every day.  Did you catch that?  Young people today are absolutely flooded with the gurus of pop-culture.  We have to have the stuff to counter all the flashy computer technology in the movies.  

The three sacraments in our culture: movies, music, and TV are persuasive in seducing young people to stupidity.  We can’t just throw Bible verses at them nor can we always be quoting from our own limited life experience.  And it’s not always helpful to always be citing 17th Century authors to them.  

No.  We need to swim with them through pop-culture dissecting it scrupulously.  We must study to show ourselves approved to God and to our children.  The effect should look something like lining up all the stupid heads of pop-culture and rhetorically and in love, cut off all their heads by the penetrating analysis of their foolishness with the well-developed tools of cultural engagement.  What are these tools and weapons?

At the least, the Bible oozing out of your pores and careful study of what we know to be biblical about the distinctives in our denomination and in a Christian and classical education.  What else but a great classical ed. can provide for a teenager the difference between a good story and a ridiculous one?  What else can lay the foundation for the wisdom to know the difference between Eminem and Bach?  And if you don’t know who Eminem is, then you should familiarize yourself by listening to some of his music on itunes. (!)

It just doesn’t do to tell a kiddo, “Oh, that’s bad, very evil stuff.”  You have to show why.  And we’re all challenged along the way.