VALUES

The longer the SPRING Student Center is open, the more we come to see that many kids do not have an appropriate (or any!) sense of values, a sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Values and morals are very closely related.

Values- (as defined in Encarta Dictionary online)

1. accepted principles or standards of a person or a group

Morals- (Encarta)

1. involving right and wrong: relating to issues of right and wrong and to how individual people should behave

To save space, I’ll skip to number five in Encarta’s definition:

5. good by accepted standards: good or right, when judged by the standards of the average person or society at large

6. able to tell right from wrong: able to distinguish right from wrong and to make decisions based on that knowledge

The Bible refers to morals in First Corinthians 15:33 - 34 (HCSB)

³³Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” ³⁴Become right-minded and stop sinning, because some people are ignorant about God. I say this to your shame.

The Holman Bible Dictionary says that morals and values are closely related to the terms,

Integrity, righteousness (Psalms 7:8), uprightness (Psalms 25:21) and blameless (Psalms 101:2).

How do we teach values or morals, what is right and what is wrong? As I mentioned earlier, it is very apparent that many of the teens that come into the SPRING have, either no apparent sense of right and wrong or a warped one at best. That is not to say that none of them does, lest I appear too critical. There are many of these teens that are polite, know when they’ve done something wrong and exhibit a positive sense of values in other ways.

Many though, have rejected even what the civil law says is right and wrong. We can see this in the numbers of teens who engage in underage drinking of alcohol, abuse of drugs (prescription and illegal) and fighting in school just to name a few.

My concern is this: how do we teach a sense of values to those that do not seem to have any? If these kids have not been brought up in the church, where do they get this sense of values or morality?

The answer of course is first to model Biblical morality while demonstrating the love of God. Then, we need to incorporate scripture into our explanation of why we have certain rules and regulations. All of that is simply groundwork to lead them to a life-saving, life-transforming knowledge of Jesus Christ.

SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD