NeoZine

The Simplicity of Maturity

Our world is deeply confused about parenting, and it shouldn’t be any surprise that kids are deeply confused about growing up. For millennia the proven path to maturity required children to learn sacrifice for others, but new and unproven theories are redefining parenting and the family itself in the twenty-first century. Often seeded with humanistic assumptions, modern approaches have now shipwrecked a few generations of children, beginning with Baby-boomers, and now secular research and even the popular press are documenting how widespread this failure is.¹

It means modern parenting is a best-guess scenario. Little social consensus remains, and even the self-proclaimed leaders among academics and social scientists are deeply divided.² Far more tragic, parents often cannot (and sometimes should not) look to their own parents for guidance. The confusion and failures of parents now spans generations, and the proven model of maturity is fading from modern memory.

Fortunately God provides us with a clear and simple path to maturity. It is a process:

1. To move away from immature demands that others meet our needs.
2. To become capable of providing for our own needs.
3. Finally, developing a surplus to give in sacrificial love.

Paul captures this process of growth in one verse:

He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Ephesians 4:28 (NASB)

“He who steals” accurately describes demanding Infantiles. The solution? “Steal no longer!” Infantiles may not feel their demands are thievery, but that is what God calls it, pure and simple. (Read “Steal No Longer” which is someone’s blog about employing this principle, and how to win.)

It means the demands must stop! This is not optional. It is a timeless, culturally-agnostic fact of human genetics that until “he will have something to share with one who has need,” the Infantile lives in a cauldron of seething emotional turmoil. Demands will not satisfy long-term emotional needs.

The Furnace of Present Love Feelings

The modern child-centered home and the influence of the “Self Esteem” movement is producing a new social phenomenon where childhood extends far beyond the age of 18.³ It means a population of “adult kids” is forming. It is a subculture with a consensus that further perpetrates Infantile demands. Their propaganda is seeded in the media, movies and TV sitcoms.

This new Infantile subculture is a furnace of super-heated emotional needs. As Infantile meets Infantile, expectations crash against demands, and when relationships crumble they fall back to one conviction: I was betrayed! The furnace intensifies with loneliness and heartbreak, but the Infantile is oblivious to the obvious problem: the problem is me!

Often our response is not repentance. Many move into self-protection. “I can’t be wrong. It is the world that is wrong!” ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

Parents were the first to stoke the furnace of Infantile demands. In a safe and loving home, kids were provided Present Love Feelings that met their emotional needs. Growing up in the center of the universe, the child charges into the world with confidence, feeling loved, supported, and completely ungrateful.

The goal for parenting is not to make kids feel loved. Nowhere in scripture can we find such an injunction. We don’t mean to say that parents shouldn’t make their kids feel loved, but we are saying this isn’t the goal of parenting. Many parents would agree, yet because it’s the easiest way to make someone feel loved, pumping out the Present Love Feelings ends up becoming a parent’s default effort. “Soccer Moms” and minivan families lavish such a wealth of Present Love Feelings on the kids, but these are all modern behaviors and part of the modern confusion about maturity.

Leaving home, these kids thrive on a reservoir of Present Love Feelings which fuel their spirited dreams of conquest. But a latent emotional bomb lies beneath the surface: unable to create healthy relationships, these young adults suffer painfully in their quest to refill Present Love Feelings. Usually the bomb explodes after the collapse of a few random romances.

Without emotional fuel people cannot function for long. The hidden bomb explodes in a cloud of emotional instability which can deal crippling blows to the body’s chemistry, its immune system and large array of crippling maladies, as research has demonstrated (see Loneliness). These young adults become new patients at Dr. Ankenman’s clinic, crippled with emotional distress:

Every emotionally unhappy person in the world works from the perspective that says, “love has to come to me.” The final cure of the emotionally-upset person is learning to give love. ::bibtex(Ankenman-Approach2,Ankenman - Biblical Approach part 2)::

The problem for parents is one of investment.

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1. See Raising Infantiles for more about the Baby-boomer parenting phenomena and the sensational results in Millennials documented by 60 Minutes and others. [⇑]
2. See ::bibtex(Seligman-Forum,Seligman)::. [⇑]
3. See ::bibtex(Safer-Millenials,Safer-Millenials)::. [⇑]

To Be Grown-up

“Act like men!” God says. That surely is one of the most concise and poignant statements of God’s Love Ethics in the Bible. Three words capture the difference between depravity and redemption, emotional sickness and health, uselessness and significance: act like men. If the writer lived in today’s political correctness it would be phrased at both sexes: “Grow up!” The rest of the quote explains it:

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. - 1 Corinthians 16:13–14

These concepts go together: alertness, resolve, “grow up!” and strength. But how does “love” fit? These thoughts seem so disjointed: all about power…then love? Either these concepts are incompatible, or our understanding is wrong.

This is a three-part series which tries to clarify what it means to “act like men!” It means means understanding God’s plan for growth, which is immediately helpful to all Christians, but it also applies to Christian parents trying to lead their children into maturity. It may require some effort to study this material, but it comes with a great promise: to end the confusion about love means converting painful emotional defeats and struggles into astonishing victories. We begin with the most foundational but hard-to-believe points…

From God’s viewpoint love is the most potent and victorious force in the universe. God proves this in practice: although He is omnipotent (all-powerful), this is not His weapon of choice against a universe in rebellion. If humans held such omnipotence, all personal conflicts would be quickly resolved, but nobody would be left alive on earth!

We foolishly think strength and victory comes from smashing the opposition. The Romans built an empire this way, and even today the Hollywood heroes are those great killers like Clint Eastwood. With glowering eyes and chewing a dead cigar, this cold-hearted killer always wins, or so it seems. But it must be remembered he holds a .44 Magnum, which is impractical for the office or home. Clint also has serious relationship issues. When Clint arrives, the streets vacate, and those who remain are soon dead.

Clint actually lives in a simplistic and childish world where pulling a trigger makes problems disappear, and at the end of his movies he rides away all alone. Psychologists identify similar behavior in “parallel play,” a phenomena seen in little kids in the same room who play by themselves, “parallel playing” and oblivious to each other. This occurs because these children are too immature to understand how to participate in a world outside their own.

God’s strength is loving strength, and extremely victorious. He is always loving, even when dealing with rebellion and hatred. “Love never fails,” the Bible says. To “act like men” means living the way God does, and it means victory is an expected way of life.

All the above points are lost on Infantiles. We need to begin by addressing the fundamental immaturities of the Infantile, because this is where everyone starts in their journey towards Mature Love. People may mature beyond Infantile Love, but they retain vestiges of those immaturities well into adulthood, and would be well-advised to understand what Infantile looks like.

In the process of studying Infantiles, it is necessary to distinguish between Tribal Infantiles and Diffuse Infantiles. Infantiles operate differently in Tribal and Diffuse Love Spheres.

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Since ‘83 I’ve been engaged with the growing migration towards online communities. “Back in the day” it was CompuServe, which of course became AOL. In ‘94 I ran a BBS with a modem bank out of my office. (NeoXenos AOL!) Then in ‘96 I was on ICQ with all my old Columbus buddies, including old Buck, and when he moved to Russia we kept in contact daily with ICQ. Now it’s sophisticated CMS systems like MySpace and its close competitor at http://neoxenos.net.

I was always frustrated by the lack of participation and interest from my beloved brothers and sisters. They seemed to appreciate only one mode of fellowship: meeting in a room somewhere (which is a blast!), but can’t we meet online too?

Suddenly the Millennials come along and changed everything…have you ever wished for something, got it, then reconsidered? I’m not there, but close.

Christian techno-fear

Christians are notoriously conservative and easily frightened by new social developments, as if Christ was too. But isn’t it precisely new technologies and social developments which God Himself employed when He brought The Christ to us?

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, Galatians 4:4 (NASB)

In retrospect we know the Incarnation took place at the most strategic point in history, and by this we mean technologically strategic. Christ came at the dawn of Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”) which was marked by the universality of Koine Greek, Roman roads, and widespread Roman authority which enforced peace and promoted trade. Christianity ripped across the civilized world like lightening. Never since has there been such an opportunity for globalization — until the past few decades. God knew how to drop it while it’s hot, fo sho!

the “information super-highway”, Roman-style

Here’s the rub: if a church council scheduled the Incarnation, it wouldn’t happen. Here’s why:

• Too much social upheaval caused by Pax Romana — legions of dirty, hungry, horny soldiers on the move.
• The pollution of the language by crass Koine Greek — Koine is terribly crude compared to the finesse of Classical Greek.
• Roman highways bring so much filth from across the empire and deposits it at our front doors

All those modern horrors (in 6 BC) surely would have been anathematized by some churches, I presume, but God didn’t. He can use dirty tools.

So it is today: we have the anathema of TV, movies, and PlayStation (read about it). Now “MySpace” is the new “Boogy-man” for many Christians, but it’s impossible to ignore. This essay grapples with the revolutionary issues kids and parents now face, and will demonstrate a biblical approach which is both practical and necessary for this social revolution.

‘The Voice’ Online

So the Web is “the devil’s playground” and “the voice of the devil,” Christians complain. And you know what? They’re right!

watch the documentary at pbs.org

Everyone should watch the fascinating and well-researched Frontline documentary, “Growing Up Online.” If you know anything about Frontline, you know it’s the premier showcase of journalistic craft, irregardless of occasional political slants. They do a good job of balanced reporting in this one, and it’s painfully clear the Internet poses incredibly dangerous threats never before seen which parents should know about and which require strategic answers…

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