For example the fears of another Chernobyl have been fired up by the media creating nuclear energy knee jerk reactions around the globe. Unfortunately, the true facts of Chernobyl are in very short supply as the pundits show they are neither aware of the final results of Chernobyl nor able to accurately portray the potential damage to people’s health in Japan and elsewhere; note the run on anti-radiation medicine in the stores of California, Oregon, and Hawaii.  In actual fact the only people after thorough study and investigation who died as a direct result of Chernobyl’s meltdown were the 30 people in the plant who died in the explosion. Perhaps you did not know this because you relied on the news media to tell you the truth. Additionally, the Sunday Times of London reported April 28, 2002 that the animals around Chernobyl are “thriving.” 50 years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear bombs, the 90,000 survivors had experienced only 700 cases of cancer in excess of the normal rate of cancer in the population, and half of the 90,000 survivors were still living.

One of the most important aspects of the impact of this natural disaster is not even on the radar screen of the media. From a career missionary friend to Japan, who was born and raised there, I received a letter with the expression of hope that this upheaval of shocking proportion will awaken the Japanese people from spiritual lethargy to think about eternal values. He wrote that on any given day in Japan 90-100 people commit suicide. Even as the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami climbs to above 10,000, such a number represents only a third of the people in Japan who die every year by taking their own lives.

As in any disaster, natural or man-made, the question inevitably arises, strangely enough from even atheists and agnostics (go figure), “Why did God allow this, or if He is sovereign over all creation as the Bible teaches, why did He cause it, or why didn’t He stop it if it is just nature running its course?” It’s a good question to ask, especially if you also consider your answer to the following questions along with it: “Why has my ignoring of Him been so pervasive in my life in the past? And why am I concerned about His plan, purposes, and practice only when my life is inconvenienced by a disaster that really gets my attention?”

This last earthquake, tsunami, or what have you is not nearly the final one we will see or experience. The doozy of them all is still to come, described graphically in Revelation 16, not to mention all those in-between.  Whatever the full ramifications of God’s purposes in the many devastations of the past, the present and the future, this much is surely true; it has been seen that is often the only way to shock spiritually dead or lethargic people into  seriously evaluating where their life is headed eternally and to seek out the Almighty and Living God. Would that Japan would experience a spiritual revival as a result of this upheaval, as well as other peoples of the world who are able in this 21^st Century to see firsthand what is happening across the globe from them.  For every believer Japan’s pain should motivate our own prayer life, and stir us more readily and earnestly to speak the gospel into our own personal world, to those near and around us who are devoid of any relationship with Jesus Christ or hope of heaven.

1. They can get easily get sex without marriage
2. They want to enjoy single life as long as possible
3. They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises
4. They face few social pressures to marry
5. They are waiting for the perfect soul mate and she hasn’t yet appeared

Unfortunately too many young men believe that life should emulate a beer commercial and thus, cling to their single life as long as possible. When they finally meet a special woman and decide to commit, they bring a lot a lot of baggage and regret into the relationship, which decreases the likelihood that the relationship will last.

Marriage is a sacred covenant between a man, woman and God. Like nothing else, marriage reflects the pro creative and complimentary nature of God.Thus, marriage is the cornerstone of civilized society. and provides for the physical, emotional and economic health of children and communities. For guys, marriage is a commitment of the deepest kind. To esteem one person above all others, to become one flesh, to put her needs above yours, and to love courageously and sacrificially is the hallmark of a man worth marrying.

One of the indications of addiction is the extent to which one’s life becomes organized around using drugs or alcohol. For addicted teens, there is almost always a well-defined sub-culture of friends, associates, parties, and rituals that becomes the center of their social life. Healthy activities that used to capture their imagination such as sports and academics soon become secondary to the “party” culture.”

Helping teens find a new, drug-free social life is no small thing. It’s not as simple as plopping them back into healthy activities. They will need real friends, excitement and purpose for their life. Unfortunately, many lack the social skills and emotional maturity to seek and sustain new friends. Parents must step in and lead.

Healthy recovery groups for teens and young adults are hard to find. As a result, they will have times of loneliness, sadness and boredom as they transition into their new life of recovery.

Here are some tips to help you help your teen:

• If your child went through a treatment program, ask about after-care services and recovery groups in your community. Many treatment centers will assist in finding a 12-step sponsor or 12-step support group.
• Check with your local Alcoholics Anonymous (http://aa.org) or Narcotics Anonymous (http://na.org) about local meetings. Local churches may also have faith-based recovery groups such as Celebrate Recovery (www.celebraterecovery.com/).
• Try to keep him active and engaged by planning fun family activities or weekend trips, or just hanging out with him.
• Find a church or faith community with a vibrant program for teens.
• Acknowledge that recovery is difficult and sometimes “boring.” Ask how you can help today.
• Watch for healthy, drug- and alcohol-free teens or young adults and social events.
• No matter how bored she becomes do not lower the bar by letting her hang out with her old drug-using friends or go to parties where alcohol is available. Stand strong because the risk of giving in is too great.

Heath Ledger in
I’m not there

As I looked at this every day on my way to and from work, the sadness of that title was profound. And though, not trying to draw too many conclusions or metaphors from the title, I could not help but think how in many ways, that when we are at home with our spouses and our children, often we are there in body, but not really there in mind.

I hear parents ask the same question: “when my son/daughter is home, it seems like he or she is not really there.” Or “all my son wants to do is sit in his room and play videogames. He seems withdrawn and distant.” What those parents seem to be saying is that they are with us in body, but are not really there in mind. While it is easy to ask that question aloud concerning our children, I wonder how true it is for us as not only spouses, but also as parents.

How do we anchor our children to reality and to us as parents, when so often we are disengaged ourselves?

We live in a self-created fiction yet cannot ignore reality even in our fiction. That is a pretty deep way to start to answer the question, but it is true…we create our own sense of reality. Our children merely emulate our behavior. This virtual world that we see in the internet, 500 different cable channels, thousands of movies, an author on every corner, text messaging, living life on phones did not create itself. We have created a world, a fiction that surrounds the universe of me. As parents, we have passed that on to our children and given them new tools and a faster way of doing it.

But how real is that fiction? And what is the problem with doing it anyway? Everyone likes to escape reality from time to time don’t they? I know I do.

For me, I use entertainment as a way to escape reality. Often it is a book, a movie, or even a television show. Lately, the internet has been a way for me to explore my interests….a virtual library at my fingertips. Is there really anything wrong with me doing this?

This is when I begin to live in my own fiction. The fiction that tells me I am the only one who matters: the only one I need to worry about pleasing. In the words of Terrell Owens; “I love me some me,” and that is the crux of the problem. We are generally so enamored with ourselves that we really are not there. “There,” is the reality of life. “There,” is the place most often we are trying to escape. We often have trouble anchoring ourselves as parents and our children to the reality of life. Life exists on the other side of fiction.

What does that mean? Heath Ledger, truly, is no longer here, and that is the reality of life. He was trying to escape from his own reality with no knowledge of the consequences that would come. Drugs for so many people are an escape, yet they are perilously used to seemingly add color to a life that seems dull…black and white.

Life is fleeting and it goes all too quickly. Yet given the speed of life, how do we establish a sense of permanence in our children? How do we anchor them to the reality of life and the permanence of hope?

Certainly it seems that anchoring our children and ourselves to reality is a challenging task. Life, in many ways, seems odder than fiction. A newspaper on any given day can make that point for us, but a recent article suffices. According to the Australian newspaper, The Telegraph, “suicidal pets are getting anti-depressants, particularly tropical birds such as parrots which seem to have been the most affected by depression.”

The news and the advances of technology on any given day make it seem as if reality is a moving target and challenging at best. From birds taking Prozac to robots that are being developed so we can have virtually interactive sex, it would appear that reality changes with each generation.

However, in a shifting culture, there are principles that we as parents need to embrace so to anchor our children and ourselves to reality.

• Reality is not relative nor, is truth. If reality and truth were relative, then no one would ever be wrong.
• Truth does exist. O.J. Simpson either did or did not kill his wife. The fact that you or I do not know the answer does not mean that an answer does not exist.
• In the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson: “The fact that there is such a thing as twilight does not mean that we cannot distinguish between night and day.”
• We cannot merely live virtually, apart from others. E-mail, voice mail, and the phone, are all ways that we now seek to live our lives without interacting with others. The virtual touch has become easier than the personal touch. We however, are built to be in relationship. Virtual interaction, will never be as good nor as challenging, as the real thing.
• We all need down time. We all need to relax. Weariness is not an excuse to entertain ourselves into isolation, into our “own reality.”

Technology and culture will change. The movement of society is not an excuse to let ourselves and our children be absent in our own homes. Weariness is not an excuse to let our children retire to their rooms, live virtually on the phone or internet, watch their TV, apart from us. We allow them to do those things because it is easier. It allows us to live our own lives, while ignoring theirs. But it is not reality. We as parents need to guard ourselves from escaping reality. In doing this, we can prevent our children from escaping into their own fiction.

The other side of fiction is reality. It is a world we all live in, and we are not alone in it.

“I have a child who…appears to be suffering from depression.”

Depression can be triggered initially by almost anything: break up with a girlfriend/boyfriend, guilt over doing wrong, feeling left out by friends, making bad grades. If gone untreated or unchecked, depression can become a very real physiological condition that may require medication.

Depression may appear similar to apathy: depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain that produces very definite behavioral manifestations: changes in personality, listlessness, loss of appetite, life seems to have no meaning, talk of suicide. Be engaged in your child’s life; find out what is the root of the depression.

By Paul Anderson – Strength Legend

No one really knows just how powerful the mind is. I have seen people, who practice the power of positive thinking day after day, and who give me some convincing reports concerning its value. In my own life I have experienced some of these things that are amazing, and especially baffling to the person who doesn’t realize what great power he has stored in his brain.

The athlete not only must condition his body through proper exercise and diet but also the force that controls the body must be properly trained. This can be proven day after day just by observing records. When Roger Bannister finally showed the world that the four minute mile could be broken, it seemed that many others who had been tottering on the brink of such an accomplishment, were then able to duplicate the Roger’s sterling performance. To achieve this goal, what did Roger Bannister possess that others did not? It had to be more than just his stride, endurance, and finishing speed. There must have been something more. It was his mental attitude and the discipline he took in preparing to achieve his goal.

The same goes for all those who lead the way in any sporting event. There must be something extra there, to give the participant that exceptional competitive spirit, and the idea that he can be the first one to make the accomplishment.

To achieve the ultimate, from the psychological part of weightlifting or using weights to reach potentials in other sports, I will say that first and foremost, we must have a very good image of ourselves. We must feel that nothing is impossible for us to accomplish in the sporting world. We then must set our goals, and not have them as mental blocks, which can easily happen, but to feel that we are very capable of reaching them. In an immediate way, our mental attitudes can work for or against us: whether we have a positive or negative attitude. If one approaches a barbell and has a negative attitude, surely he is not going to be successful in the lift. This is the same with approaching a golf ball or cocking the arm to throw a baseball or football. We must have a positive attitude about what we are going to do and accomplish. This is both true in training, actual competition, and in life.

So what do we say to our children; we who certainly lack perfection; we who become weary; we who are quickly frustrated; we who battle with selfishness; we who never experience days of complete contentment with everything and everyone around us? What do we say to them when we say goodbye for a short time? What do we say when we put them to bed? What do we say when they lie to us? What do we say when they do something wrong, or irresponsible, or irritating, or whatever? What do we say to them when we are bored with them, or tired of them, or do not know what to do with them?

There are many lessons we can draw from 9/11. As we near the 8th anniversary of this “act of war” and atrocity, we will have another opportunity to hear numerous opinions of what we have or can learn from this specter of humanity’s evil, as well as the “good” that can come out of such horror. Peggy Noonan, former President Reagan’s speech writer and a contributing editor of the Wall Street Journal, in the past has reminded us of a particularly poignant lesson we all can learn from this tragic event.

Ms. Noonan wrote that she was awed by the messages emanating from phone calls or left on answering machines for those not at home. These calls and messages came from people about to die, and were sent to their loved ones. Many others had no opportunity to make that “last call,” or say those final words. Noonan was struck, however, by the substance of the calls and messages that got through. What she wrote was, “Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered…there is no record of anyone calling to say, ‘I never liked you,’ or, ‘You hurt my feelings.’ Amazingly—or not—there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying ‘I hate them.’” Essentially, the messages were what Noonan entitled her editorial, “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”

Her excellent point was that, “Crisis is a great editor. No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small.” This is analogous to the advice of Solomon in Ecclesiastes: “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words…Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore, stand in awe of God.” (5:2-3,7)

Now, you say, this speaks of words said to God, not to our children, or to those we love. Still, we must remember, all words spoken by us are spoken before the eyes and ears of an omniscient and omnipresent God. He is all knowing, and He is everywhere. We must remember this, and stand in awe. In other words our actions, our thoughts, our words must be tempered by our awe of God. If this is believed in our head and in our heart, then we might edit Noonan’s premise to say, “The awe of God is a great editor, even more than crisis.”

James tells us with fearful precision, “The tongue is a fire; a world of evil among the parts of the body…No man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” (James 3:6,8) The tongue can do inestimable damage. Coupled with the amazing recall of the mind, words spoken years before can be remembered over and over, and in some cases, never forgotten. Have we considered who it is that are the recipients of our words? As parents we have responsibility for immortal beings, our children. When considered in its full context this is an amazing thought, too difficult to fully comprehend. Nevertheless, it is true.