I really despise the term “teenager” because it brings up the image of a child, and very often “teenagers” are even called “children.” BUT, they are NOT “children.” People who are in their “teen" years are really nothing less than young men and women.
A lot of problems have arisen due to the use of the word “teenager.” Let’s look at a few of them of them:
1. When young men/women in their “teens” commit crimes, they are given lighter sentences for their crimes than if they were adults (those who have reached the age of majority), and often the records of their crimes are sealed and unable to be used as evidence in trials for crimes they commit as “adults.”
2. When participating in consensual sexual relations, if one is still a minor (under 18 years old), the other individual can be charged with a sex crime and will have the title “sex offender” for the rest of their lives! (I have personally seen this happen when the male was 19 and the female 17, and when the male was 18 and the female 16.)
3. When a “teenager” commits a crime and is killed by a law enforcement official, the media cries about how the police killed a “boy” or a “child.”
Christians are just as guilty of using the term “teenager” as is the secular world, and this should not be. Throughout history young men and women in their “teen” years married and raised children and even farmed their lands. “Teens” have served in the military since the beginning of the existence of militaries. “Teens” have reigned as kings and queens.
Young men and women in their “teen” years are NOT children and should not be treated as such. Instead, children should be raised so that by the time they reach puberty they will be mature enough to begin learning how to be adults. The failure to do so is a problem among Christians as much as it is among the secular world. And this is one reason our children are not equipped to deal with the secular world during their junior high and high school years, let alone when they are in college.
Brothers and sisters, let us start using discernment and stop playing the secular world’s game of using the term “teenager” (or permutations). Let us call our youth in their “teen” years, “young men/women.” Let’s train them to be young adults and not children.
2 comments:
I totally agree. And yet, just days after your post I come across this:
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/health/2018/01/adulthood-doesn-t-begin-until-mid-twenties-scientists.html
I found it so annoying when 17 year old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed that people were bemoaning and wailing, "He was just a child!" I joined the Navy at age 17, in 1976, and was at my full grown size of 6'-2", 175 lbs. I was NOT a "child."
I accept this "scientific" finding the same way I accept the finding of man-caused climate change. I look at real world an history, while these guys look to promote an agenda.
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