Jesus Loves the (sigh) 'Stupid' Children

Jesus Loves the (sigh) 'Stupid' Children
By Dave Meurer

If you are a father with a teenager living at home, you need to be aware that in most states it is still illegal to bury your child up to his neck in an anthill even if he really gets on your nerves. I checked.

And while the Code of Federal Regulations does not specifically state that you cannot stick your teen in a crate and ship him to Bangladesh, your wife will probably argue that this proposed action does not quite pass the "what would Jesus do?" test. So you are still shot down.

We have not one, but two teenage boys occupying our home. The term "occupying" is used here in the same sense as when the German army was "occupying" Poland. My sons blitzkrieg the refrigerator, requisition all the hot water, confiscate every towel and then fire a barrage of dirty laundry at the floor while we plot ways to escape.

But that isn't the stuff that really bugs me. I mean, providing for our kids is a basic responsibility God gives me as a dad and living with nominal amounts of teen debris comes with the territory of raising them.

What seriously gets to me is the fact that teenagers are—and I say this in a loving, caring, Christian manner—moronic.

Case in point: My wife was recently driving in busy downtown traffic when she was horrified to find a teenager with a severe wisdom deficiency riding a motor scooter while holding a soda. For those of you who do not have experience riding a two-wheeled vehicle, let me explain that in order to safely operate a scooter the rider needs to use both of his brain hemispheres. It also helps if he uses both hands unless he is seeking to achieve that euphoric-but-brief sense of weightlessness that results from flying over the handlebars when only the front brake is applied. (This is called "applied physics," a high school course which should be mandatory before letting teenagers make a scooter purchase.)

Later that day, after I painstakingly and with robust volume explained the sheer stupidity of his actions, my son replied, "But how else could I keep it from spilling while I was riding?"

If this were the only example of moronicity in my teens, I could chalk it up to an aberration or fluke or even gamma rays from the planet Zoobon. But this kind of stuff happens all the time in my home.

Another case in point: our teen son Brad spent one Christmas in the Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital. I do not fault Brad for this. It was not his choice to have a ruptured appendix, and it was not his fault that the condition was initially misdiagnosed as the flu. Brad was not responsible for the subsequent infection, complications and three weeks of hospitalization during which a team of dedicated health care specialists quite literally saved his life.

The one thing that Brad's doctors had required of him was that he perform a daily series of breathing exercises intended to force air into his two partially collapsed lungs. After several attempts, Brad balked at the exercise because it was painful.

"I know it hurts," I said. "But three different doctors with a combined medical expertise of more than 100 years—the very doctors who saved your life—say that you are at risk for pneumonia unless you do this exercise."

To which Brad replied, "What do they know?"

I will not go into detail regarding my response, other than to note that the hospital refused to release me from the restraints until I signed a document promising that I would not remove Brad's spleen.

Although I do not wish to generalize, let me simply point out that all male teenagers are like this, which makes me seriously question not only the wisdom of letting them vote, but also the wisdom of letting them out of their rooms until they are 30.

But even if we could keep our teens locked in padded cells, the fact remains that they often seem to exhibit the average IQ of dryer lint.

I would despair completely were it not for three facts:

FACT ONE: Fellow dad, you know that we used to be exactly like them.

FACT TWO: God loves moronic, shallow, self-absorbed people, and wants to transform them into wise, faithful, noble leaders of their homes and communities.

FACT THREE: The aforementioned fact two applies to you and me. Hopefully, we are further along on the journey of conformity to Christ, but we still have a looooong way to go. Frankly, I think God deliberately programmed our teenagers with "difficulty" DNA just to give us, as fathers, a slight understanding of what we put Him through.

As Christian dads, we are generally pretty clear on the concept that God is using us to mold and shape our teens. We are less quick to understand that He is also using our teens to mold and shape us. In loving our kids, even in their often-spectacular foolishness, we find our hearts beating in sync with a Father who always loves us.

Dave Meurer is the author of Stark Raving Dad!: A Fairly Functional Guide to Fatherhood. He also is a congressional aide, which means he helps run the federal government. We find this alarming.