Youth Culture Today with Walt Mueller

The famous theologian, Augustine, once said this: “This is the authentic happy life, to set one’s joy in you, grounded in you and caused by you.” After many years of wandering and struggle as a young man, God took hold of Augustine’s heart and called Augustine to Himself. It wasn’t long after that Augustine took to writing the volume that we know as his Confessions. This quote is one of the ancient gems we should be sharing with our kids. You see, in today’s world, our kids are led to believe that one’s joy can only be found in being true to one’s self. Authenticity and loyalty to self are the highest value in life. But sadly, this is not the path to joy. The writer of Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lordwith all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Parents, you have been called by God to lead your children onto the path to life. If you don’t lead them into finding their joy in Jesus Christ, they will most likely believe the culture’s lies.

I was recently thinking back over what I had planned to do when I grew up. Why? I was reading about what one survey calls one of the most desirable career options kids are thinking about in today’s world. Are you wondering what that job is? It’s a job that wasn’t even an option just two decades ago: Social media star or influencer. We now live in a world where there is what is called a “Creator Economy,” an industry now valued at over two-hundred and fifty billion, with some influencers making well upwards of six figures a year, just for posting videos and photos of themselves on social media while using certain products. Parents, kids are typically attracted to the fastest track to income. Let’s teach them to discover their God-given gifts and abilities, and use those gifts and abilities in a lifetime of faithfully serving the Lord. Point them to these words from the Apostle Paul: “So whatever you do, whether you eat or drink – do it all to the glory of God.” It’s not about us!

Imagine walking today into a twelfth grade English class at your local high school. You stand in the back of the room, undetected, and look around at the twenty students who are seated at their desks. According to the latest research, you can correctly assume that two out of these twenty students have admitted to using what’s known as delta-8-THC in the last year. Delta-8 is a psychoactive substance that is derived from hemp, which is a variety of the Cannabis plant. Delta-8 products can be purchased online and over the counter, with products including oils, gummies, capsules, disposable vapes, and more. They are marketed aggressively to our kids, and the FDA reports adverse health issues related to this psychoactive substance. These Delta-8 products have intoxicating effects, and they are often manufactured using potentially harmful chemicals in order to increase the concentration of THC. Parents, monitor your kids, and warn them about the spiritual and physical dangers of substance abuse.

As conversations in our culture continue over how to navigate the increased traction the transgender ideology is getting among our kids, we should be paying attention to what is happening across the pond in the U.K. The world’s largest gender clinic has been the Tavistock clinic in Britain. Health officials are closing the clinic this spring as more and more is being learned about the dangers to our kids regarding what’s labeled as “gender-affirming care.” Not only is the clinic being shut down, but the National Health Service of England has said that children who have or who identify as having gender dysphoria will no longer be given puberty blockers. The NHS says that there is not enough evidence regarding the safety or effectiveness of puberty blockers with children. We applaud this common-sense reality-based move, and hope that all of us will realize just how much life-long damage these supposed treatments cause. God has made us male or female, and gender is given, not chosen.

Parents, what are you teaching your kids about the presence of pain and suffering in their lives? Are you preparing them to face whatever difficulties life may bring by immersing themselves in what the Scriptures teach about the formative role adversity plays in our lives? In Psalm one-hundred-nineteen verse seventy one, the Psalmist writes, “My suffering was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees.” Theologian J.I. Packer writes these words about suffering: “The fact is that God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other sorts of affliction, as his chisel for sculpting our souls. Weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.” Those are good words that reflect the truths of Scripture, that we must not only embrace for ourselves, but teach to our kids. The fact is, suffering is redemptive.

Ever since the smartphone debuted back in 2007, I have encountered a growing number of parents who lament how much time our kids are spending on their smartphones, and the way that time has undermined their teenager’s well-being. There’s a growing amount of data that supports these concerns, and which should cause us to wake up and pay attention so that we are more diligent in setting screen time limits, along with monitoring where are kids are spending their online time. But we’re now learning that’s it’s not just parents who are complaining about the effects of smartphones on our family relationships. The Pew Research Center’s late 2023 survey of teenagers found that nearly half of today’s thirteen to seventeen year-olds say they have a parents who is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they’re trying to talk to them. Too much time looking at our screens takes away from the time we should be spending with each other. Are you spending too much time on your phone?

Every now and then I run across a challenging quote about the Christian faith from someone who does not embrace the Christian faith. And every now and then, these quotes serve as a wake-up call or much needed punch in the gut. That was certainly the case when I encountered this quote from author and agnostic, Julian Barnes. Barnes writes, “There seems little point in a religion which is merely a weekly social event. What’s the point of faith unless you and it are serious – seriously serious – unless your religion fills, directs, stains, and sustains your life?” Parents, what kind of faith is it that you embrace? Are you seriously serious about your relationship with Jesus Christ? That kind of seriously serious faith is the kind of faith that we’re called to. It’s also the kind of faith that we need to pass on to our kids. And the best way to pass on a seriously serious faith, is to live a seriously serious faith. Why don’t you take some time for some serious self-examination today?

Beginning way back in 1975, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has been surveying high school students on their behaviors regarding drug and alcohol abuse. The survey launched when it was recognized that the 1960s had brought a widespread epidemic of illicit drug use among U.S. youth. As that epidemic has evolved, the survey has added a host of new drugs as they have become available, and it began gathering data from eighth graders in 1991, as drug use was filtering down into the population at earlier ages. In the introduction to the 2023 version of the survey results, researchers write this: “Substance abuse is the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality; it is in large part why, among seventeen high income nations, people in the U.S. have the highest probability of dying by age fifty. Parents, we need to monitor the behavior of our kids, and do all we can to educate them to the physical and spiritual dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

What does the cultural narrative tell us and our kids about what we are to believe about who we are? How and where do we find our identity? Is who we are a given? Or is who we are someone or something we have the responsibility and privilege to create? In her helpful new book, “Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians”, Tara Isabella Burton traces the slow slide our world has experienced, into believing we are who we make of ourselves, rather than seeing ourselves as being made by God. She summarized the issue this way: “All of us have inherited the narrative that we must shape our own path and place in this life and that where and how we were born should not determine who and what we will become.” In effect, Burton is reminding us that in today’s world, we are to lean into self-sovereignty, rather than living under God’s sovereignty. Parents, this is one of the most dangerous lies our kids can believe. Are you telling them the truth?

If you have a calendar on your wall that lists holidays, you will notice that today begins the Jewish remembrance of the Passover. This annual holiday celebrates the escape of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery, a story that is recounted in Exodus chapter twelve. The name Passover includes the sense of to spare from something. In this case, God looked on the blood-sprinkled houses of the Israelites, passing over them and sparing them from the way he smote the Egyptian homes by striking down all firstborn men and animals. If you read Exodus 12 you will see that the blood which was to be sprinkled on the houses came from a sacrificial lamb. In the New Testament, we learn that Christ has become our Passover, and that the blood he shed on the cross on our behalf offers a way out of our slavery to sin, delivering us into new life. Why not take some time with your family on this Passover day, to read Exodus twelve, to see the mercy and grace of God, and to thank Him for Jesus Christ, our Passover lamb.

My friend, youth pastor and writer Mike McGarry, offers some great advice to youth workers and parents on how to prepare students for a lifelong faith. This is important to consider as the research consistently points to the fact that far too many kids are not only graduating from high school, but graduating or walking away from the faith as they enter young adulthood. Here are Mike’s four best practices for facilitating a lifelong faith. First, apply the Gospel to everything. Help them see that Christ not only came to save them, but to lead them into faithful God-glorifying living in every square inch of their lives. Second, teach them to love the church. Engage them not only with their peers, but with the full spectrum of believers in your local body. Third, dream big biblical dreams for your kids. Pray that they would grow and mature in their faith. And finally, give kids the opportunity to lead and even fail. A deepened faith is the fruit of real-life struggles. Don’t coddle your kids.

The latest edition of the Monitoring the Future National Survey on drug use among our teenagers, cites good news that I would like to pass on to you today. The survey, which has been conducted annually since 1975, offers some encouraging data on what the survey labels as “abstainers.” Abstainers are defined as students with no use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine. Nicotine use is typically by cigarettes or vaping. Researchers report that in 2024, levels of lifetime abstention significantly increased among students in the two high school groups surveyed, that is, our tenth and twelfth graders. These levels of abstention are at the highest since they began getting tracked back in 2017. Researchers say that these increases in abstention have been driven by decreases in nicotine vaping and alcohol use. This is good news, and should encourage us to keep educating our students on the dangers of drug use, while point them to finding meaning and purpose in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

With March Madness now being over for about a week, it’s a good time to think about the place sports holds in our lives. Some recent data from the Pew Research Center offers five facts about Americans and sports. First, about half of Americans say they took part in organized, competitive sports in high school or college. This means that many of our kids grow up playing organized sports. Second, most Americans who played sports in high school or college say their athletic experiences improved their physical health and confidence. Third, our love for sports is also about spectating. Almost forty percent of American say they follow college or pro sports at least somewhat closely. Fourth, if asked to choose one sport as America’s sport, over half choose football. And finally, almost one out of five Americans said they had bet money on sports in the past year. Parents, sports are great. Teach your kids to love God first and foremost. To put anything in His place is idolatry.

Do you think that pop music has an influence on the values, attitudes, and behaviors of our kids? The truth is that it’s not just the lyrics that influence, but the high-profile lifestyles and stories of the pop stars themselves. Popular singer and Grammy award winner Olivia Rodrigo is one star whose music and lifestyle influence our children and teens. As part of her recent concert in St. Louis, Rodrigo did more than sing to the twenty-two thousand fans assembled at the Enterprise Center. With the help of the Missouri Abortion Fund, Rodrigo handed out free Plan B pills, or morning after emergency contraception pills, to her fans. Standing up for abortion rights is nothing new to Rodrigo as she’s been a vocal abortion advocate for years. Parents, we encourage you to listen to who and what your kids are listening to, and then talk about what they are hearing, affirming that which is line with God’s Word, and then challenging and correcting that content which advocates sin.

If I remind you that today is known as tax day here in the United States, some of you will breath a sigh of relief that you have completed the tedious work of pulling your tax returns together. Others of you, if you’ve forgotten about today, might now be panicking over your procrastination. What I want to encourage you all to do is to use today as a teachable moment to share with your kids what Jesus and the Apostle Paul have to say about governmental authority. Both of them taught that we are responsible to pay taxes to the government. Jesus tells us in Mark twelve seventeen that we are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are Gods. In Romans thirteen, Paul commands the church to pay taxes to those whom taxes are owed. While we have no higher authority that God, we must recognize that our government has been instituted by God, and we are to respect the government’s authority, unless the government commands something immoral.

Today, we wrap up our look at the categories of Pornographic Style of Relating, or PSR, that Dr. Andrew Bauman tells us undermine God’s good desire for our sexuality and human flourishing. After the first four categories of control, objectification, speed, and hunger, Bauman cites a fifth: isolation. With pornography, sexuality is experienced in sinful and fallen ways behind closed doors. This isolation fuels a secret life and very quickly breaks down our relationships, undermining our relating to our spouses, children, and friends. God’s design is for our sexuality to be shared with our spouse in a heterosexual, monogamous relationship, not with a series of images online. Finally, Bauman offers a sixth category of PSR: fantasy. He reminds us that healthy relationships live in the truth. It’s my hope that our discussions this week will motivate you to teach biblical sexuality to your kids, that you will warn them about pornography, and that the Lord would protect their vulnerable hearts and minds.

Today, we continue our look at the categories of Pornographic Style of Relating, or PSR, that Dr. Andrew Bauman says undermine God’s good desire for our sexuality and human flourishing. After the first two categories of control and objectification, comes a third category, speed. He writes, “the rapid pace of relationships comes to resemble the quick climax of intensity around pornography. Pornography desires speed, which is opposed to the kind of healthy relationships marked by faithfulness and long-lasting intimacy. Bauman’s fourth category of relating is hunger. In terms of sexuality, hunger is a frantic need that must be filled by the other. It is selfish. It consumes and devours others in a desire to fix something that’s broken inside of ourselves. Of course, we know that the hunger is ultimately for a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Parents, are you going out of your way to continually teach your kids to live into God’s good design for biblical sexuality?

Yesterday, I told you about Dr. Andrew Bauman, a Christian counselor whose own experience and study on the effects of pornography has reported on the dire effects of pornography on young men and young women. Bauman has written about the development of what’s called a pornographic style of relating, or PSR, which happens when pornography becomes a child’s primary teacher and guide on sexual development. Today, I want to look at the first two of the six categories of PSR Bauman cautions us about. First, there is the category of control. God has given us sex as mutual experience for one man and one woman to share in marriage. Online pornography encourages solo sexuality that is non-mutual, putting sexuality in your own control and power. Its a straying from God’s good design. Second, there is the category of objectification, where others are not seen as people, but as objects to be used and cheaply discarded. Tomorrow, we’ll continue our discussion of PSR.

It’s no secret that our kids are being misinformed and misshaped by the pervasive presence of online pornography in today’s world. Because they are sexual beings who are naturally curious about their developing God-given gift of sexuality, we should be instructing them in age appropriate ways about God’s plan for sex and gender. But if we choose to be silent, they are left to have their questions answered by a sexualized culture and peer group that’s been heavily influenced by exposure to pornography. The largest pornographic website in the world reports over ten billion visits per month, and this certainly includes our kids who go looking for porn, or who have encountered porn that has found them while they are innocently spending time online. Dr. Andrew Bauman is a Christian counselor who confesses that the church’s silence and his own consumption of pornography distorted his sense of his sexuality. He warns, the consequences are dire, and just coming to the surface.

One of our greatest concerns about smartphone use among children and teens relates to pornography. With ninety-five percent of teens having access to a smartphone, we should be concerned about exposure to pornography, either intentional or unintentional, along with both the short and long-term effects of pornography on our kids. The average age of first exposure is between eleven and thirteen years old, with some studies finding that kids as young as nine years old are exposed. By the time our kids reach their teens, about eighty-five percent of our boys and sixty percent of our girls have viewed pornography, most-often through their smartphone devices. The greatest damage occurs as our kids see distorted, broken, and sinful expressions of God’s good gift of sexuality which can not only lead to addiction, but can twist and destroy their sexuality and so much more for the rest of their lives. Keep listening as we spend all this week talking about the dangers of pornography.