Mucky Declarations

All right, here's the story. Last weekend, I volenteered at the last minute to help a friend of a friend with a Disciple Now weekend at his church. This is a home based retreat, where the kids camp out for a weekend at various houses within the church community, and spend time (hopefully) doing retreaty-type things, such as learning more about God, etc. The focus of this retreat was purity, which ended up being quite interesting later. You'll see what I mean. I arrived at the church to find that the youth minister was a graduate of my fine university, and is a chemistry major. He called me a plumber, and I called him a labrat, and we were fine for the rest of the weekend. No, he was seriously a great guy, and very much had the stereotypical youth minister personality. I immediately met one of his more enthusiastic students, who was a drummer. We clicked immediately, as I aspire to be so. We talked a lot about music, as well as other things. We (the college student workers) were warned about the scenario that was about to take place. There were two churches getting together to have this retreat, from two different school districts, and we really had no idea as to how this was going to pan out. We were keeping an eye out for a country vs. city war, or something on that level, but nothing really happened. I did notice, once the kids began to arrive, the typical cliques that form within jr. high/HS age students: the jocks (who took to shooting baskets like pros), the preppy girls (who stood in their little circle and talked about boys, and looked disdainfully at anyone who dared glance in their general direction), and the outcasts (who were too large or skinny or dorky to be athletic or popular, and had, at this point in their career, learned to accept this role, and had made it a symbol of pride among themselves). This last group was comprised of kids that all had dressed the same (baggy pants, black stocking caps with the popular logo among nonpopular kids at the time, long hair), and after a few minutes, started a game of hackey sack. I knew who I needed to talk to. After about 45 minutes of gaining some sort of rappor with these guys with my ninja-like hack skills left over from my jr. high years, the most jaded of the three (and the oldest, as it happened to be) was beginning to warm up to me. Either that, or he was getting uncomfortable with the fact that he was going to spend time around church folk for the next three days. Whatever the cause, he started to babble about various things. Many were things that I was simply not well versed on, such as the latest video game, anime episode, or death metal group. There were, however, a few that I could relate to. We had all spent a fair share of time watching comedy central, as it is basically a staple around my college campus. We had some fun relaying bits of acts from comedians that we liked. All was well. At least I thought. I was soon to find out that things such as this had been basically raising these kids, rather than their parents. Immediately before dinner, I made a comment to the youth leader that the rest of the weekend might be interesting, due to the fact that there were definite non-christian kids attending this very christian retreat. I was suddenly afraid of many of the ultra cheezy things that tend to happen in churches nowadays would happen (and sure enough many of them did), and give these kids some weird view of christianity. Either way, I was determined to deal with it the best I could. I continued to talk to this kid (let's call him Jim) through dinner, and he, strangely enough, brough the conversation around to some fairly spiritual issues. He had several "opinions" on God, and Life, and what they may all be about. I am good at these type of conversations, and I continued to ask questions that challenged his worldview. Nothing confrontational, just conversational. There were many "Huh, I've never thought about it that way before," moments. He talked to me a lot about the things about religion that he was learning in school, which scarily enough was more Buddhist stuff than anything else. This was the first item this weekend which made me want to homeschool my kids, when I have them. Then came our worship service. We had an acoustic worship band, comprised of two male guitarists (one of whom was a singer), and a lady pianist (who was also a singer). These proved to be the eight or ten longest songs of my life, due to my thinking solely about the perceptions of the three rebel kids I was sitting next to. The youngest of the three (let's call him Matt) was full of smiles and energy, but didn't have an "off" button, even during the worship service or the forthcoming sermon. I kept getting strange comments that remotely had to do with the songs that were being played (the most memorable was when the song "We are Hungry" was played, obviously being intended in a spiritual sense, but Matt looked over and said: "not anymore, we just had pizza."). I did lots of smiling, nodding, and redirecting, as I wanted to keep them in check for the benefit of the other students, who were actually worshipping, but without completely stifling them. The speaker really ticked me off. He had his message about purity, which was fine, albeit typical. But at the end, he made a point of giving a sixty second gospel presentation (he spoke like an auctioneer), followed by a very high pressure "alter call." He asked for everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes, and if anyone hadn't made a decision for Christ (he didn't bother asking if they wanted to) to stand up and go to the back wall. Of course nobody did. He then asked the students that if they wanted to take a stand for purity in their lives, to go to another wall, get on their knees and pray to make that committment. Of course all of them did. I just sat there shaking my head. All he did was force them to make another meaningless commitment for the sake of an alter call. Grrr. Anyways, it turns out that Jim was not in my group, but Matt, and four other kids were, one of which was in my hacking circle. I found that Matt and Jim were cousins, and had many of the same family influences, as well as the fact that Matt looked to Jim basically as a father figure in the absence of his own. Suddenly a whole lot became clear. Matt ended up being a bit of a pill for the entire weekend. To describe it clearly, he was ADD. Diagnosed and on medication for it. So was Jim. This is really a hot issue for me, for I believe that this is one of the most overdiagnosed drugs in America today, and is strictly a symptom of parents not taking responsibility for disciplining and raising their kids. I was bombarded with a variety of excuses when I had to repeatedly ask Matt to sit down, and stay on topic in our devotion times: "I'm hyper," "It's my nature," "I can't be still," "I like being random," etc. It's as if these things had been drilled into his head. He had been told them so many times that he believed them. I really didn't know what to do. Matt was quite frustrating for our entire group, the rest of which was composed of fairly mature christians, who knew bible verses, and all the right answers to all the churchy-type questions. They eventually turned to rebuking and teasing him, which, I'm sure he got a lot. I tried my best to keep this from happening, and to give him the attention that he didn't have. At my host home, I saw the thing that really hit home to me. We were upstairs in the living room watching a movie with the host family, who had a small child, perhaps 4 or 5 years old. The child was playing with his stuffed animal, and other toys, but really wanted to play with his father, who was reclining in the chair, watching the movie. The son tugged on the father's leg, got up in his lap, tapped him on the chest...no response. Daddy's eyes never shifted from the TV. Eventually the child was pounding on the father's chest, shaking the chair. Dad looked over, and rebuked the child, saying "I'm trying to watch this," and turned back to his program. I think I subconciously tuned this out at the time, because I'm not sure what I would have done to the father had it registered. I am not a father, but it royally ticks me off when I see a father doing something that I know quite well should be done differently. That may sound arrogant, and maybe I'll eat the words someday, but I don't care. That kid deserves better. Dad, I love you and thank you for playing with me when I was young (and old). I swear to do the same with my kids, and not just on the commercials. After seeing this, I put it all together, that we as a culture, to steal from the title of a book I recently saw, are entertaining ourselves to death. We are getting so wrapped up in fake lives: TV, video games, movies, that we don't bother living our own lives. I suddenly noticed that my group had to have the TV or the radio on in the basement where we were staying. They were so used to being entertained by something, anything, that it was second nature. Contemplating this on the ride home made me evaluate many things in my life. I do not think that television or movies are evil, or any such thing. They are, however, simply amusement. Fiction. If we spend all of our time being zombified by these things, we will find ourselves lacking a life to live. We must be good stewards of our time, and count people of more worth than pixels. There were other hyper kids in my group, so I told them that if they'd cooperate with me, I'd let them shave my head at the end of the weekend. I was bald by sunday morning. It's amazing how far a little motivation goes. Here are some pics: