usually i pass on blogging about youth and violence. cuz it normally involves guns and i know too many people love their guns and don’t want me to rant what they know needs to happen with how we distribute weapons in the u.s. so i usually won’t go there. only when i have to rant or vent do i really ever comment on kids and guns. here’s a story in texas that made me pause though and whisper to jesus, when are you coming back. there are days when i want jesus to set some stuff straight so we don’t have to read about this crap.
so apparently these teens were not allowed to date. outraged, they plotted to kill the girl’s parents. i know, insane. yet it doesn’t surprise me so much (which is really scary) to read that kids think and plot murders of their parents. if you know youth, most of them will think they are better off without their parents. murder is the extreme way of carrying out such feelings. the really disturbed ones take it to this level. we’ve seen quite a bit of it in the last few years. anyway, here’s what really makes me vomit when i think of this story… after the kids shoot their parents, they have sex. crazy. yet as i struggle with the sequence of actions, their choice to have immediate sex tells us something about this tragic situation.
think about their issue… they aren’t allowed to date, they are told they are too young, not ready, not mature enough, he’s not a good guy, creeps the parents out, etc. they all become disgruntled. why did they kill them? did they kill for vegence or to get back at the parents? mmm, maybe but that’s only part of it. did they kill because they’re just plain mad at em? and in their passion, they just went nuts and lost all sense of reality? possibly.
i think they kill for something else: independence. why this is so blatantly true is fact that they had sex after they finished killing off mom. sex, in my opinion, isn’t about love for most teens. some adults think it’s just a problem of lust. i wish people would give kids just a tad more thought before they blame things on lust…. on the surface it might be but when you get to the root of it, it’s something more egocentric oriented. for most, the sex is really a way to say that i’m my own person and i make my own decisions about what makes me feel good on my own. i do what i want and that includes what i do with my body. alcohol, drugs, or sex, then, is the extreme way of telling adults: f— off, i want my own independence. and in reality, this is true for anyone. when we go to extremes with our lives, it’s usually a statement that says: don’t tell me what to do. so these kids kill for independence not for lust or sex or hate. they do it to say to parents that they aren’t ‘too young’ to do what adults do. they can make their own decisions.
the need for independence morphed into something evil. under it all, though, is this personal frustation with adults that many students experience when they are overly sheltered. while tragic, the event is a good reminder to keep it real for youth in all areas of my teaching. i’m a supporter of helping youth take on adult challenges early so that they aren’t confused by true life later. not all people feel this way. good parenting, good pastoring, good student leadership, demands that we be more open with real life issues. this is where i usually rant about learning to respect youth by treating them more and more like adults as they get older so that they do become adults. but i’ll save my rant for another day. for now, i’ll just say that i think youth are far more ready for life’s challenges, more raw issues, and it becomes more and more important to help students embrace their natural desire to be adults…
