Toward the end of each school year, I get asked to meet with our High School Seniors on successive Wednesday nights for what might be best described as a "fatherly" chat, or "Advice from the Sr. Pastor." Sounds rather stuffy at first blush. Still, I love the opportunity.
To be sure, for several years, if they have been a regular part of First EFC's youth ministry, our kids been mentored and shepherded well. Jonathan and Mark give these developing young adults every opportunity to forge a character in Christ and a relationship with Christ that can navigate anything up ahead.
They are kind to give me a final shot each spring with these great HS seniors.
The urgency of right-headed and hearted preparation is well illustrated in a Wall Street op-ed piece today (4/26/11, A15), William McGurn's "Sex and the College Dean." "On campus," he writes, "lawyers rule. Civility doesn't." The article catalogues the mess public and private universities are in over the lack of moral, sexual behavioral restraint. The secret taping of a gay sexual encounter leading to a student committing suicide. The rape of a Saint Mary's College co-ed by a Notre Dame football player. Yale frat boys standing outside a women's dorm chanting, "No means Yes and Yes means anal!"
For years upon years, the lack of clear ethical teaching (grounded in a solid, indisputable standard of "right and wrong") have led to the moral chaos in American society at-large, and on university campuses specifically. McGurn is surely correct when he writes, "The real threat to civility and common decency is this: the substitution of codes and committees for responsible adults exercising humanity and judgment....as deans and presidents surrender what little moral authority they have left to their in-house counsel and off-campus government authority. Pity the young men and women who are left to make their way through this minefield on their own."
Paul catalogued the tragic, moral spiral downward in timeless words found in Romans 1. Failure to acknowledge God as God, to be humble and thankful before Him, leads to increasing perversity and human disintegration.
As I sit with our HS Seniors heading into the moral mess which is the public university campus, needed is a word both of caution and commitment. Romans 12:1-2 can hardly be improved on. "Don't let the world pour you into a mold and shape you like itself. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then prove in your living what the will of God is - that which is good and acceptable and pleasing." It's Jesus in you, gang. In Christ, stand and live, solid and strong.
PreacherHound
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