I just finished reading an article in the June edition of Time magazine written by John Cloud of San Diego entitled Should you Drink with Your Kids?
He states that “our effort to stamp out underage alcohol use failed, creating a culture in which young people binge in secret.” He says the better way to handle this is to help the young people learn how to drink resonably. There going to drink before there 21 anyways so why not be there when they drink? It is not even illegal is 45 states for the adolescent to drink your house, it is just illegal in public?
It is mind boggling to me that he even asks these questions. It isn’t that I didn’t see my fair share of alcohol growing up in rural west Kentucky. It is just I thought there was a moral law/ code of conduct that we all lived by even if we were not Christian. My father, who had a substance abuse problem, never tried to get rid of his guilt he felt as I stared at him as he would get drink by having me join him. He may have not strived to be Christ like.. but there was a line in his conscience he would have had to cross.
Horrible things happen when you try to work on the results of a problem instead of dealing with a root cause. If the goal was to lower the amount of kids who secretly binge – then quite obviously bringing it our into the open would help take care of that problem. There are so many seemingly good programs out there that are trying to help the teenagers “do better”. However, they do not take care of the sin problem anymore then the blood of a goat makes you righteous.
I am reminded of the verses in Hebrews..
Here is my personal application from todays reading:
1. I must show clearly to my students what God expects from their lives contrary to what the culture says is permissable. To state something I belive should be self evident is not good enough – I must show them from the Word of God.
2. I want to be more involved in the program in our church to help people overcome addictions. The battle is not coming it is here. I will either meet it with the Word of God or just let sin abound.
3. I must open my eyes to the real battles my teens face. They are being faced with opportunities to do wrong at a much early age then I did. The pressure is coming from as many directions or more to be average.
