As my children are all now in early adulthood and yet living at home, we have been forced to wrestle with some of the assumptions in the culture about kids leaving. These questions are coming from both within and without the Church.
First of all there is a problem in the culture of kids not
growing up. Thirty is the new eighteen they say and I've seen considerable evidence
of that. The extreme end would be the loser boys in their twenties that won't
work, won't grow up, and sit around playing video games. There's plenty of that
going around.
There are others who maybe have gone to college but just seem
to float in a world of temporary jobs, moving in and out of home, with lots of
trips, travel, and something of an extravagant consumer lifestyle. In this
case, it's all being facilitated by the well to do parents. If they cut off the
financial lifeline, these kids would be forced to grow up, but they don't and
so you have these thirty year olds that are still deciding what to do with
their lives.
Well do I recall that when I was a teenager it seemed like the
opposite dynamic was in play. There were many of my peers that at seventeen
seemed like they were already thirty years old. Some were eager to get out on
their own and were willing to make real sacrifices in order to do so. I
remember people living in apartments with almost no furniture, driving beat up
cars, and using public transport while they worked low-wage jobs or scrounged
their way through college.
Today, I witness pseudo-hippie types that want to pretend
that they're into the 'alternative scene' and non-materialistic because they
dress like bums, even while they live in nice apartments, with nice stuff, and
drive late model cars – all of this being financed by parents. They are phoney
bohemians as it were, children living a pseudo-adult life still very much
tethered to mom and dad. They're a joke.
But what of adult children that are working and contributing
and yet still living at home? Many seem to think this is problematic, even
strange.
A lot of this thinking is rooted in middle class assumptions
and definitions of success. There is an unwritten progression you're supposed
to follow that takes you on the path to this so-called 'success' – the end being
security and respectability – holding a status in society that also ties in
with notions of citizenship and the like.
But as Christians who follow the doctrine and ethics of the
New Testament we must reject these assumptions as they are contrary to the
teaching of Christ and the apostles. We live by a pilgrim ethic. Rejecting
mammon and the violence it (and the state) represents, we live as second-class
citizens (or even subjects) whose allegiance belongs to another Kingdom. Our
work and goals are not the same as theirs. Respectable Christians are
unfaithful Christians. It's that simple. If we're not being hated (for the testimony
of the gospel as opposed to political meddling and scheming), and feeling the
pressures of persecution (in some capacity), and being reckoned fools, then
something is wrong.
And a paradigm which inverts this basic New Testament
assumption is indicative of a Church that has become compromised and defines
itself in terms of the world. It's an age old struggle and I'm afraid very few
Christians understand this. Most go along with the world and culture mores and
this way of thinking is further facilitated by the bevy of false teachers who
not only justify this arrangement but have developed a comprehensive theology
to sustain and promote it.
What New Testament are they reading? Where in the world did
they ever get the notion that being a Christian would make one respectable in
the world's eyes?
Home ownership has a prominent place in bourgeois thinking
and as the society has grown more decadent and the masses are manipulated by
the interests of the financial class, the old model of graduating high school,
marrying your sweetheart, and buying a house is no longer the functional model.
Today, one needs to buy a starter home, build equity, and raise your credit
rating. These are essential for those who would access middle-class life and
status. You've got to get the first home so you can later sell it and take the
equity you've 'earned' and roll into your next home's down payment. I guess
people don't understand that the smiling faces at the bank are just trying to
sell you a golden hamster wheel – even the churchgoing ones that work there.
And once you're in your final home, well – now you need to take out more loans
for improvements and updates. You're a bad and irresponsible homeowner (a bad
steward) if you don't keep up with the latest and you allow your 'investment'
to become dated. More loans, lines of credit, and the like – they're here for
you, they say with a smile. It's just a trap, a big racket.
Homes aren't places you live in (four walls and a roof) but
an investment (and status symbol) and this consumerist ethos is heavily
promoted by the banking, realty, and home construction industry via outlets
like HGTV and the like. In other words it's yet another scam brought to you by
Wall Street and one that has been integrated into the culture and translated
into a set of values.
One would think this wouldn't need to stated, but it's a set
of values and a belief system that Christians shouldn't buy into and in fact
should denounce and reject. But that's not the case is it? Instead we find
these same worldly values are deeply embedded in the Church and often
sanctified and appropriated by the Church. In fact if you're 'on top' you've
probably got a better chance of being picked for a leadership position within
the local church.
We can safely say that the assumptions behind this line of
argument are misguided and should be rejected out of hand.
In non-Christian circles there is the assumption that young
people want to move out because they need a 'pad', a place for youth culture and
its experimentations to flourish. There is the expectation of bad behaviour, a
place to bring girls, the kind of immorality that was painted with an innocent
brush by television shows like Happy Days. And indeed, this culture began to
flourish in the context of the decadent 1950's – yes, the 50's were the period
of decadence, and the 60's were the time of disintegration, the moment in which
the internal contradictions of America's early twentieth-century culture
reached a breaking point.
The Greatest Generation turned their backs on the culture
they were born into, they were the children of the new culture emerging in the
1920's – that was put on hold during the Depression. The narratives that focus
on the 1960's miss the mark. The events of the latter part of that decade
belong to a larger context and since this is ignored, the myths and misguided
interpretations persist. And worse, because the 50's are often used as a
'control' by means of comparison to the counter-culture 60's, its suburban consumerist
values are lionised and idealised as something pure and in some circles –
Christian.
Today there is an added assumption that affects our daughters
and this is feminism which once again the Church (broadly speaking) has bought
into wholesale. Contemporary young women are expected to pursue careers and
thus echo the paths of the young men. Girls venture out into the world and live
the independent life – so celebrated in song and on film.
And yet contrary to all the assumptions of the feminist
movement, daughters are in fact different. What is normal today, was scandalous
a few generations ago, and rightly so. Such independent girls would not have
been deemed 'nice girls' of the type you bring home to your mother. Sadly and
tragically I have known many families that have followed the cultural pattern
and subsequently lost their daughters to the world.
More could be said about what the New Testament teaches
regarding daughters and the fact that they are under their father's authority (1
Corinthians 7) as well as the call for women to remain in the domestic sphere
so the word of God is not blasphemed (Titus 2.5), or to guide the house (1 Tim
5.14), giving no occasion for the adversary to speak reproachfully – but the
larger Evangelical Church has little interest in these doctrines and
imperatives and spends far more time attempting to counter them, strip them of
their meaning, and explain them away. And these doctrines do not stand alone
but are in fact closely connected to what Paul teaches elsewhere about the role
of women in the Church and the fact that they are commanded to be silent. As I
continually argue, any church which takes a hard New Testament line on this
issue, as well as divorce, and psychology (what I call the Accommodationist
Triad) is going to be a very small congregation indeed. And in the culturally minded
and compromised ethos of Evangelicalism, nothing could be worse or indicative
of the fact that God is not blessing the work. It's all about numbers – and money.