The revolving world is a constant blitzkrieg of the sensational and the sickening.
As youth workers, we understand that culture plays a big role in the development of teenagers’ identity. Culture is both a glorious and disastrous melding of art, tech, fashion, language, music, web sites, dominating values, politics, advertisements, current events, books, movies, celebrities/icons, magazines, TV shows…the messages and mediums of culture are nearly endless.
This week, we’ll look at different ways you can help your students develop necessary and required filters to navigate their life in a broken and fallen world. Here are a few ideas to consider:
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Amazing resource by Walt Mueller to help your students learn how to make
responsible media choices. Go HERE to check out a free sample.
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RAISE THE NEED FOR DISCERNMENT
You can’t force your students to develop biblical discernment, but you can constantly tell them why it’s important to evaluate the influence of culture. We would encourage you to make your “plea” natural and compelling without being explosive and condemning. In our experience, it’s more effective to present the challenge of discernment in a rational way rather than reactionary.
Rarely is life-change the result of a reactionary rant.
Help your students understand the connections between seeing, thinking, and doing. What we SEE impacts how we THINK, and how we THINK impacts what we DO, and what we DO impacts what we SEE. With the (nearly) unlimited number of negative messages pushing-in, it doesn’t take long to feel imprisoned by destructive culture, thoughts, and actions.
RECOGNIZE THE SOURCES
Like water is for fish, culture is for living. Ubiquity nullifies awareness, as we live typically unaware of culture’s powerful influence on our own lives. After CHOOSING to develop filters, the next step is to identify specific cultural influences. They key to this action is personalization: help your students discover where their particular cultural influence originates.
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Amazing resource by Walt Mueller to help your students learn how to make
responsible media choices. Go HERE to check out a free sample.
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Not everything we SEE and HEAR in the world is bad and destructive. In fact, there is a lot of good that comes from cultural messages. Discerning the good and disarming the bad begins with choosing to filter and recognizing the sources. More on this tomorrow!