Lessons from Our First Youth Event

Our new (formal) Youth Event season kicked off Monday night with a well-attended viewing of the movie "The Hunger Games" which just came out on DVD.  Based on the book of the same name, it tells the story of two teenagers whose government and society force them to participate in a brutal spectacle pitting them against other teenagers from around the land.  All of the young folks, two from each "district" of the country, must fight in an expansive, scenic arena until only one emerges alive and victorious to be feted with riches beyond imagination.  This event is shown on TV for the amusement (and rooting interest) of all.  Our two heroes are forced to put on a show, faking a romantic storyline with each other, pretending they're thrilled with the chance to participate, demonstrating that they're not only willing to do away with their opponents, but that they're good at it.  If they don't play along they'll get no "sponsors" and not get the crucial aid they'll need to survive the ordeal.  At the same time they struggle with their own integrity:  the desire to be good versus the need to stay alive, the difficulty in keeping one's own identity when battling against a corrupt culture.

Like the books, this movie brought up multiple discussion points.  For purposes of this sitting, we focused heavily on two:

1.  Today's young generation lives in a world where if it doesn't happen on video, it's not real.  Between TV, YouTube, Facebook, phone cameras, webcams...every important moment is ripe for recording and broadcast.  There's a temptation, then, to swallow everything one sees on video as real.  The movie showed how unreal most of these situations are.  Our characters were forced to pretend the entire time they were on camera.  They were primped, trained, threatened, bribed...everything was directed towards showing the story the culture wanted told rather than the real feelings of these two people.  How similar is that to 99% of the things we see on TV today, especially "reality" TV?  In most ways if it happens on video it's not real.  Many of these people putting themselves out there for public consumption are doing just what all the youth in the arena had to do:  making up a pretend person to show to the world in order to put food on the table, stay alive, or gain fame.  That's not reality.  Or if it is reality, we're all in trouble.

2.  One of the enduring themes of the books and the movie is that even though our main characters find a way to keep/salvage some integrity, fighting back against the system to change it, they, personally, are never the same again after having witnessed the horror and violence that their culture has set up for them.  In some ways it takes them years to recover.  In other ways they never do.  Our young people today have the capability of witnessing almost anything with the click of a mouse button.  The best of human achievement is open to their Googling, but the worst is too.  No generation before them has had access to the kind of information and imagery that they have, for good and bad.  Our parents and society kept away harmful images and information during our formative years.  You had to actually go out and get/buy a magazine or movie to see shocking things.  These were usually protected, kept away from minors.  Not so today.  All of it comes right into your house.

This means that our young folks have a special responsibility to guard what they see.  They need a discipline beyond that which our upbringing required.  They need the ability to say, "No...I do not wish to see this, at least not right now."  No matter how much our culture dangles in front of them, they need to understand that society is more interested in selling them something than protecting them from anything.  They need the same kind of integrity our main characters had, to not go along blindly into things beyond their capacity to control.  Once seen, an image can't be unseen.  It'll follow you the rest of your life.  Those of us who are older have built up some resistance.  The cement of our brains has hardened to an extent.  Much of the harm of all but the most grotesque images bounces off.  But when you're young that cement is still wet.  The wrong image at the wrong time can leave an imprint that hardens into permanence, just like the hand print on the sidewalk.  It's OK to say no to some experiences for now, to stay out of the arena until you're sure you want to enter and you're sure you can handle it.  Just because something exists doesn't mean it's right for you.

We'll have more youth events in the coming months.  Hope to see all of you young-type folks there!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)