Chip Ingram - Effective Parenting in a Defective World

Tyler was like most of the other fifteen-year-olds who attended our church. He came from a good, solid family his parents loved God and were doing their best to raise their children. Like everyone, they had their struggles, but nothing particularly unusual. So you can imagine my shock when I received a phone call informing me that Tyler had died. Not only was the suddenness of his death shocking, so was the cause. He had overdosed on heroin.

When we began to peel back the layers of Tylers life over the next few days, I learned how a few bad decisions could destroy the life of a good kid. Long before, he had gotten mixed up in the wrong crowd and, in complete secrecy, had begun to do things his parents never would have imagined him doing. His parents eventually discovered that he had a drug problem, and they helped him through clinical rehab and biblical counseling. Everything seemed fine.

But one bad decision on one terrible night had devastating consequences. Tyler relapsed, and with one dose of bad heroin, he died in his room.

This is not the story of a kid from a bad family situation with negligent or abusive parents. This is the story of a middle-class American family a mom and dad with good jobs who loved their bright, gifted son very much. This normal family suddenly found itself in a culture where a couple of mistakes can cost a kid his life. Tylers parents realized they were raising their children in a very defective world.

At the funeral, I got a glimpse of the perverse subculture in which Tyler died. More than a hundred kids dressed in black and adorned with satanic emblems had found their way into our church. They were products of a twisted society, so completely turned around that they could hardly discern the difference between good and evil. They certainly werent inhuman; in fact, one by one they got up and talked about how much they cared about Tyler and about how they didnt want to end up dead, their lives abruptly cut off like his by a drug overdose. Most of them were from what we would consider normal, middle-class families. Their parents, in many cases, were just as caring and well-intentioned as you and I are.

What was the problem? Why are so many loving parents shocked to find that their childrens values come out so different from what they intended to teach them? The answer is that we live in a defective world, and good parenting can never go with the flow of the culture. That has always been true, but understanding it is perhaps more critical now than ever. Parents face enormous challenges today.

When I was in school, we got in trouble for throwing snowballs at the school bus or for chewing gum in class. The kids who were really rebellious smoked, sometimes daring to do it in the school restrooms. Some would even smoke a little dope. Every once in a while, a girl would get pregnant and have to drop out of school. There were plenty of opportunities for trouble, but those opportunities pale in comparison to todays.

Now the stakes are higher. Its possible for your children to make one wrong decision and be HIV positive. Or they can be unwise for a moment, get in the wrong car, and end up at a rave. They have almost unlimited options for getting involved in drugs. Your daughter can even take a drug without knowing it, unaware that the guy shes with added a little something to her drink, and be raped while she sleeps it off. Or your children can go to school one day and come home forever traumatized from witnessing some of their best friends getting shot in the hallways. Life as a kid isnt what it used to be.