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Saturday, August 22, 2009

INFLUENCE OF CULTURE


I was sitting in my living room this morning with my 3 year-old daughter. She was in one of those goofy, yet hilarious moods where everything she says is comical. I was soaking it all in and thinking how much I love these times I have with her. My wife was in the bedroom and says something (can’t remember what….I think it was “Jo-Jo, you are super hot) that made us laugh, and I called her a nerd. So my daughter, in her goofy-mode, says “yeah momma, you’re a nerd.”. I was hoping my wife didn’t hear her. But my daughter was dead set on letting her see how funny she was. So she gets up to walk to the bedroom to say it again. It was like slow motion as I reached for her to stop her but she was too quick. Then she says it again. My wife just looks at her and says, “That’s okay if you say that to mom and dad, but don’t ever say that outside of this house about other people.” I was shocked……….how dare my wife allow my daughter to call me a nerd. 
The beautiful stress of raising children. My wife and I spend plenty of time with parents who tell us their struggles of raising teenagers and how they really couldn’t prepare for it. It’s become so difficult. We try to teach our child to see life as beautiful yet tell them to keep their ears and eyes closed. Today’s culture is such a mega shift away from children raised in the 70’s. The biggest influence: media.
In a recent survey by Teen People magazine, 27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have a perfect body.
By the time a young person is 17 years old, they have received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media. Eating disorders have grown 400% since 1970. And this isn’t just with females. Many males are becoming insecure about their physical appearance as advertising and other media images raise the standard and idealize well-built men.
What can be done about this? I don’t want to be the parent that has their child wear a helmet wherever they go. I don’t want to have my kids watch the Princess Bride 10,000 times and tell everyone that it’s the greatest movie ever because that’s the only movie they’ve ever seen. How can we have our kids see culture as beautiful and be able to participate in it and learn from it without having them turn into blood-sucking monsters (please notice the sarcasm….they really won’t suck blood)? The youth really need to see beauty and learn to walk in it. They need to understand how beautiful life is when they understand who they are in the eyes of God. They miss out on so much when we isolate them from God’s gift to man to be able to create culture.
So how can you raise a child to understand that our image in God and to God is where our value comes from, yet not have them walk through life isolated from experiencing the art of created culture because we don’t want them to turn into blood sucking monsters?
When you find out, please let the Church know,because Lord knows, we don’t have the answer.