News Flash: Our Culture Is Telling Us to Jump Over Lakes In Motorcycles

At one of my recent high school youth group meetings I had the opportunity to ask the teens the following question: "What is our culture telling us?" After I posed this question, immediately one eager gentleman raised his hand. I called on him and he asked me the question, "Is MTV our culture?" I responded that MTV is most certainly a part of his culture. I asked him, "What is MTV telling you?" I eagerly anticipated his response. I knew that anything from MTV would be an opportunity to tell the teens how our culture is oftentimes a bad example of how we should live our lives. His response was, "MTV is telling us to jump over lakes in motorcycles!" I thought "This is not the answer I was expecting" as the whole group began to laugh at his response.

After the laughter died down, a bright young lady raised her hand. I called on her and asked her what our culture is telling her. Her response, also not one I expected, was somewhat more deep and thought provoking. She responded with, "Our culture is telling us that it is O.K. to be a failure." Wow! I was floored by her response. I am frequently amazed by the teens I work with. They often have as much to teach me as I have to teach them, and this was one of those times. Our culture does say that it is acceptable to fail.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't believe that it is unacceptable to fail. Lord knows, I have failed many, many times in my life. It is perfectly alright, and natural, to fail, but we need to pick ourselves back up and try again. However this is not what our culture is telling us. Our culture is saying that it is O.K. to fail, because there will be someone else there to pick up your slack. It is O.K. to fail in school, because you are going to move on to the next grade anyway. It is O.K. to fail in life, because the government, or some other entity, will come in to take care of you. Our government will come in and "bail out" anyone who does fail. This is what our culture is telling us.

This line of thought is just wrong, and if we continue down this path we will raise a generation of teens who will grow up and expect someone to fix their problems and failures. If someone comes in and "fixes" our failures then we as individuals have learned nothing about life. We will continue to fail because we will not have learned from our failures. We will also become unnecessarily dependent on others. This is not what Christ intends for us.

Christ gave us a free will to choose what we want in life. If we so choose, we can allow ourselves to fail in life and let others "bail out" our failures. However, Christ wants us to choose to pick ourselves up after our failures and try again. He knows that we will make mistakes and fails. He also understands that it is though our failures that we learn and grow. He doesn't want us to depend unnecessarily on others. He wants us to depend on Him. It is only through depending on Christ that we ultimately find success in this life and the next.