After the budget speech was recently delivered in Australia, a member of the opposition party had the following comment: “How can you give someone a tax back payment, when they don’t even pay tax in the first place?” Now I don’t follow politics very closely, but I understand and agree with what he was saying.
Criminals have more rights than the police! Those who do nothing (as a choice) get rewarded, while those who work hard are penalised! There is an excuse for every behaviour! I have seen how people in Australia swear at police and it needs to be tolerated, but if one policeman gets a little rough when handling an offender, a big deal is made of it. I know people who choose not to work, because they are given enough money from the government to live quite comfortably. I have been teaching long enough to have seen all the excuses for the behaviour of children – even excuses that now qualify as accepted conditions. A friend of mine is at the point of giving up on everything in life because of the way he has been treated as a teacher by children, parents and the principal of the school he is at. My wife, Bev, has been kicked and spat on by a grade 1 student at a previous school and the child’s behaviour was excused as the consequence of problems at home.
When are we, as a society, going to stop molly coddling our next generation and allow them to build up a bit of resilience in life. There is a school that has now banned children from handing out invitations to birthday parties, because it is causing “emotional distress to those who are not invited. A child psychologist on the news rubbished it by saying, “How are we going to build resilience in our children if we aren’t allowing them to experience disappointments in life?” Kudos to you “Doctor whoever you are.” That is why there is so much violence and abuse today. When people face the slightest disappointment in life, they don’t know how to deal with it and they lash out. Why is it, that we don’t recognise the hand that we are playing in the degradation of the next generation.
We aren’t doing the youth any favours by wrapping them up in cotton wool. It’s not only a waste of good cotton wool, but it’s also leading to a spoilt generation who is self-centred and unable to deal with anything that requires a bit of courage and resilience. When we are not held accountable for our actions, we adopt an attitude where everyone else is to blame except us. The fact that these things are also advocated in Christian schools and – environments blow me away. Romans 5:3-4 says: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
That means there will be difficult times in life when we will be disappointed. Jesus doesn’t wrap us up and protect us from every little thing. In fact, He says that we will have troubles. If we want to build a next generation that is strong and resilient we need to make sure that:
- we lead the way by accepting responsibility for our actions
- we stop looking for someone else to blame when we do the wrong thing
- we face the consequences of inappropriate behaviour
- we learn from our mistakes
- we stop being selfish and self-focused
Let’s become a generation that loves one another and is accountable to one another for our actions.
Have an amazing day.
Mark Davidson
