The Problem of Opinions

In the last 20 years, we’ve seen a great backlash against the danger of bullying. Many stories of kids who have taken their lives over bullying have prompted parents to sue schools and school districts in order to bring this issue to light, so much so that bullying is now a legal term and cannot be used lightly.  In fact, at school, we cannot even call the bad treatment of one student to be bullying because of the legal ramifications of this term.  This is good in some ways—we hope that students will realize how serious it is to treat others unkindly.  However, there is another backlash with this increased vigilance.

We are teaching our kids, to some extent, that people should always be nice to us.  We are also teaching them that adults are wholly responsible for making them feel good or safe.

This causes an expectation that is highly unreasonable.  We live in a world filled with sinful people, and, even with the best of intentions, we cannot fully protect our kids from unkindness.  As a parent, I cannot stand the thought of someone being mean to my children, but I also know that part of my parental responsibility is to teach them how to handle it in a way that builds independence from me.  With our hover parenting issues, we do not train our children to be independent emotionally.  They instead become dependent on adults to always intervene to protect them.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that adults should protect children, but I also believe that we do them a huge disservice if we also don’t teach them how to defend themselves emotionally.

We’ve seen evidence of this lack of emotional toughness in many areas.  For example, the military has reported that they’ve had to change the way they do training because they were finding increasingly that the new recruits could not emotionally handle it any longer.*  People have long been critics of the intense boot camp experience whose purpose is to develop emotionally resilient soldiers by first tearing them down and then building a sense of unity within the corps.  However, our emotionally tender youth cannot handle this process any longer. I have not participated in this kind of training, so I cannot offer comment on it; however, I believe it is telling that many from this generation of soldiers cannot handle the training that has persisted for decades.

Recently, we’ve seen this demonstrated in the college riots, particularly at Yale, where the students demanded a safe space.  The idea was that it was the school’s responsibility to make them feel safe and secure.  That is not something any human institution can possibly promise.  There will always be jerks.  Any attempted legislation to curb hurtful words is actually an imposition on the freedom of speech, and college, especially, is meant to be an arena where difficult topics are discussed freely.  It’s a place for adults, not children.

The more this movement grows, the more unwilling the populace is to hear anything that is unpalatable to them.  Just over Christmas break, Michael Moroz, a senior in a Philadelphia high school wrote an article in his school newspaper condemning the Ferguson riots.  Since then, he has received numerous death threats and his article has been removed (however, the opposing article in support of the Ferguson riots was not removed).  The message is clear—any opinion that is not popular is punished accordingly.  To be sure, he is going to have to stand behind his own words and be prepared for the backlash.  However, this emotional reaction to an unpopular view is appalling.  There was no room for debate or discussion on the topic.  He was not allowed to have a view that would be offensive to others.  This, I believe, is extremely dangerous to our country.

The way I see it, it starts with training our children to handle their own conflicts.  We too quickly move in and fix it ourselves or demand that other adults fix this problem for our children, perhaps before we are even necessary.  These actions teach our children that anything that hurts them must be taken care of by someone else.  There is no personal responsibility to take ownership of the situation.

With this mindset, they grow into adults who expect the government to regulate opinions that are offensive.   In fact, a recent survey indicated that 40% of millennials believed “the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements about minority groups” (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/).  While I am absolutely opposed to racism, I do not think that limiting free speech will actually fix this problem.  The solution to the problem of racism is actually a renewed respect for the value of all humans, not a government-regulated ban on opinions, however wrong those opinions may be. 

Recently, in my English class, we read a story about a young boy who was trying to impress some older young men by attempting to swim underwater through a very long tunnel.  After an intense training, he accomplishes this feat, but it almost kills him.  The story ends with him realizing that he really didn’t care what those boys thought of him after all.  When discussing this with my class, I encouraged them to choose whom they allow to speak in to their lives.  We have control over what we allow to shape our view of ourselves and the world.  We cannot stop their voices per se, but we can determine how much those voices influence us.  Like the young boy in the story, we can decide whether we care about the opinions of certain people. 

The root of all these issues necessarily comes back to what gives us value and worth.   People’s opinions, whether for good or ill, do not define us.  However, the opinion of our heavenly Father speaks to the deepest parts of our hearts.  A person who has grasped the concept that each person, including himself or herself, is an image-bearer of God understands that his or her intrinsic worth does not come from outside.  This person can walk confidently through the ever shifting sands of people’s opinions firm on the rock foundation of God’s love. 

Our goal as believers must be to make sure we are rooted and grounded in God’s love.  From that secure place, we can face the harshness of the world with confidence, and we can teach our children this lesson also. 

*I was unable to find the article where I read this information.  I hesitated in even sharing this because of this.  If you are familiar with this concept and could send me a link, I’d greatly appreciate it.