Resources/Articles
What Has Happened In The Last 50 Years?
The following article appeared almost fifty years ago in
“The Gospel Teacher”, Northside Church of Christ,
Lexington, Alabama.
When you have finished reading this, ask yourself,
“What will the next fifty years tell us?”
One of the chief problems in high schools throughout America today is premarital pregnancies. While the total birthrate has increased 60% in America in the last 25 years, the illegitimacy rate has more than tripled. About 40% of America’s unwed mothers are between the ages of 16 and 19. Members of the church are not unspotted from this growing plague either. The Scott County Association of Mental Health and the Iowa Council on Family Relations co-sponsored a program in the Blackhawk Hotel in Davenport, Iowa, to discuss this distressing problem. In this meeting, those who had studied these issues presented some reasons for the problem and offered some suggestions for solving it. The reasons are as follows:
1. “Freedom of autos.” The young person who does not have his own car today has a friend who does, or who can easily obtain the use of the family car. The car provides a private traveling house for drinking, smoking, and petting.
2. “America is constantly bombarded with sexual stimuli.” Movie advertisements in the papers are filled with men holding half-nude women in passionate embraces. Most movies make direct appeal to the lusts of the flesh, and boast of handling their subjects (sex partners) in a very up-to-date manner. Norman Douglas once said, “You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.” If that statement is true, America has the lowest morals of any nation on earth. NO other nation pours out such a river of filth upon its people daily, no, not Russia, France, or any other nation.
3. “The way women dress.” Women deliberately buy clothes and dress themselves and their daughters in such a way as to make direct appeal to the lust of the flesh and then wonder why it is not safe for them to walk the streets at night.
4. “Steady dating, or going steady.” Boys and girls going together constantly develop a husband and wife attitude toward each other. This over-familiarity destroys barriers of modesty and wrong ceases to be wrong with them. At one school recently the question was asked, “What is your view of pre-marital relations among your people?” Seventy-five percent of those questioned answered in effect, “It is all right if they really care for one another.” Where did young people get a standard like that? Is it all right to commit fornication if you really care for the other person?
5. “High school dance.” Please bear in mind that these reasons for the big problems in American schools were not given by gospel preachers, elders, nor by any other member of the Church of Christ. These reasons came from experts in the field, people who have studied these issues. One man said, “Emotions are stirred up in these dances that they young people do not know how to deal with.” Someone said, “Statistics will bear out that most teen-age pregnancies are the result of junior high school dances.”
Now what do you think?
In what direction are you pointing your children?
Let’s be real servants of the Lord.
