God has a habit of waging war with strange weapons. He fought Egypt with frogs, gnats, and boils. He defeated the Midianite army with Gideon’s clay pots and torches. Strangest of all, he defeated sin and death using a tree. So, it should be no surprise to us that Jesus calls us to take up forks and spoons to fight back Satan and his legions.
Brothers and sisters, hospitality is war.
The word hospitality seems harmless enough. Maybe it conjures images of Ina Garten serenely chopping herbs plucked from her lush palisade and soft-lit montages of company having lighthearted conversation while enjoying tomato crostini. Maybe you just picture an old fashioned potluck. Either way, does hospitality really have eternal value? Can sharing the table with others really advance the kingdom of Christ?
Gathering at the King’s Table
“It has been Christ’s plan since the beginning of the church to advance his kingdom through dinner tables.”
It is the prerogative of conquering kings to invite guests to their table. In kindness, David invited Mephibosheth, grandson of King Saul, to join his royal banquet (2 Samuel 9:10). In the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar extended hospitality to Daniel and his friends after his conquest of Judea (Daniel 1:5). An invitation to the king’s table is an extension of sovereign grace and mercy.
As Christians, hospitality also flows from our King. Jesus started his ministry in Mark’s Gospel going about “proclaiming. . . ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’” (Mark 1:14–15). In the very next chapter, Jesus gives a foretaste of his triumphant victory, sharing the table with the most unlikely of guests. The scribes marvel at his dinner company: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:16).
Our King has invited us to dine at his table as royal sons and daughters. Consider this reality: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23:5). Nothing snubs an enemy and declares, “We are untouchable!” like sitting down to dinner in the middle of a war.
It’s no accident that we accept the hospitality of our Savior every time we approach the Communion Table. Jesus has invited us to share in his eternal victory through his death and resurrection at a table. It signals to the powers of darkness that our victory is certain; their defeat is imminent.
Gathering Together at One Table
In the Old Testament, Jews and Gentiles were reminded of a glaring separation every time they sat down for dinner. Jews did not eat what Gentiles ate, did not sit at Gentile dinner tables, and weren’t even supposed to enter Gentile homes (Acts 10:28). This rift separated all of mankind into two irreconcilable categories, and the whole world was reminded of it at 5:30pm every evening.
However, as the apostles spread the message of Jesus’s death and resurrection far and wide, the unthinkable became reality. Jesus brought an end to the food fight. The King invited both Jews and Gentiles to his table.
“Are you sitting down to eat with people you should never get along with?”
It began with a series of troubling dreams where the Lord commanded Peter to eat Gentile food. Peter was puzzled by the Lord’s chiding: “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15). However, when he entered a Gentile home for the first time and watched as a Roman centurion named Cornelius and his whole household became believers, Peter realized that the blood of Jesus washes all men clean.
When Jesus wanted to show Peter the full implications of the “good news of peace through Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36), he brought Peter to a dinner table. In the home of Cornelius, Peter learned that one Lord, one faith, and one baptism meant that men who formerly hated one another could now peacefully share a dinner table.
Never before had a Galilean fisherman been a houseguest of a Roman centurion. The dividing wall of hostility had been torn down in Christ (Ephesians 2:14–16). Peter and Cornelius celebrated their King’s victory before the whole world by sharing the hospitality that was theirs through the same gospel (Acts 10:48).
Hospitality Is Worth the Fight
It has been Christ’s plan since the beginning of the church to advance his kingdom through dinner tables. The first believers in Acts are found “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, [receiving] their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46). For millennia, the dinner table was a visible reminder of the division between men. It is at the dinner table that the peace of Christ must now visibly reign.
So, how are you celebrating the victory of our crucified and risen King day by day? Are your meals bizarre to the world? Are you sitting down to eat with people you should never get along with? Are you dining with people from other races, nations, and social classes — eating food you would never have tried if not for the unity of Christ’s body? How does your mealtime shine forth the peace that Christ has brought to a hostile world?
“God has made forks and spoons, pans, pots, and plates weapons of war against the darkness.”
Showing hospitality is a fight. Satan will convince you, six ways to Sunday, that you don’t have time to share your table with others. Whether scheduling issues, sports practices, fatigue, or money constraints — there will always be a reason not to invite others over for dinner.
But hospitality is worth the fight. When you survey your kitchen at the night’s close, and it is filled with dirty silverware, piles of plates, and a sink overflowing with greasy pans and pots, may you realize these are the well-used weapons of our war against the darkness. Make your ladles, casserole dishes, and cookie sheets become your trusty side arms in our fight to expand his kingdom.
Tim Keller Speaks at Google on ‘Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical’
In October 2016 Tim Keller gave a talk at Google, based upon his book Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical. He lays out his case in the first 35 minutes, followed by 20 minutes or so of Q&A.
In Part 1 of this series we stated clearly that the best option for a believer in Christ is total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. We made the point that the wine Jesus’ drank is not the same as the wine available today. We stated that it is logical that our Lord’s character would cause Him to refrain from advocating “the use of a beverage that would cause one to be diminished in their moral actions and mental activities.”
But what about the Holy Spirit? One main purpose of His work is to glorify Jesus. Therefore, a significant question as we consider social or moderate drinking is: will it glorify Jesus? “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
The contrast to being filled with the Spirit
In Ephesians, Paul deals with the Spirit-filled, or spirit-controlled, life. He makes a most interesting contrast on being drunk versus being filled with the Spirit: “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit” (5:18).
Why do people drink alcohol? The reasons are too numerous to report but certainly include: acceptance, happiness, to ease pain, to take revenge, to build courage, to excuse other sins (because it weakens inhibitions), to appear socially correct, or to feel good. But the problem with alcohol is that it controls the one who consumes it! Paul says we are to be controlled by the Spirit and therefore should never allow anything else to control us. Self-control is a fruit of Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). Drunkenness is not the only marker for impairment.
We must all agree drunkenness is sinful
Getting drunk or high by alcohol or drugs, legal or illegal, is immoral, sinful, and wrong! “Wine is a mocker, Strong drink is a brawler, And whoever is led astray by it is not wise” (Prov. 20:1).
Drunkenness is never acceptable, but the only way to insure you never get drunk would be that you never drink alcohol. So, while we can all agree on the Scripture’s condemnation of drunkenness, we should also know what else the Bible says on the subject.
In the Feb. 1, 2007 issue of The Florida Baptist Witness, Danny Akin quotes Adrian Rodgers who said, “Moderation is not the cure for the liquor problem. Moderation is the cause of the liquor problem. Becoming an alcoholic does not begin with the last drink, it always begins with the first. Just leave it alone.”
A lot of church people are drinking
John MacArthur quotes a survey that says 81 percent of Catholics and 64 percent of Protestants drink. Whether you drink or not is not a sign of your spirituality. Your spirituality is what you are in relation to Christ; what you do is a manifestation of who you are. So the question is, does social drinking manifest the qualities and attributes of Christ, does it glorify Him?
I might add that drinking will not, in and of itself, send you to hell. It may well hasten your death but it won’t determine your eternity. It will surely make you smell and act like you have either been in hell, or that you are considering a visit!
What the Bible says
Peter says alcohol is a mark of those who will not enter heaven (1 Pet. 4:3-5). Drunkenness disqualifies one from spiritual leadership (1 Tim. 3:1-13; Titus 1:7). The Priests in Old Testament times were forbidden to use wine (Lev. 10:9). Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man who ever lived (Matt. 11:11). While certainly not the only reason, Scripture notes that John abstained from wine (Luke 1:15-16). This barely scratches the surface of the Bible’s condemnation of alcohol.
Do these verses merely refer to drunkenness, or do they also include so-called “moderate drinking?” The problem is the issue of what constitutes drunkenness. Should we affirm anything that impairs our judgment?
There are three reasons a pastor, and for that matter any professing Christian, should be a teetotaler: because of the …
Social Impact
Scriptural Injunctions, and the
Spiritual Influence of alcohol.
Regarding the social impact of alcohol
We could speak all day long on the statistics that reveal the terrible toll alcohol takes on individuals, families and businesses. Those statistics reveal the very negative impacts of alcohol, which are many and easily researched. Some of those statistics are revealed in Richard Land’s article from 2006 here.
Approaching this from a pastoral ministry standpoint, I would never advocate the use of alcohol. Why?
Because I have stood by the casket of teens killed by drunk drivers. I have stood by the casket of two men, both alcoholics, who on separate occasions took their own lives, leaving behind wives and children in utter shambles. I have stood next to men whose careers were destroyed because of alcohol, and they were devastated. These men were not drunkards, but their social use of alcohol ended their careers.
I have spent the night with an alcoholic whose family had left him and he was contemplating suicide. Getting him through the night and sobered up, I fortunately convinced him to come and see me later so we could talk about how to get the victory.
Showing him from the Word of God that God hates alcohol, he repented of his sin, was gloriously saved, and took the pledge of abstinence from all that could intoxicate. He became a faithful church member, his family was restored, and God began to use him greatly.
One who advocates the moderate, social use of alcohol cannot be effective in this situation. Any encouragement to this man that he could have Jesus and booze too would have sent him into drunken frenzy.
The social impact of alcohol is too great for us to make the mistake of encouraging its use among God’s precious people. In a future article we will address the scriptural injunctions against alcohol and the spiritual influence we have as believers regarding alcohol.
Tom Rush is an itinerant evangelist with Tom Rush Evangelism & Discipleship Ministries (TREAD). Over 43 years of ministry, he served 34 of them at churches in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and New Mexico. He's the author of "Your Reasonable Service: Understanding Your Motivation for Ministry." He currently serves as staff evangelist at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell. He can be reached for revivals, supply preaching or interims through his blog page at https://pastortomrush.com/.
'Centuries of religious conflict' now on U.S. soil
'To leave would be like giving up on our Constitution'
WND Exclusive
Sterling Heights, Michigan
After the Sterling Heights City Council agreed to settle a lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department and allow a third mosque to be built in the city, this time right in the midst of a neighborhood populated by Christian refugees who escaped persecution from Islam, some residents said they planned to move out of the city.
Sterling Heights, Michigan, is home to the nation’s second largest community of Chaldean and Assyrian Christians, many of them coming directly from Iraq where their families were the victims of a genocide by ISIS, al-Qaida and other Islamic militants over the past 50 years.
While understandable, picking up and moving in the wake of a mosque approval is exactly the wrong response, say Michigan activists.
“This is our city and our country and our community,” said Tom Mitchell, a 52-year resident of Sterling Heights who says the council’s vote gave him renewed determination to help support his Chaldean neighbors. “To leave would be like giving up on our Constitution, giving up to a culture that doesn’t believe in our Constitution and our laws. I tell people to stick it out, get more active but don’t move out.”
Mitchell is a former member of the Army’s 86th Airborne unit.
“I never surrender. I’m a veteran,” he said. “God, family, country, that’s where I stand.”
But real-estate transactions are often a fact of life when a mosque gets built in a previously non-Muslim area. The newly released book, “Stealth Invasion,” documents homes being snatched up by Middle-Eastern buyers in certain neighborhoods of Idaho and Minnesota after the U.S. State Department began sending heavy numbers of Islamic refugees to those areas.
The same trend has been seen in Warren, which borders Sterling Heights in Macomb County, Michigan.
Transforming the county, one city at a time
One resident of the 12 Mile Road area of Warren, who lives within a few miles of five mosques, told WND the area is changing a little more with each new real-estate transaction. Businesses once run by Americans have changed hands and now cater to Muslims with hookah shops, halal meats and Middle Eastern markets.
The local Walmart is frequented by women in burqas and hijabs.
“People drive 18 miles away to Rochester Hills to shop because they don’t want to shop here anymore,” said Suzanne, who asked that WND not publish her real name for fear of retribution. She said it’s not the Muslims she fears as much as the city of Warren itself, which she said has shown great hostility toward anyone who speaks out against the mosques.
Halal pizza shop in Rochester Hills, Michigan, sells meat sacrificially blessed by an imam.
Yet, even Rochester Hills is starting to get transformed, as shown by the photo at right.
“Here in Macomb County, we live by the old adage that all religions are equal but some religions are more equal than others,” Suzanne told WND.
“On our corner of 12 Mile and Ryan, there are these yellow signs put in the ground, on all four corners, that say ‘we buy homes for cash.’ And every time my husband and I take the signs down they go back up,” said Suzanne, who is a member of Secure Michigan, a group that opposes Shariah law in America.
Rochester Hills halal pizza shop
“And they’re calling us to find out if we will sell our homes. We received a call,” she said. “The strip mall that now houses a mosque also has a total Middle Eastern food market there. Rumors are they want to open an Islamic funeral home.”
Whenever a house in her neighborhood goes into foreclosure, it usually gets purchased by a Middle Eastern family, said Suzanne.
The Islamic Organization of North America or IONA Mosque opened in a former strip shopping center sometime around 2006 or 2007, she said.
“We have 32 houses on our street and four have gone to Middle Eastern families. On an adjoining street we have three more,” she said. “They seem to be getting all the ones that are two-story and have four bedrooms.”
In the summertime, she said men take up space in the public park praying on white sheets spread out on the lawn. Traffic has increased exponentially.
So far, there has been no loud calls to prayer using loudspeakers. She expects that could start at any time based on what she’s seen in nearby Hamtramck, a city just 10 miles south of Warren and 14 miles south of Sterling Heights that has been transformed from a Polish community to an Islamic enclave over a period of about 20 years. Hamtramck became the first U.S. city with a majority-Muslim city council last year and has daily calls to prayer over the loudspeaker.
Meanwhile, there are new questions being raised about the mosque given the green light to build in the Chaldean Christian community of Sterling Heights.
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said she was ‘very proud’ of the settlement deal allowing AAIC Mosque to build in Sterling Heights.
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, an Obama appointee, indicated in a press release Wednesday that the American Islamic Community Center would be moving to Sterling Heights from its current location one county over in Madison Heights.
“The AICC, currently located in Madison Heights, Michigan, sought to build in Sterling Heights because the location is more convenient for its members and its current space has become inadequate for its religious, educational and social needs,” the release stated.
Residents have said they don’t believe there are enough Shia Muslims in Sterling Heights to support a large mosque of nearly 21,000 square feet. This is affirmed by the fact that many will be coming from Madison Heights in Oakland County. Sterling Heights is in Macomb County, a Democratic stronghold of mostly blue-collar workers that went for Donald Trump in last fall’s presidential election. Neighboring Oakland, historically more Republican, went for Hillary Clinton.
Catholic, Lutheran churches resettle Muslim refugees
Macomb and Oakland and counties are two of the most densely populated suburbs of Detroit. The two counties have received more than 14,000 refugees since Barack Obama took office in 2008, according to State Department data. Most of them have been resettled by Catholic Charities and Samaritas, an arm of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Michigan has received 2,120 Syrian refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Many of them have been secretly placed into Oakland County against the wishes of County Executive Brooks Patterson, or into Macomb County, whose elected leaders have welcomed the resettlements.
WND has reported previously how a Wyndham Hotel in Sterling Heights owned by an Arab-American with ties to CAIR Michigan is being used to temporarily house refugees until they can be placed in surrounding communities like Troy, Hamtramck, Dearborn, Warren, Clinton Township and Madison Heights. All of these communities are being transformed, residents told WND.
In her blog Thursday, Ann Corcoran, a watchdog over the refugee program for the past decade, called the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney’s accomplishment of getting a mosque approved in the heart of an Iraqi Christian community a “travesty.”
She said this is how refugee resettlement is used to transform American cities, changing the nation by changing its demographics, one city at a time.
“Iraqi Christians will now be pushed out of this community in Sterling Heights, a win for the Islamic supremacists,” Corcoran said.
Watch video trailer for “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad’
Worse, she said the U.S. State Department, which oversees the resettlement of refugees from the Third World into more than 300 U.S. cities and towns, has a habit of mixing people groups with ancient rivalries in the same American city, sometimes in the same apartment complex or neighborhood.
“… [T]he U.S. Department of State continually places Muslims in the same communities in which they have placed Christians from the Middle East,” Corcoran said. “I’ve seen them place Burmese Muslims into Burmese Christian communities in some U.S. cities as well, and thus they bring centuries of religious conflict to American soil.”
Corcoran said it also should be noted that mosques represent the expansion of Islam into non-Muslim areas.
This is affirmed by other experts such as Dr. Mark Christian, a former imam and son of a Muslim Brotherhood member in Egypt who converted to Christianity at the age of 28, later founding the Global Faith Institute in Omaha, Nebraska. He explained that the Islamic doctrine of “hijra” or migration is a very important part of spreading the faith.
“First and foremost it’s a political ideology and, number two, it’s expansionist. It’s about how to establish your leadership in a region and very important how to expand, pushing those borders a little bit every day.”
For that reason, it’s doubtful that the Madison Heights mosque that McQuade indicated was moving to Sterling Heights will ever close and relocate. What is more likely is that only part of the Madison Heights congregation will pick up and make hijra to Sterling Heights, although this remains to be seen.
Suzanne, the resident of Warren, lives three miles from the planned new mosque in Sterling Heights. She asked WND not to use her real name out of fear that she will be singled out for unfair treatment by city officials. It’s a pattern she has seen all too often whenever someone in her community speaks out against the mosques or is critical of Islam.
She lives within six miles of at least five mosques, she told WND, and has seen the area transformed by Islam since 9/11.
IONA Mosque on 12 Mile Road in Warren, Michigan, moved into a shopping center about 10 years ago and is operated by Imam Steven Mustapha Elturk of Beirut, Lebanon
Her neighborhood is closest to the Islamic Organization of North America or IONA Mosque, which buts right up against her neighborhood. The mosque’s imam, Mustapha “Steven” Elturk, was, like the vast majority of American imams, born in the Middle East. Now 61, Elturk emigrated to the U.S. from Beirut, Lebanon, at the age of 21.
Elturk has had a strained relationship with the surrounding community since opening his mosque in a large strip shopping center about 10 years ago on Ryan Road, Suzanne said.
“We filed a lawsuit to stop them from building a large playground on Walker Street next to our neighborhood with a gate giving access to our neighborhood. We lost,” Suzanne told WND. “The city tried to shut down all the activists. The only reason I’m still active is they don’t know who I am.”
“We argued we didn’t want access to a commercial property but we lost for religious reasons,” Suzanne added. “The city lets them do anything they want. The mayor tells us we can’t use the word Muslim or call them Muslims.”
Suzanne said her group went door to door to gather petitions against the mosque playground access but the Michigan chapter of the George Soros-funded Welcoming America followed on their heels with a petition in support of the mosque.
Welcoming Michigan, like the group’s other chapters, works to “soften the soil” of U.S.-born residents, seeking to cultivate support for arriving immigrants and refugees. Corcoran calls it a “well-oiled propaganda machine.”
After filing a lawsuit against the mosque playground and losing, things started to change.
“The city started coming in and giving ordinance violations to anyone who showed up at council to complain about the playground or the mosque,” Suzanne said.
Four men spoke publicly before the city council in opposition to the mosque’s playground.
All four men were subsequently paid visits by city zoning police – one was cited for having a few pieces of firewood on the ground, another was cited for a downspout violation and another was written citations for his boat not being parked properly.
“Just petty stuff,” Suzanne said.
She moved to Warren in 1964 and has seen its transformation from a mostly working-class city that fed off the auto industry to one that has increasingly taken on the appearance of the Middle East.
Darul Uloom mosque on 12 Mile Road in Warren
About a half mile down 12 Mile Road from the IONA mosque is Darul Uloom Islamic Center and School, which opened in 2014, according to its website. It is one of many Dar al Uloom madrassas that former Homeland Security officer and whistleblower Phillip Haney has tracked and described as radical. San Bernardino shooter Syed Farooq attended a Dar al Uloom mosque and exchanged repeated text messages with the mosque’s imam in the months leading up to the attack.
The Dar al Uloom mosque in San Bernardino is a haven for activists involved with Tablighi Jamaat – a fundamentalist, proselytizing Islamic sect known in some circles as the “Army of Darkness.”
“Dar al Uloom are the evangelists of the Islamic world,” Haney told WND. “They emphasize children memorizing the Quran.”
Darul Uloom of Warren’s stated mission is to provide “authentic Islamic education in an Islamic environment. Darul Uloom Michigan has been sincerely serving the Muslim community since its inception, and by the grace of Allah (subhanahu wa ta‘ala), it is now a notable Islamic seminary with students of all ages from across North America.”
“We were alarmed to learn we lived near that,” Suzanne said.
“So I’m on a half-mile triangle of all of these mosques, and that’s why, any space that comes available in the strip mall you know where it’s going, any vacancy that comes open gets filled with an Arabic business or religious establishment so things are happening real fast in my neighborhood, and we have to keep quiet about it because they’re shutting us down when we speak up in my neighborhood. Everyone who complained about the playground got visited by the city.”
IONA imam Elturk holds regular interfaith meetings, sometimes at city hall, with at least two other imams and various Christian church leaders.
“They tell the police department they’re afraid of us because they claim we follow them. I think they’re just trying to find out what the police are doing in the neighborhood, what the game plan is,” said Suzanne. “I know they work actively in our community within the interfaith group in order to get sympathy, but we’re definitely out-numbered, I can see that already.”
A homeowner who lives across the street from the planned new mosque in Sterling Heights has reportedly already been asked if she will sell her home.
Suzanne, like Tom Mitchell, hopes the Chaldean Christians won’t leave the area that has become their home.
“When I go door to door to talk to people the reaction I get is they want to move,” Suzanne said. They’re chasing too many good people out. Most of my neighbors want to move out of Macomb County and into Oakland County, because Brooks Patterson is our advocate there. In Macomb they just lay down and accept whatever the mosques want. We don’t have an advocate here.”
The Sterling Heights group, led by the Chaldeans, is “very boisterous” compared to activists in Warren, Suzanne said.
“Our philosophy is you can’t go around saying people are going to cut our heads off and expect to get anywhere. We have one person who we allow to speak on our behalf, and he’s never once crossed the line and said anything prejudicial about the Muslims. It was always, this is our neighborhood, it’s residential, we don’t want noise, we don’t want traffic, we never made it personal we never made it religious.”
But Suzanne says keeping religion out of their arguments didn’t seem to work any better than the Chaldeans’ strategy of making it about a personal religious struggle against their former persecutors coming from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
“We probably lost quicker trying to be polite,” Suzanne said. “We did it the PC way and we just got steamrolled.”
'Teenagers don't have the maturity for physical relationships, regardless of what adults in our culture say'
I am often asked to speak about sex to high school students. Many adults shudder at the thought of talking to kids about sex — but I love it. First, I have a captive audience, and second, I get to talk about two things that I am very passionate about: the dangers of teen sex and the joys of sex in marriage.
Many adults worry that kids will be too shy to ask questions, but I have found them eager to have their questions answered in an honest, upbeat manner.
I do not take the topic of teens and sex lightly. I have seen the pain of STDs in 13- and 14-year-old children in my office as a pediatrician, along with other serious health issues caused by sex.
Most people are aware of the physical repercussions of sex:
You may be familiar with those numbers, but few are aware of the emotional repercussions teen sex can have.
For the thousands of teens I’ve treated and counseled, many of them — yes, teen boys too — have depression related to sexual activity. I consider it an STD with effects as devastating as HPV, chlamydia, or any physical infection. Consider these numbers:
In 2015, roughly 3 million adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the U.S. had at least one major depressive episode in the past year — that’s about 12.5 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds.
From 1999-2014, the suicide rate in girls ages 10 to 14 tripled.
About 20 percent of teens will experience depression before they reach adulthood.
I believe it is no coincidence that as STDs have become an epidemic in teens, so has depression. The correlation is startling.
Depression in a teen occurs on a biochemical as well as psychological level — and the two are linked. We know that the levels of specific hormones in the cerebral spinal fluid of depressed teens are different from those of non-depressed teens. And, we know that depression occurs when a teen experiences un-grieved losses — hurts that have been buried in their psyche, festering like abscesses. When a teen doesn’t deal with a traumatic or hurtful event, he ends up stifling it and the negative emotions come out sideways. He becomes angry, withdrawn, and depressed.
Consider a 15-year-old girl who feels pressured to have sex with her boyfriend. She finally does, and two weeks later, he breaks up with her.
Think about a 17-year-old-boy who has had multiple sexual partners (as most 17-year-old boys are encouraged to do). He has sex because he believes this is what he must do to be a “man.” However, not all of those sexual encounters go well. He is too ashamed to admit this to his friends and knows he can’t talk to his parents about it, so he pretends like everything is fine, suppresses his feelings, and continues having multiple partners.
Or consider a 15-year-old girl who feels pressured to have sex with her boyfriend. She finally does, and two weeks later, he breaks up with her. She can’t explain to her parents why the breakup is so upsetting (she may not even know why herself), so she tries to find consolation in the next boy she dates — starting an unhealthy cycle and not dealing with the grief and the loss.
Teenagers don’t have the psychological or cognitive maturity to handle sex, regardless of what adults in our culture say. And they certainly can’t handle sex with multiple partners. Depression occurs by un-grieved losses and the truth is, sex for teen boys and girls causes many losses on many levels.
This is why simply talking to your child about “safe sex” (a term that even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t use anymore) is not enough. It’s your job as your son or daughter’s parent to help set them up for a lifelong, monogamous relationship and to get them there as emotionally unscathed as possible — not to simply cross your fingers and hope your child doesn’t get one of the over 35 STDs.
The misconceptions many parents have about their teenagers are these: that teen boys are nothing more than vats of hormones, that girls want to be sexually active in high school and college because that’s what girls do, and that sex is really fine for kids if they use “precautions” and stay “safe.”
First, boys have minds, hearts, and spirits, and treating them otherwise is wrong. Second, most girls don’t want to be sexually active but have no one to counsel them how to postpone sex. Finally, terms like “precautions” and “safe” are meaningless. How is a teen to avoid hurt if he has sex, bonds to a girl, and then breaks up? And studies show that condoms don’t protect equally against different diseases — so being “safe” is nonsense. I can’t tell you how many 16- and 17-year-old boys come up to me after I’ve spoken at their school to talk about the emotional scars they have from sex.
Do more than teach your child about the physical harm that can result from sex. Talk to them about their feelings and make sure they understand the emotional and mental connection that sex has. You need to be the person to tell your child this and know that they want to hear what you have to say. Work very hard to protect their hearts and minds as much as their bodies because trust me, nobody else is going to help teach them what you will.
Dr. Meg Meeker has practiced pediatrics and adolescent medicine for more than 30 years. She is the author of the best-selling book “Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters,” as well as a number of digital parenting resources and online courses, including “The 12 Principles of Raising Great Kids.”
Gaslighting: Know It and Identify It to Protect Yourself
Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power. And it works too well.
Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.
People who gaslight typically use the following techniques:
1. They tell blatant lies.
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You know it's an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they're setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you'd be a worthy person if only you didn't have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being.
4. They wear you down over time.
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This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what's happening to it.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad." Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter.
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7. They know confusion weakens people.
Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslighter.
8. They project.
They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior.
9. They try to align people against you.
Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, "This person knows that you're not right," or "This person knows you're useless too." Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it's dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.
By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality. You've never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be telling the truth, right? No. It's a manipulation technique. It makes people turn to the gaslighter for the "correct" information—which isn't correct information at all.
The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them and avoid falling into the gaslighter's trap.
