comes for the next generation an issue in personality maturation. What may have seemed to us an intellectual question, a theological issue, becomes a far deeper prob lem to our children. One generation may feel that spirit uality is really defined by certain mores. If this genera tion undergoes a transition whereby it doubts the valid ity of these mores as an expression of spirituality but maintains the mores as a form, children of this genera tion pick up a double standard. They fail to feel the support which had been present in the earlier attitude. In the new overthrow of authority the next generation feels permission to rebel at the very point where the parents have placed the most emphasis and have had the least conviction. The dogmatic stress on the form implies most significant ambivalence. Implicit in our discussion thus far is the assumption of our age that, after all, things are relative. To be assured, to be convinced, is to be rigid; to conform is to be bound. This premise is perhaps one of the most My Shepherd is the Lord my God, There is no want 1 know; His flock he leads through verdant meads, Where tranquil waters flow. 2 He doth restore my fainting soul With His divine caress, And when L stray He points the way To paths of righteousness. 3 Yea, though I walk the vale of death, What evil shall I fear? Thy rod and staff are mine, O God, And thou, my Shepherd near. 4 My enemies behold the feast Which my dear Lord hath spread; And lo, my cup he filleth up, With oil anoints my head. 5 Goodness and mercy shall be mine Unto my dying day; Then shall I bide at His dear side, Forever and for aye. destructive forces in interpersonal relations. To be able to accept authority is closely akin to be able to trust. The isolation of the individual, the rarity of real shar ing, the heightening of an already paranoid attitude in our culture are inevitable if one cannot trust his values and thereby become decisive and find strength. It can be said that a child needs control, indeed func tions best within well-defined limits. This assumption has its roots in a child’s essential lawlessness. A child can not shape his own image nor find his own way. He gains mastery over his impulses, his fears, and hostilities by accepting and even emulating and incorporating the ex ternal curb on his activities. Real love is meaningful to a child only when it deals with his own inner chaos. The character traits we so admire — resourcefulness, conviction, leadership — are impossible unless love and authority are welded. When femininity equals authority, when mother controls and not father, these two images The Twenty-third Psalm by Eugene Field 1
If we examine the main question under consideration from the point of view of the teen-ager, we see it more sharply and may be able to feel the urgency implicit in this. It may be said that the early and middle teen-ager (the high school student) and the late adolescent (the college student) have only borrowed standards, a con science given to them by family and church. In today’s world, where group acceptance and the mores of one’s peers are of deepest significance, the Christian young person has an especially difficult time in the identity crisis through which he must go to know himself, ascer tain his convictions, and become a person. Since com municating with this age group is somewhat unfamiliar to us, we may easily fail to grasp the magnitude of the changes in the last quarter century. This is not typically the problem of the Beatnik or the delinquent, who clearly represent a minority. This concerns a far broader group. The parents of the depression years often identify security with material acquisition. The chil dren of the depression now find that the message of materialism, the physical comfort and convenience which can be provided in our economy, has little meaning to today’s struggles. The attitudes of the depression and the bounty which was sought to assuage the deprivation of that time does not deal with the struggle of today’s youth. In fact, the suburbia which has arisen out of the success of this quarter century has maimed far more than economic deprivation could. The relationship, the identification between parent and child, which paradoxi cally often was strengthened under the threat of family disruption because of financial crises now is one of the victims of our new social-economic structure. All of this added to the removal of the “ absolutes” of another age make the struggle of becoming, the finding of meaning in life, far more difficult for the adolescent. This is not to say the absolutes have always been abandoned at an intellectual level. But when these values are not sup ported with a meaningful relationship, it is all too easy for the adolescent to doubt the validity of not only the then outworn cliche but the helpfulness of parents who did not support these values with conviction. This problem is most significant in the Christian family. The traditional Christian family once was able to maintain its mores because of the power of the group. Such a family is now more an island unto itself. The young person coming out of this family frequently feels that he must break with what he considers the rigidity of his parents in order to be free. All too often he thinks that a breaking with these attitudes is real freedom. He may go through a chronic period in which all efforts at control are scoffed at because he has not yet considered the possibility of conformity as well as noncomformity. Freedom, after all, implies the possibility of choosing to conform or not to conform. At the heart of the struggle there seems only one alternative to the adolescent, that of becoming a person by becoming the opposite of that with which he has grown. The real tragedy occurred in childhood when the child came to think the strength of authority to be malevolent because the parents never really felt the support and the value of authority them selves. This kind of conflict in which the parent adheres to the tradition without a meaningful emotional convic tion and without a personally rewarding relationship to authority figures prepares the way for the deeper dis turbance in his adolescent children. In a real sense, the struggle of the individual Chris tian young person parallels the historical weakening of authority in the church. In the church we have come to suspect that authority itself is somewhat of a problem. What one generation doubts intellectually usually be
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OCTOBER, 1962
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