The following quote was found in a big city newspaper some time ago:
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders, and love to chatter in places of exercise. They no longer rise when others enter the room. They contradict their parents; they chatter before company; they gobble their food and terrorize their teachers.”
You’re probably thinking, sounds like some of the young folks around our area. Or; I have been thinking the that the young people of our day and time have “gone to the dogs.” Certainly no doubt we have some young people who are arrogant and disrespectful. Yet I don’t think it’s much worse than it has always been. For you see the above quote was first written by Socrates over 2500 years ago.
You see times haven’t changed all that much.
For each generation has it’s problems. The reason being is that man hasn’t changed, he is still being born into a world with sin, he still grows up to the age of accountability and sins, by those same 3 areas of temptation that is listed in I Jn.2:15-17. Young people still have “youthful lusts” they need to flee. They still have to grow up and mature like everybody else who lives long enough in this world.
We need not be overbearing because things are so much “worse” today, than when I grew up. Children need the same loving but firm hand to direct and encourage them as any of the rest of us had. The exhortation to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, is not more needed today, but certainly just as needful today as is was in the Paul the apostle’s day, when he penned it. Older folks forget the way it used to be when they grew up, they had the same problems of maturing as our young people do today. Let’s help and encourage the young as they grow in the ways of the Lord. There are some mighty fine young people in our day and time. Not all have gone to the dogs, we just think sometimes they have.
— Dan McKibben
