For the first half of the week, we had the pleasure of sitting under the teaching of Dr. John Stonestreet. He taught us about our culture, about who makes culture, and how we contribute to culture. One thing that stuck out to me is that, these days, the range of adolescence is from ages 11-30. That’s crazy! What happened in our culture, today, to make the range so wide? Why is there such a delayed adolescence in the world? These are questions I’ve been thinking about all week. What’s crazy, to me, is that the word adolescent is still a fairly new term. The term came about in the early 50’s. It’s crazy to think that in the past 50 years the age range of an adolescent has expanded past the typical 13-19 age range, and is now stretching over part of childhood and adulthood. We wonder today why people aren’t getting married until they turn 30. It’s because people are still acting like teenagers when they get well into their 20’s. What can we do about this? Well that is what Dr. Stonestreet taught us. We, as people, make culture. If you are questioning this, how did fashion change? How did technology change? Someone had to change it! As citizens, men, women, and even children of God we are responsible for the direction of our culture. You can’t help but participate in culture, so why not participate for the betterment of our culture? My generation is going to be the generation that either changes culture for the better, or we will bring destruction to it. We need more people, like Dr. Stonestreet, teaching my generation about how big a part of change in our culture we play. I really liked his class, because I never knew how much of an impact I can make on our culture.
We create culture and culture creates us.
Jessica Darby