Episode #58: Ruth Chapter 6 - Teenagers

Jan,16 2026

<-#57: Ruth Chapter 5 - Termination#59: Ruth Chapter 7 - The program ->

People speak now of "teenagers" as if they were a new species discovered by psychologists. In my youth we had no such word. We had children and we had adults, and between them a long, noisy bridge that everyone crossed differently.

Christopher understood that bridge better than any man I have known.

He treated adults with the freedom of responsibility.

He treated children with the freedom of learning.

But he treated those in between with the freedom of wisdom.

When a young person came to him with questions, he did not answer as he answered adults. He did not lecture as teachers lecture children. He offered possibilities the way a farmer offers tools and asks which feels right in the hand.

If a boy asked, "What is my place in the world?" Christopher would reply, "What place do you wish to build?"

If a girl asked how to win the heart of someone she admired, he would not speak of tricks or manners. He would ask, "What can you offer that would make another glad to walk beside you?"

When a restless youth declared it was time to leave home, Christopher would not forbid it. He would ask practical questions:

Can you cook a meal that will keep you warm?

Can you prepare the wood before winter?

Do you know how to mend a roof before the rain comes?

If the answer was no, he did not shame them. He gave them a task and a teacher, and said, "Return when your hands know what your feet desire."

This was his way of honoring the storm that lives in young blood. He believed that curiosity must be guided, not caged. He trusted that most foolishness could be survived if surrounded by patient adults.

I look at the world now and see something different. Our young people receive their lives already sliced and labeled. School hands them a fixed curriculum like a tray in a cafeteria: this hour for mathematics, this for history, this for the body. Little room remains for discovering what the body and the mind can do together.

They are told what to think before they have learned how to think. They are given answers before they have formed questions sharp enough to cut bread.

Christopher would have worried about this.

He believed that becoming an adult was not a birthday but an apprenticeship. A teenager, in his eyes, was someone old enough to choose work and young enough to change course. He placed them beside the fields, not above them, so they could feel the weight of real consequence without being crushed by it.

I remember a boy who wished to be a carpenter. Christopher did not send him to a classroom. He sent him to repair the steps of the town hall, and the steps taught him more than any book could. I remember a girl who feared speaking in front of others. Christopher asked her to read the Psalms one evening, and when her voice trembled, he thanked her as if she had sung like an angel.

These small acts shaped us more than sermons.

Today I hear parents complain that their children are lazy or lost. I wonder how often those children have been allowed to cook a meal that matters, to care for an animal that depends on them, to feel the pride of splitting a log without being told it is dangerous and unnecessary.

Freedom for teenagers, Christopher taught, is not the absence of boundaries but the presence of meaningful tasks. Give them room to practice adulthood while adults still stand nearby to steady the ladder.

If we do not, they will learn their lessons from strangers, and those teachers are rarely kind.

I write this not to scold the present but to remind it of a quieter path. The bridge between childhood and adulthood does not need more signs. It needs more hands.

<-#57: Ruth Chapter 5 - Termination#59: Ruth Chapter 7 - The program ->