First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
May 10, 1998
Scripture: Genesis 37:2-4, 12-24
She stormed into my office, exasperation dripping from her voice, demanding to know whether the Bible had anything to say about teenagers. So I said: “Why do you ask?” One hour later, she was still telling me why she was asking. Eventually, we got around to the matter at hand…. namely, the Bible and teenagers. But concerning them (as a group), there is little in the Bible that is said directly to them, and even less that is said specifically about them. There’s a reason for that. In the biblical era, teenagers didn’t exist. In those days, a boy was a man at 14, and (by that age) most girls had already married and borne at least one child.
An exception is the biblical story of Joseph, his magnificent sport coat, and his ten older brothers. Madeleine L’Engle, gifted author and Bible scholar, has written a beautiful book about Joseph entitled Sold Into Egypt. Concerning this cycle of stories, she writes: “I try to listen to the story of Joseph because it describes the journey of a spoiled and selfish young man, finally becoming (through betrayal, anger, abandonment, unfairness and pain) a full and complex human being. I have much to learn from him.”
Ms. L’Engle reminds us of Joseph’s teenage status at the time that this messy business with his brothers takes place. Taking a few poetic liberties with the text, she describes him thusly:
He was a spoiled brat, Joseph, the eleventh brother. Indulged. Selfish. He clung to his father and the women. Whined. Got his own way. When one of the wives said no, another would surely say yes. And when he was crossed, he would wail that he had no mother.
In adolescence he became arrogant. He knew he was the favored one of the brothers. But he was not yet old enough to know that a father does a son no favor in singling him out, giving him a beautiful coat, lavishing him with love.
Who can know all the reasons for such indulgence? We are led to believe it had to do with the fact that Joseph was born in his father’s old age (when his daddy had more to give and had mellowed to the degree that he was more inclined to give it). Moreover, Joseph was born to Rachel (who his daddy loved more than he loved the other women who had borne the older boys….and who had died). There’s probably enough material in that brief description to keep a therapist busy for a year.
Joseph, of course, takes everything that comes. He contributes to his downfall by sharing with his brothers a pair of dreams. These dreams make Joseph out to be a hero, and his brothers to be considerably less. In fact, the hidden message of both dreams is: “I will be your master and you will do my bidding.” Joseph would have been better off keeping his mouth shut about such dreams….if, indeed, he really had them. But his father also set him up for what was about to happen, both by something he gave him (a beautiful coat) and by something he failed to ask of him (that he work as hard as everyone else was asked to work). Notice that when the confrontation with the brothers takes place, Joseph is not only all dressed up, but is coming out to the work place (where his brothers are already hard at work….and he is not).
They see him coming. They decide they’ve had their fill of him. A brotherly debate breaks out among them. Should they kill him or sell him? They settle on selling him. And Joseph is off to Egypt (in the company of a wandering band of Ishmaelites), while his brothers are off to tell some cock-and-bull story to daddy.
End of story? Hardly! For, as Madeleine L’Engle so nicely summarizes:
Sometimes terrible things are redeemed in unexpected ways. This sudden and violent separation from everything loved and familiar was the beginning of Joseph’s growing up. This breaking of the pampered pet was essential to his development into a mature human being.
Don’t let that last line slide too quickly by. “This breaking of the pampered pet was essential to his development into a mature human being.” What Ms. L’Engle seems to be saying is that it’s hard to have everything and grow up, too.
Clearly, in the Joseph story, the deeper issue is that of favoritism. One child is singled out…. treated differently….over-blessed. It is the underlying issue of every family saga in the book of Genesis. And it still takes place today. But what if there is no favoritism? What if everybody is equally over-indulged? Do some of the same problems still arise? I think so.
When we were talking about this the other day, someone picked up on this issue of over-indulgence and used the word “spoiled.” It is a word I would rather dismiss than discuss. I don’t like the word “spoiled.” To me, it is indicative of fruit that hasn’t been eaten in time. Suddenly it is soft and mushy, smelly and moldy. It is black bananas, brown pears and powdery white oranges. “Spoiled” tastes terrible, makes people sick and draws flies. Once something is spoiled, there is no resurrecting it. The only earthly use to which it can be put is just that….an earthly use….making compost. That’s what “spoiling” is all about. What’s more, we never think of “spoiled” without the other word that follows….the word “rotten”….as in “spoiled rotten.” Such language is occasionally appropriate for fruit. It is never appropriate for kids.
Still, there is a reality to which this points. Bruce Baldwin, a well-known author and an acknowledged expert on the subject of lifestyle management, has been stumping the country, suggesting that by giving our children too much materially, we may begiving them too little of what they really need to succeed in life. His mission is to shed light on the much-asked question: “Why don’t Dick and Jane succeed despite every advantage?” Baldwin discovered, as a result of doing seminars across the United States, that two things continuously emerged in conversations with parents. First, they were genuinely committed to doing their best. Second, they were highly concerned about the ability of their children to “make it” in the real world.
Their concerns were reflected in three recurring complaints. Said these parents:
A. Our kids have values that seem shallow and self-serving. They are interested primarily in pleasure-seeking activities. They assume that all they need do is express a need and someone will meet it. Gratitude does not come easily to them.
B. We don’t see our children motivated to become self-sufficient. They are quick to lay aside long-term goals in favor of gratifications that are more immediate. In short, if it can be had right now with little effort, it is much preferable to that which can only be had down the road with much discipline.
C. We don’t see our children developing a sense of responsibility. They can be highly manipulative in getting what they want and highly evasive when it comes to doing what they do not want. They have be to “hounded” into fulfilling even the most minimal responsibilities, and their most highly polished verbal skill is the art of making excuses as to why something didn’t get done or wasn’t their fault.
Those are heavy complaints. As I read them, I bristled. I thought of a million reasons why they were exaggerated. I also thought of several kids they did not fit. But then I sat back, analyzed my defensiveness, and realized that I had also heard the same things expressed by many of you, and had even (on occasion) pondered them myself.
From complaints such as these, Bruce Baldwin formulated the concept of “cornucopia kids.” These are kids who have been raised in great homes by highly-committed parents who, with the best of motivations, simply wanted to give their children a secure lifestyle, a comfortable environment, and a competitive edge by providing them with every material advantage. But these parents failed to understand how that generosity was being perceived by the kids who were its recipients. Simply put: “Cornucopia kids are kids who develop an expectation, based on years of experience in the home, that the good life will always be available for the asking, with little need to become accountable for its continuance.”
In short, cornucopia kids are suffering from our success and our desire to share it. After all, what is a cornucopia but a mythical horn-of-plenty….the traditional symbol of a harvest that has been abundant, not merely to the point of sufficiency, not merely to the point of satisfaction, but to the point of spilling over. Yet this is not a problem limited to the very rich. The fact of the matter is that cornucopia kids are being raised in homes that are very middle class, and even in households where there is a struggle to make ends meet.
All of this got me to thinking….about the toys kids get….the trips kids take….the allowances kids receive….and the clothes kids wear. But it also got me to thinking about things that are even more basic to the home itself, like having your own room.
Most kids have their own room. Today’s houses are big enough. Today’s families are small enough. Neither used to be the case. But it is the case today. Having your own room is probably a good thing. It gives you privacy. It gives you “turf.” It gives you space you can define and call your own. I don’t know of anybody who couldn’t make a case for the benefits of one kid to a room.
But at Albion College we know three things about kids and rooms. We know that 98% of entering freshmen will come from homes where they had their own room. We know that their bedroom will often be bigger, by half, than the dormitory room into which they will move. And we know that roommate problems will be the biggest non-academic adjustment that freshmen will have to make. Not freedom. Not alcohol. Not sex. Not loneliness or homesickness. The biggest adjustment will involve living in the same room with somebody else….dividing space….protecting stuff….negotiating differences….setting schedules (sleep/study, light/dark, noise/quiet). Many will not be able to live with the first roommate, not because the college made a poor choice, but because learning a new developmental skill will often claim a few casualties before it is mastered.
Or maybe your kid has a car. Perhaps the company provides an extra one. Or perhaps it is simply more convenient, given the fact that you have had it up to here with chauffeuring and hassling. Good thing, a car. Saves a lot of wear and tear on everybody. True. But when one car per person is not available (and the family car needs to be shared), valuable lessons are learned about allocating and negotiating resources. Important decisions are made about priorities. Important discipline is developed when one needs to have the car home by 6:00 because someone else needs to leave in the car at 6:05.
Ditto for the phone. It would have saved a ton of problems in our household to have given our kids their own phone line and not merely their own extension. But considerations other than cost that mitigated against that. When we were all answering the same phone, we knew a lot about each other’s business. We knew who was calling for whom. We learned the art of taking accurate messages. We parceled out phone time by negotiating priorities. In a busy household, one phone line was inconvenient. But it forced us to function as a team.
Television! Everybody talks about it. Everybody complains about it. Everybody has a well-constructed theory as to why it may be the Devil incarnate. But the issue nobody talks about is the number of sets per house. Most kids figure they should have one in their room. A great many kids also have a VCR in their room. They can burrow in and hunker down, again learning nothing about negotiating whose turn it is to watch what. Someone told me, just the other day, that it is not uncommon in their household to have three different sets, in three different rooms, watched by three different persons, with each set tuned to the same program. That’s a togetherness issue. But watching a program in isolation also renders one immune to the commentary of others. Whereas, if you and I are watching the same set, even objectionable material is open for comment and conversation. I don’t know about you, but over the years I found it easier to say “Let’s watch it together,” than “No, you can’t watch that”….especially with TVs all over the house, over which I had no control.
Or consider things that fall into the category of parental rewards….like senior trips, elaborate bar mitzvahs, that kind of thing. As concerns the “senior trip” scene, I think we all recoiled at the excesses of cost and behavior that were taking place a few years ago. And when “juniors” started thinking they should take such trips, too, we reacted all the more. Where our high school kids are concerned, I think there are ways to say “Way to go” or “We’re proud of you” that do not involve dollars and distances that make our honeymoons (of 25 years ago) look piddly by comparison. And the “cruise scene” is all the more dicey, when the primary enticement is an unlimited consumption of alcohol beyond the three-mile limit.
We want the “best” for our kids. We want the “most” for our kids. But we are beginning to learn that the “best” and the “most” are not necessarily compatible. I fully understand that the single-most difficult thing about being relatively affluent is that it is hard to turn to those we love and say, “But I can’t afford it.” After all, how do you answer the kid who says: “Hey, it’s not as if you and dad are broke or something….”
Yet that is precisely the charge we need to answer. Because the issue is not with our kids, but with ourselves. Two parents came across Bruce Baldwin’s original lecture on cornucopia kids and, convinced that they were raising one in their home, actually gave a copy to their son and said: “Read this and tell us what you think.” Eventually he returned, tossed the magazine on the coffee table and said: “Mom, Dad, I agree with everything it says. But it’s your problem, not mine.’ And irritating as that answer may be, it’s absolutely right.
A mother was talking to a caseworker about her 14-year-old son. The boy had been in a minor scrape with the law. Too minor for a court sentence. But not minor enough to let go with a reprimand. Community service was indicated, but the kid seemed too young and immature to assign to a community agency. So the requirement of the caseworker took the form of mandated household chores. Which seemed appropriate, given that he had been previously assigned no household duties. But no chore could be found. A maid cleaned the inside. A yardman cleaned the outside. The family never ate enough meals in the kitchen to fill the dishwasher. It was suggested he might be able to change the litter in the cat box. But even the mother knew that something more strenuous was indicated. She seemed perplexed. What could be done to help this kid with his problem? Well, one of the first tasks of the caseworker was to re-define the question of whose problem it was.
It is part and parcel of the ethic of Jesus that when you have a lot of anything (money, talent, brains, stuff), a great deal more will be asked of you. This means that you can’t just consume it, keep it or stuff it away for selfish purposes. But neither are you free from the obligation to discriminate carefully as to how much…to whom….for how long….and at what cost….you give it away. That may require a bit more firmness (where our children’s expectations are concerned) than we have mustered heretofore. But if the principle of isometrics suggests that you can build muscle by pushing firmly against a hard-to-move object, is it not possible to suggest that Christian character might be built in precisely the same way?
Note: Prior to this sermon, in a series of “Mother’s Day remarks,” I shared the following story:
Most of us are familiar with the magnificent artist, Marian Anderson, who began her musical career in the children’s choir of Union Baptist Church in Philadelphia and ended up in Carnegie Hall singing “Ave Maria” as nobody else ever sang it. She brought the house down. And they brought her back to the stage until she finally responded by singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” Her mother was sitting in the audience, tears flowing down her cheeks. Whereupon the person next to her said: “Mrs. Anderson, why are you crying?”
And Mrs. Anderson answered: “I’m not crying because I’m sad, but because I’m happy. I remember Marian growing up, and I remember working in people’s kitchens to make it possible for her to continue her musical training. But most of all, I remember Marian saying to me: ‘Mother, I don’t want you having to work like this.’”
Late in Marian Anderson’s career, someone asked her to recall the happiest moment of her professional life. “Was it that moment in Carnegie Hall in New York? Was it the moment that you sang before many of the kings and queens of Europe? Was it the moment when Sibelius declared that his roof was too low for such a voice? Or was it the moment that Toscanini declared that a talent like yours comes but once a century?” To which Marian Anderson replied: “The happiest moment in my professional life was the moment I could say: ‘Mother, you can stop working now.’”
(I am indebted to Bob Hill for this remembrance. Bob, in turn, credits a printed sermon of the late Martin Luther King.)
