Adolescence

I was a punk rock kid for many years. In many ways, I think a little bit of that element still resides in me. I was different, (just like all of the other kids). I was politically informed and believed in social reform but spray painted anarchy symbols all around town, believed in education as a means to a brighter day and ditched school frequently to meditate on it. Believed in peace while hating and hunting skinheads and metal heads because they didn't. Why is it that we whooped the hippies then? Oh yeah, just for fun. We listened to Adolescents and glorified slogans like "Brats in battalions". There was this deep, innate desire to be a man but there was no knowledge of Christ to become one. We were adolescents though, and that bought us at least 7 years. From 12 to 19 we have the right to be as stupid as we can, to do all kinds of contradictory things, engage in irresponsible, inconsequential behavior because our hormones are out of control. "That's what teenagers do", people say.
This notion of adolescence has become wildly accepted even in Christian circles lately.
I understand the whole hormone thing being a big hurdle to jump over, but according to the Bible, sin is sin whether you're fourteen or forty four. Scripture does not have such low expectations from teens. Paul even left Mark behind because he "broke". David, the red headed, short shepherd kid whacked Goliath defending the Name of God very early on in his life. God spoke with Samuel at a very early age, Mary, Jesus' mom, was very young and God placed on her an incredible responsibility. I guess one of my favorites is the story about those fools that mocked Elisha about his bald head and next thing you know, mother bear is out of the woods and they're dinner.
It seems to me that the biblical pattern for young men and women is one of expectation of godliness, entrustment of responsibilities and accountability. In other words, sin is not brushed over but young men are expected to be godly and when they aren't, they either repent or suffer the consequences of their sin. That is the expectation of godliness.
Also neither the family, nor the covenant community will shy away from delegating certain responsibilities to our young men because they are young. That may happen for different reasons (i.e gifting, amount of responsibilities already on them etc...) but never because they are "adolescents". The family and the church place certain responsibilities on the young men and women and expect godliness from them in fulfilling those responsibilities. Finally, young men are to be held accountable for their behavior just as much as everybody else. Being young is never to be an excuse for lack of spiritual growth, negligence of duties, reckless behavior or any sinful practice or belief.
God uses these (and other) means to produce in young men the characteristics that will define them as men, which has much less to do with biology or time walking on earth than it does with a reality of being, a stage of maturity that one reaches and should always look to keep growing in them by means of looking to Christ as Author and Perfecter of our faith.
I'll be talking about those characteristics very soon in future posts.
Peace to you all.