You’re going to find out as you get to know me better that my heart beats for the next generation. I long to see them healed,
trained and released! The question we have to ask first, is, who is
training them, and what are they being trained in? As parents and people
of an older generation, it is our responsibility to teach those things that we want them to learn.
Television, school, even the Church is
not responsible to teach my kids those things that I believe will make
them world-changers, intimate warriors, who understand that they are
loved by their heavenly Father and that they have to give that love
away to the poor, widow and orphans of the earth.
A
few years ago, I watched this nature special on television that we
showed at a couple of our events and was reminded of it through a book
I am reading. It was set in a certain part of Africa and was about
young bull elephants.
For some reason, these young bull elephants were
acting strangely out of character – antisocial and aimlessly violent;
they were stomping on VW’s, pushing over trees for no reason, and even
killing other small animals and baby elephants. Park rangers came in to
study the problem and, in the course of their investigation, they
discovered that there were no older bull elephants in that area. By
some accident, all the older bulls had either died or been poached for
their ivory, which left the teenage males to roam and forage out of
control.
What as their solution? They
brought in some older bulls from other areas by helicopter, lowered
them onto the scene, and in a matter of weeks, amazingly, the whole
situation had changed.
Apparently, all the old bulls did was wave their
ears and make various sounds or small charges, and somehow the younger
male elephants understood that their behavior was not the way good
elephant boys should act.
It seemed to be just that simple. Things soon
returned to normal once the fathers acted like fathers.
We
are a society without fathers. The effects of this are life-long for
both genders, creating boys who never grow up and want to marry mothers
instead of wives, and girls who want securing and affirming daddies
instead of risk-taking warriors.
Neither gender is ready for the work
and adventure of a full life. What are you teaching your kids?
What are
you teaching the next generation?
