(this post started on my family blog)
I was flipping through the pages of the school yearbook with my son and daughter.
On more than one occasion, I would remark on this pretty girl or that handsome guy and ask about them
“She is drunk all of the time.”
“But her parents said how proud they are of the person she’s become.”
“Dad, the cops have had to deal with her.”
I flipped a few more pages…
A 1/2 page ad by some parents who are proud of the “fine young man” their son has become.
“What is he like?”
“Oh, he’s gay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s openly gay.”
I was disappointed several more times.
It’s not that I think every kid is an angel. I’m not that dumb. Shoot, I was messed up. I was fairly straight until I left high school but that was because I largely lacked opportunity. As soon as I left home, I went into complete self-destruct mode.
Maybe the parents don’t know. I know that my wife and I were blind sided when our second daughter went south on us. We discovered it accidentally. It was a real blow to me because I am and have been a very involved father.
Some parents are actively helping their kids self destruct. They buy the alcohol and are fine with their kids getting drunk. Maybe they really are proud of them! This is in wealthy, upper middle class Overland Park, KS! I know a couple of them. Their son is well on his way to becoming an alcoholic and they took out an ad to tell him that they are proud of the “remarkable young man” he has become.
I realize that this is not politically correct but…
Are we helping our homosexual son by telling him that he has become a “fine young man?” Has the bar been lowered that much? Whatever happened to raising a young man who will love a (singular) woman and become a father to their children? Is everything equal?
Should we tell our promiscuous daughter that we are proud of the person she has become while she reduces herself to being a momentary good time to a bunch of guys?
Whatever happened to shame? Does it have no place in our culture anymore? Is there nothing our kid can do that makes us ashamed of them? Is there nothing for which they should be ashamed?
Have we become so politicized that we are afraid to tell our own children that there is a right and a wrong? Are we unwilling to be the one person who will tell them that what they are doing is wrong?
After the truth came out about our daughter, we reached out to her in every way we could think of but we didn’t suddenly abandon our values and pretend that we accepted her behavior.
My parents didn’t either…and they weren’t “holy roller Christians” like I am. I knew that I was screwing up. No matter how cool my friends thought I was, my conscience told me otherwise.
I think if my parents took out a huge ad in the school yearbook to tell me how proud they were of me while I was doing it, it would have only made it worse. It would have confirmed one of two alienating facts: either that they really didn’t have a clue about my life or if they did know what was going on, they really didn’t care.
Our culture is reeling. We are lost because we no longer know what is right and what is wrong. Everything has become equal. And so we now congratulate what should be reproved. “It’s all good.”
I believe an old, “outdated” Book that has become “totally irrelevant” in our modern society said it best, “we now glory in our shame.”