AoO Chapter 9: Life in the Real World

Tripp starts this chapter by describing two typical responses to our culture: Rejection and Assimilation.

Rejection is illustrated by the "Smith" family. They are dressed very conservatively and talk about a book they are reading as a family. Their children have little interaction with non-Christians to avoid negative influence. No modern music is played, and they do not go to the movies. The TV is for educational programming. The Smith's paradigm is "Come out among them and be separate".

Assimilation is illustrated by the "Jones". The kids wear a lot more jewelry and earrings. The daughter has headphones around her neck and the kids participate in many public-school activities. They all have stereos in their rooms and watch lots of TV. On the surface, the Jones look and act like their non-Christian peers. Their motto is "Be in the world, but not of the world".

Rejection has problems. Everything God made is good, though good things can be abused. Modern music is not evil by nature, but it becomes evil when it draws us into rebellion against God. The other problem is that the core of our struggle is not evil outside us but with evil within. The corruption of the world is caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:4). Isolationism may lead to self-righteousness- righteousness is equated with "keeping the list".

Assimilation has problems also. Scripture teaches us that nothing is neutral- "He who is not with me is against me".

Tripp uses the pollution metaphor to understand how sin taints our culture. When there are poisons in the air, people wear protection. The protection that we wear is a Biblical worldview that filters out the unseen poisons of the culture. Simply sheltering teens from culture will not work. The key is to open the communication channels and help teens see areas where they have absorbed the pollutants of our culture. This is done through personal examples and pointing teens to Christ. This "Redemptive interaction" is a third response to culture, which is different from rejection and assimilation.

GOAL 3: Teaching a Teenager to Understand and Interact Redemptively with his Culture

The first step is to know and understand God's truth as a protection against the culture's pollutants. This is done by preparing teens to have a Biblical worldview and not just teaching Bible stories without connecting them to real life. When studying scripture, here are some questions to ask ourselves:

• What do we learn about God, His character, and his plan?
• What do we learn about ourselves, our nature, our struggle, and the purpose of our lives?
• What does God say about what is right/wrong, good/bad, true/false?
• What does the passage have to say about our culture (its values, views, behavior)?

The next step is teaching teens to test what they see from a Biblical worldview. They should give teens opportunities to test the culture against God's Word. This means going to movies and concerts with them, listening to music together, etc... The testing process includes identifying the common ground between our experience and the fallen culture. If we look at our own sin and experience of being sinned against, we will recognize common experience and grief.

The final steps involve deciding and redeeming. Teens must be coached into deciding when they can be redemptive participants or when they must separate from the culture.

Alex' thoughts: I like the analogy of wearing protective gear to filter out pollution. Our main struggle is with our own evil desires, so we must understand those desires and starve them rather than feed them. I have some concerns with this analogy, though. Since there is so much pollution in the culture, I see few cases where we can redeem it. God commands us to "flee temptation". Having the protective gear of a Biblical worldview could provide a false sense of security and expose us to things we have no business experiencing.

Questions to ponder:

• What does it mean to redeem our culture? Do we need to experience the world to have common ground with others?
• Like American football, rugby is a full-contact sport. However, rugby players do not wear nearly as much protective gear as football players. Interestingly enough, the injury rates for rugby players are much lower, and tend to be much less serious. How could our "Biblical worldview" protective gear lead to a false sense of security?
• What should a parent do if he and his teen have tested culture from a Biblical worldview and the teen still wants to rebel against God?