To take to
heart the challenge to be a youth advocate once reading Clark’s findings about
today’s youth is rather a natural response. Adults who want to be effective in reaching out to this
generation need to consider Clark’s presuppositions—today, not many are
“getting it”—not the church, the schools, youth workers or parents. What IS
going on inside the world of today’s teenagers? I am still in the process of
re-wiring my mental thought processes to Clark’s ‘underworld’ schemata but
frankly it is taking a while—he states in his update to his first edition, “It
isn’t getting any better,” and that is the ‘why’ for this second edition.
This is yet another book which
speaks to the elongation of adolescence but doesn’t give a complete definition
(explicitly) of what a healthy ‘normal’ teenager looks like today. One could
glean implicitly from what Clark speaks against though.
Clark reports how bad it was for teens in years before and things are so
much worse for them today—definitely different since I was in High School. George
Barna reports in, RevolutionaryParenting, how spiritual champions are raised today. I wonder how Clark and Barna would discuss together how healthy kids develop. This almost seems to be an impossible chore
to accomplish from Clark’s book. But his book isn’t a parenting book, it is an
exposing book.
Isn't the older
generation simply reaping what they have sown in the next, like the
entitlement attitude for example? Adults believe kids today should
respect them first, as if they are entitled to it. This book gives in detail
why this generation should not respect them. Respect and other virtues won’t be
found until adults see how youth are trying to survive in the world and
culture we have built (dug?) for them. They are simply reacting to our pushing
them to the side or launching them into the proverbial cultural sea “without a
rudder or a compass.” In a word, today’s adolescents have been 'abandoned'.
The 60's kids have never grown up--the progression from dependence to
independence to interdependence stopped. In their search for continued
survival in a post-World War society, they have abandoned the following generations
to ‘figure it out for yourself’ while they distanced themselves to live their
own lives.
But live them for what? It's Judges
all over again. But where are the Judges? When is the next Advent? We need
another incarnation. We need to stop leaving our kids “to themselves” as
Solomon says which reaps more of the same consumer culture we find ourselves in
which sees both us and them as things to cash in on and leave emotionally
bankrupt. This creates a make-believe world where teens today walk as avatars
to merely being seen but not ever heard—the real teen is sublevel living his or
her life seemingly protected but lonely. Our culture neglects them so they act
as if they don’t need adults—not the kind at least that further abandons them.
They want safety. Isn’t that the kind of world we all seek to create at some
level and in our way?
Is it any wonder then that in a
pursuit to cash in on what is available that today’s psychological world is
taken the time to update their research on adolescence? This is another form of
abandonment Clark states. Professor seekers want the degree and the money
without the work of getting their hands dirty with the actual teenagers—a "let’s
just build on another’s work" approach--and since today’s teens are so different it makes sense
that many studies would be irrelevant and outdated.
Satan’s plan was unmasked in many
findings reported in this book. Satan lies to soon-to-be-parents that life is
found in stuff, not people. Deceived parents have a "deviced world" ready for their kids to be born into. They raise their kids but soon
Satan turns the lie back on the parents by telling the kids, “Your parents
don’t really care about you. They only care about what advances their lives.”
The kids run away from Satan and his lies to those whom they trust
to give them protective truth—the parents. But the deceptive
trap is sprung and closes on the teens when they find once again their parents absent--and nothing is left but to believe the lie. When the parents finally snap out of their deception and try to gain
their children’s trust they have layers and layers of abandonment memories to
try and work through. Most parents give up. Some keep it up for years with no
success—the kids are too far into the trap.
But then there are some
who continue to believe the lie can be broken and that the children are worth
what it takes to break it. And the kids hope that one day mom and dad will come
through those doors and try just one more time. “Will they come?” is the
question this book ends with.