Center of the Universe

Does anyone want to guess what the universe—or at least America—revolves around these days: Money? Power? Social status? Pleasure? Yes, I think many of us wouldn’t argue with those, and could possibly add a few more to the list. How about people, though…what group of people does America seem to revolve around today: Children?

It’s not something I’ve really given much thought to before, but the evidence is certainly there. After reading a piece written by Dr. Gene Edward Veith, academic dean of Patrick Henry College and director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis, in March’s issue of Tabletalk (a monthly publication from Ligonier Misistries and R.C. Sproul), I began thinking about just how much our culture revolves around kids. Now, I know the little world Brewmaster and I live in revolves heavily around our children, and often we have the same struggles many parents have with balancing our efforts to raise Godly children without making our family an idol. But in his piece, Family vs. Culture, Dr. Veith tells how we learn about a culture’s values by studying their artifacts. After letting that sink in a little, does your heart feel a bit heavy like mine did as you look off into space thinking about all the artifacts today’s culture is leaving behind for future generations to study? Here are just a few I immediately thought of: Rap music, WWF, Grand Theft Auto, South Park…

Here’s what he had to say about today’s cultural artifacts:

And, in the oddest anthropological phenomenon of all, our cultural artifacts are shaped not by adults but by children. Teenagers set our cultural fashions. In every other culture, elders determine the fashions, make the music, and tell the stories. With us, adolescent children make the culture.

Of course, children cannot afford recording studios or Hollywood sound stages. Adults still manufacture and sell the artifacts. But they gear television and movies to the taste of adolescents, with little effort to form them into adults. And our popular music is entirely the province of teenagers, who are the performers and trend-setters. The result is that our adult culture is infantilized. Adults try to be like children, instead of vice versa, as is the case in normal cultures. All of this is, of course, pathetic, ridiculous, and embarrassing to actual children.

Ideally, the elders in families and communities teach the youth about their culture, using artifacts to reinforce the values they want to pass down. As Christians, can we use today’s “artifacts” to reinforce the values we want to impart on our children? Or, rather, will we allow today’s “artifacts” determine the values we pass down to our kids?

Coming back to my point of children being the center of the universe…I know there are many explanations and theories for how society has shifted from that of being elder-led to child-led. Even in families like ours that try so hard to be Christ-centered and elder-led, the temptation to let the children be the parents’ peers can be hard to resist. But can anyone argue that we have gone overboard on the authority we have delegated to children—way beyond “spoiling our kids” or “child-centered parenting”—by letting them dictate today’s culture, all the in the name of “children’s rights”? Or do you think that “we’ve come a long way” in doing so, and that as a society we’ve progressed for the better because of it?