My teenage years

Sep

Throughout my childhood we went to the village church which was a beautiful, thousand year old building built soon after the Normans occupied England. I enjoyed seeing friends and looking at the old statues and stained glass windows.

St. Andrews, Sherborne St John

I was not aware that God is alive and that the Bible is his message to us. We would sit in the old wooden pews but did not realize that God could or should impact us beyond what we sat through on Sunday. The moment I left the church, God ceased to be relevant, as far as I was concerned. We were influenced by a combination of Christian ethics and respectable upper middle class values which determined what we wore and how we spoke. I did have a strong sense of right and wrong but I was never encouraged to look at the Bible to find out how to behave. I saw it more as a history book.

I arrived on the English teenage party scene with little understanding of what a teenage party should or should not be. At home we held wholesome family parties or entertained small groups of friends. In contrast many other kids who went to boarding school held large private teenage parties from the age of fifteen. We wore nice clothes and there was food and dancing. Our parents would drive us to the parties and many of them were held by families that knew my parents better than they knew us, the kids. We were generally hiding in single sex boarding schools so we did not know most of the kids. Drinking alcohol was the norm but there was little apparent drunkenness. Smoking cigarettes was common. Sex and drugs were not. I floated round these loud private discos wondering why I was there. It was hard to have a conversation as the music was too loud. I finally decided that the goal was to look attractive enough for a guy to ask me to dance. The equivalent of scoring a goal in a sport was to receive a kiss. Sometimes phone numbers were exchanged but usually that was it. Compared to many, I considered myself a good girl as I drank very little and I did not smoke. However, these parties were not as fun as the ones we had at home and now my understanding of a”good girl” has changed. I was not as good as I could have been.

My respectable background helped me avoid certain excesses but I would have benefited from specific teaching from the Bible to help me navigate the usual temptations facing teenagers. The Bible was read at church but we never read it at home or discussed it. My advice for you, if you are a parent, is that you would attend a Bible teaching church with your kids, not like the one that I attended which was all tradition and offered nothing to challenge us to change the way we thought or acted. Also find family friends who are Christians and who demonstrate changed lives and express godly values. We can all make a difference in teenagers’ lives and if we help them to develop a godly perspective we are giving them a gift. Don’t be afraid to warn and guide teenagers. They may look as though they are not listening but pray that they will and set a good example.