The Bible Speaks to You May 25, 1968 Issue

[The above is an abbreviated, postproduction text of the program released for broadcast the week of May 17-23 in the radio series, "The Bible Speaks to You." Heard internationally over more than 1,000 stations, the weekly programs are prepared and produced by the Christian Science Committee on Publication, 107 Falmouth Street, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 02115.]

RADIO PROGRAM NO. 320 - Assuring Our Teen-agers That We Really Care

Announcer: Teen-agers need respect, love, and trust. They need to know that somebody really cares about them.
Questioner: A great many people were startled, I think, to read recently of the runaway problem among young people, especially when they discovered that these youth were from middle-class homes and had parents who thought they were giving all that their children needed. Parents are asking what goes wrong.
Speaker: There's a difference between providing things and providing the real care a young person needs. He needs to be loved, respected, trusted, and valued as an individual.
Questioner: I'm sure that many parents work at this. But sometimes it's very hard to do when a youngster appears sullen or rebellious.
Speaker: That's the time when there's a special need to be sincerely loving and respectful of him as an individual. It really isn't difficult when we realize that all the love and wisdom we need already belongs to man as the likeness of God and can always be expressed. The Bible brings out that the source of this love is God. We read in I John (4:12), "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." And the source of this wisdom is God. We read in James (3:17), "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

The qualities that James mentions belong to everyone's real selfhood, to both the parent and the teen-ager individually.
Questioner: It's hard for many parents to think of their teen-agers as individuals having their own particular rights and duties.

Speaker: Yes, I know what you mean. After I came home from the war—I had flown some two thousand hours in a combat area —my dad said to me, "Can you really fly an airplane?" I saw that sometimes—to parents—we never grow up. That is, they never think of us as individuals.

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