You Need to read ....

A LETTER TO YOUNG PEOPLE

4th January 2009.

Dear young person,

With due respect, from another human being to you another human being, this letter is an introductory one, to enable me to make contact with you, the new generation of global youth, so that you will understand what is to follow in the rest of this post.

Let me explain briefly here.

This letter is written specially for young people between 13 and 18 years of age on topics which become important to you as you reach that particular phase of your development - early and middle adolescence - a period during which you find you are no longer a child, and yet not quite a man or a woman; in no man's land, so to speak. As things go today, perhaps we should add 'no woman's land.'

You are at an age which parents usually find they lose control over their children. Why? Perhaps we should ask them ourselves, why 'control', why not 'advise and guide'?
This 'control' has been an established pattern for generations, and yet why should it exist?

What happens between mother and daughter, father and son, so that all threads of communication are lost around this time and people very often become strangers to each other?

Children don't feel that they can confide in parents because "parents don't understand. Things were so different when they were our age" - and yet were they really so different? I' m not so sure. Parents felt then much the same as you,dear young person, do now. And parents say "children are not the same today. They dictate to us. They want everything but give nothing". And is this true? Again, I'm not so sure.

Parents probably presented similar problems in their younger days. It may not have been in terms of using the car seven nights out of the week or monopolising the living room for the best part of the evening, but we made our demands all the same. Only the nature of the demands has changed with the changing pattern in our way of life.

How have things changed?

People were often hurt by those who hated them. But we must go on doing good and what is right, even when we are much hated. Hate has many faces. Sometimes those whom we love most may hate us because we love the Lord Jesus best. But how are we to keep on loving those who hate us now?

You are aware of change even as every other young adult. Young girls and boys have gradually attained a degree of freedom not dreamt of 30 years ago. Children go to school, reach adolescence with much more knowledge on most things than the adolescent of a generation ago and realise that the whole world is before them waiting to be explored. They have read widely. They feel they know everything about everything. They feel they are adults. And you are one of these.

You too, like many others, find doors open to you, and you want to enter and discover things first-hand for yourself. You too feel that by your standards you are an adult, that you should be treated as one and that you should be accepted into the adult world. Yet you aren't. And even your parents don't treat you as one. Everything is unfair at this stage, and confusion surrounds you.

Let us look closely at this one important aspect of being accepted as an adult. Reaching puberty doesn't mean that you have become a man or a woman, as the case may be. That you are now able to procreate biologically doesn't make you an adult. There are many other qualities which go to make a mature man or a mature woman. Physical maturity is not the only criterion of adulthood.

As I have said earlier, you are not an adult by adult standards, and yet you are no longer a child. This is an awkward age - an age of great emotional stress, and age of great emotional adjustment - and yet it is an age which has always been neglected. Babies are cared for and loved. Much time is spent on babies, and tremendous amount of attention is given them. The young child before he/she goes to school is also cared for, trained and prepared for the more regimented training in primary school. In school, you are usually guided by your teachers, and to a limited extent you get attention. However, at this time when you are about to leave school, just when you are 16 or 17 years of age, you need guidance (gu-i-dance)and advice (add-wisdom), because you are maturing physically, emotionally , socially and spiritually. This process of maturation is gong to prepare you for new position in life. All position comes with responsibilities.That means new responsibilities in life, and allow you to develop new and mature attitudes to the challenges adults meet every day and every night too; 24 hours,7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and every year. With this many many-faceted maturation you will become an adult in the true sense of the word and be accepted in the adult world.

Being called an adult seems to you at this point very important and at your age (13 -18)you feel that you can best obtain this by doing what adults do.

Also, at this period, you want to look at things in their correct perspective and view-points. Right now, you are naturally attracted to the opposite gender/sex. You cannot help this. You are functioning normally. Biologically, your body is sound to procreate. Your emotions have been awakened and you have to make emotional adjustments. You have to make sexual adjustments. Sex, its desires and fulfilment are as normal as your feelings of hunger which must be satisfied with food. And like food, there is a time and a proper place for sexual fulfilment.

I have already said that you are at an age of very intense feelings - your desires are intense, your disappointments intense, and you are influenced in your thinking by the popular concept of romantic love. This you have picked up from movies, films, videos, books, magazines and internet surfing.

Physical fulfilment seems to be the answer to your pent-up emotions for you are dominated by your awakened desires. You will fall in love intensely, desperately, and you are apt to rush into an early marriage when you are not ready for it, not adjusted to its responsibilities.

You shouldn't rush into marriage just because your friends are getting married. You don't want to get married to the first boy or girl you "fall in love with". I cannot lay down any hard and fast rule on what the right age for marriage is, or how to choose your life partner, or what the criteria of a good husband or prudent wife are. There are no rules. There are only guiding principles and the experience of those people before you. You will fall in love, you will fall out of love. This phase of romantic love must be gone through. During this period, you feel that you will die of a broken heart if your love is not returned. This is part of our emotional development, and in many cases this kind of love doesn't last, because it is usually based on physical seasonal attraction. Puppy's love. I am not saying, of course, that physical attraction doesn't play a part. It must play a part, but not necessary the most important part of your life.

It isn't necessary to "go steady" with the first boy or girl you meet. You may not have met enough people to know what you want. Move around, befriend with lots of young people, preferably in groups. "Going steady" means that you have found someone with whom you make regular dates. Are there any hazards to early dating? Of course there are. You may not know how easily you can be led to feel, "This is all that matters. I don't mind the consequences as long as I'm with you".

Teenagers all over the world feel that they are living because they are dated/dating regularly, and they have experienced everything. You may say to me here, "don't clamp down on my natural desires and feelings; don't cramp my style, because we are behaving in no way any different from our peers".

Do you really think that all this indulgence is living? Do you really think that you must do everything that other young people do? It may be a pattern that is appearing today. Many people may be indulging in it. This fact still doesn't make it right or justify its continuance. By now you must begin to be selective and begin to set your own standards in values and in behaviour.

Many parents fight shy of explaining the simple biological facts of life to their child or children. Parents, puritan or not, often refuse to enlighten the children on sexuality, sexual relationships and its problems and hope that with some luck their children will gain this information themselves - and that they do, but probably in the least desirable ways and persons.

Adults live in an era when everything is rushed - we are harried with careers, overtime work, social activities, running a home, this and that, and have failed to recognise that our children who are really young adults need sincere guidance and advice. If adults were more interested in the activities of their maturing children, planned some of their activities, encouraged their childrens' friend or friends to their homes, influenced then by happy family living in their homes, widened their educational horizons, widened their scope of interest to the many worthwhile activities in which they can participate, then there would be much less concentration on this business of premature sex.

Sex has a part to play in everybody's life, but let us not be obsessed by it. Let us weave sex intelligently into our family lives. Let us understand our emotions, let us try and control our sexual urges until we are ready to meet the responsibilities which go with them. Sexual laxity is nothing to be proud of, and, furthermore, is associated with certain risks, among which pregnancy and venereal infection rank foremost.

A great deal of unhappiness results from an unwanted pregnancy. The girl who bears a child illegitimately carries it in sadness and in sorrow. She, her immediate family, and the child suffer from the consequences of a birth out of wedlock. Attitudes may have changed considerably in the last 50 years in relation to what is known as the illegitimate child, and people may be more understanding today in their behaviour towards the unmarried mother. Let me say here and now. There are no illegitimate children. There are only illegitimate parents. Legitimate parents were adults who were prepared to bear responsibilities for the soon to be born child. Whatever the situation the emotional upheaval wrought to all involved by such illegitimate conception is incalculable.

Many people argue and say that marriage lines are just a formality we can do without. This is faulty thinking because human society has been built up on certain social legacies which lead, as best as they possibly can, to a stable sustainable society. In this human society, the home and the family is the basic unit, and it is based on a monogamous marriage. If we break down these traditional restrains, we are heading for chaos and decay as has been known to have befallen some of the greatest civilisations in human history.

Marriage, planning the details of a new home, budgeting, the arrival of child or children, sharing joys and sorrows, tolerance, understanding, a give-and-take attitude – these things form the basis of life in a family unit.

No two marriages are alike, no two partners are alike, and it is during the period of courtship that a boy and a girl get to know and understand each other, realise what is involved in this once-in-a-lifetime contract, and accept each other as they are. 'Court ship' is making the ship which is going to be a life journey together using court process to navigate marriage voyage. Only both the husband and wife are the role players in the case.

And during courtship, it isn't at all necessary to find out whether you are "adjusted sexually" or to prove to the man/woman that you sincerely love him/her by giving yourself bodily sexually to him/her. These are only excuses, immature thinking, made up by irresponsible people to justify their actions.

Love is a combination and balance of many qualities and feelings. When, in a few years' time, you meet the man or woman you want and love to marry, you will say to yourself " I am glad I waited until now. This is an experience which I want to share with only one person." because the physical side of love within one's spirit can be a beautiful experience (gnosis) if approached in the right way in due time.

Love within loving married couples will grow steadily from the unopened budding stage during initial courtship till it is in full bloom with reciprocal understanding and fulfilment. And a maariage based on this sure foundation is the kind that is going to stand strong and firmly withstand firmly in the test of time.

Now, why should we treat all - important subjects in the usual hush-hush manner, or be casual about them? Living is completely different from merely existing. Loving is also simply completely different from merely existing. Living and loving take great efforts of the spirit, mind and body.

Love, marriage, sexual experience, parenthood, are not casual experiences.

There are so many aspects of love, marriage and parenthood that need to be thought about, and this is the time for you to turn them over in your mind and grow steadily.

many of you, young people, when you leave Secondary School or Pre-University will be involved with love and courtship, if you are not already, and perhaps think/plan of marriage and then become parents. You need to be informed and learn many aspects of maturation.

A considerable amount of information available on these important matters comes from unrealiable sources, and often put in wrong perspective. Very often for commercial reasons.