Unchaperoned Teens in an Age of Stupid Fathers

I wake up too early most mornings and work my way through the plethora of news, and there it was once again, another shooting headline. This one is in Chatanooga, TN, where police were monitoring “large groups of unchaperoned teens when they heard gunshots around 11 p.m. They saw multiple people shooting and crowds of people running away.” Now, the tragedy does not come near to what we have seen in recent days. This appears to be another common occurrence of unsupervised teenagers acting out their inner men late at night. I suspect that most of these parents function on the scale of obliviousness unbeknownst to poets in the old days, otherwise they would have been the source of zealous and chiastic mockery.

I am still a relatively young father and don’t want to opine too deeply about how I will react to my teenage children if they decide to behave like scoundrels in a few years, but let’s say I have some suspicions. And, I am certain they do too. But, let me talk about how some of the wise people I know would react to the news above. Consider the words “unchaperoned” and “11 pm.” What do they have in common? You guessed it: stupid parents! Maybe you wouldn’t expect me, in all my sophisticated ABC’s to put those two words together, but behold, alas, stupid parents make up for the harsh reality of what we see in our culture today. As Jordan Peterson would say, “What the hell, man!”

Now, immediately, some will offer me an exception or ten as to why these situations unfold, and why such scenarios are likely. I am not interested in such justifications, I want to stay with the phrase “stupid parents” for a bit longer if you don’t mind.

What we are seeing is the fruit of stupidity in very covenantal terms. Some of these parents born in the ’70s and ’80s–not all scoundrels, but all self-possessed by egoism,” are watching their young adult children enjoy the benefits of autonomous zones and self-made victimization, lefty leaning Obama-bots, and winsome connoisseurs of Rachel Maddow and Don Lemon. Well done, parents! Wait, let’s be a bit more specific: Well done, dads!

It must be rewarding to such fathers who spent most of their days working long hours in the office away from the family, spending a lot of time with their pals drinking beer and watching football while their new wives were home caring for newborns and keeping the house in some form of stability, while el king established himself in his royal throne at home after a long day and kept the children content with their tablets and unending cycle of entertainment, demanding and protesting when dinner was not served at the right time or the children would not respond politely. How did that work out for you and how does it look now? How does it feel to gain the world?

Your children have become you! Except, now they have the entire vocabulary of a nation plunged into wokedom, catechized under political correctness, politicized under cool categories like “socialism” and “authority sucks” Those young adults are the direct descendants of inattentive fathers who chose their own pleasures above the needs of their children and the regular inconveniences they offer us.

A father once said to another father: “I would die to have children like yours,” to which the father replied, “That’s exactly what I do daily…die.”

God will not judge us, fathers, for the rest we take, the games we watch, or even the late hours we may take occasionally. He will judge us, however, for seeing all these things as noble substitutes for parenting well and faithfully; for refusing to see the long-term covenantal implications of parenting.

So, to those far off, I urge you, fathers, to grab that prodigal son by the hairs of his baptism and tell him that you love him, pray for him, and confess your failures. Perhaps, and just perhaps, that might be the beginning of a new chapter in your relationship, or perhaps it will lay down a foundation for a new fatherhood.

As for the dads dying daily, don’t grow weary in well doing. And never believe for a moment that your children are first and foremost proud of your professionalism; they are proud of a father who kisses them and makes them feel possessed by love. Stay close. Keep the conversations alive. Don’t be stupid, be wise.