FROM GRANDPA ROSE
Most of what I will share with you comes directly from my heart and from my learned wisdom. What I write is not meant for chastisement or condemnation; it is meant for thought and consideration.
I dare you and challenge you, as a young Christian, to take complete charge of your life and become a leader, first to yourself and then to those around you. Lay aside blaming others who have hurt you and unselfishly structure your future from this moment on. Be a real Mensch.
(Mensch — sounds like bench — A Yiddish word for an upright, honorable, decent person. Someone of noble character. It’s hard to convey the special sense of respect, dignity, and praise that can be conveyed by calling someone a mensch. The finest thing you can say about a man is that he is a mensch.)
We are born with God-given emotions of love, hate and fear as well as the desire to be held, cuddled and nursed. We can cry and show anger. We can also show contentment at the sound of our mother’s soft voice. At the moment of our birth we have all these things even though we don’t have speech or the understanding of words, nor the comprehension of what we see. We are at the mercy of those around us, and we are totally dependent upon them. How we develop from this early age depends entirely upon others; and our nurturing, or lack of it, will set the stage for our future development. If we are taught by love and respect, we can learn to be happy, loving, caring, and confidant people. On the other hand, if we are taught by hatred and pain, we will learn to become hateful and insecure. Most of us will grow up being raised somewhere in between these two extremes and we will enter into life outside our homes equipped with various levels of confidence and self worth. But regardless of our upbringing, we alone will be responsible for our actions and we alone will be held accountable for our conduct before God and man.
The knowledge we are taught by our parents in Christian homes will mature in us as Godly wisdom and enable us to become good, decent, and Godly people; and even though our parents won’t fully understand the reality of what we are subjected to outside our homes, their Godly guidance will help bring us order during chaotic times. We will also learn from our teachers and mentors and be taught by life’s experiences. But beware! Some of the lessons we learn from these experiences will come at a cost. (That’s why they call it the school of hard-knocks.) Difficult times will necessitate our learning how to deal with those who may hurt us, sometimes even a parent. In a word, we must be ready to unconditionally forgive them just as Christ unconditionally forgave us because if we don’t we can be eaten up by bitterness from within. We should let go and let God become our vindicator; any other way may only add strife to an already uncomfortable situation. But God’s way will allow us to become unselfish peacemakers.
Outside our homes let’s be careful not to be drawn into situations by some of our “friends” who may pressure us to do what we know to be fundamentally wrong. We must boldly take a moral stand to choose what is good and will edify us, instead of what is bad and will degrade us. If we make this stand correctly, we will do well and grow immeasurably toward becoming true leaders and peacemakers for the cause of Christ. Therefore, we need to correctly identify and put into action the Godly precepts of our early-learned wisdom to become steadfast, moral leaders instead of aimless followers. We will become leaders by confidently holding ourselves apart and
taking a stand against the things we know to be degrading, unedifying, or harmful while in the presence of others; and by doing so we will help some resist the pressures of ridicule because they will be encouraged by our conduct. Let me tell you, if you knew the truth about everyone’s personal thoughts, you would find out that there are many who would resist temptations if they only knew that someone else shared their feelings and that they weren’t just the “odd man out.” So know that by your example, you might prevent some of them from taking their first steps down the path leading them to unhappiness and the lessening of their moral values.
Least you mistake what I mean by moral values, I’m talking about the very nature of God as expressed in His written word – The very truth that Jesus Christ came and gave testimony to. Real moral values are God’s values and as Christians we are without excuse to know them because they have been written on our hearts. They guide us in our conscience to keep us from joining the bad company of those who have chosen to dishonor God. And by not joining with them, we will protect ourselves from the wounding of our spirit and we will be able to maintain a clear mind and conscience. So cherish these things and you will have real peace and happiness, free from guilt, especially in your life as a teen today in this increasingly ungodly world.
I can remember a time in this country when peace reigned and the children could safely play unsupervised in the cities. Shootings were quite rare. But for the most part, the young people of today don’t know the peace of a world like that, one that doesn’t push, pull, and prod them to take them to immoral places where strife abounds. The peaceful times of the past have mostly disappeared in this country due to the casting aside and removing of Godly morals from our way of life. I ask, “Why is this happening”? Our money still states “In God We Trust.” This motto obviously refers to the God of our Judeo-Christian heritage, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and it testifies to our founding forefathers’ faith and belief in our God. It speaks of their boldness to print it on our money. They set the standards for this country high and they were not ashamed of the Ten Commandments or of the Holy Bible in our courtrooms. The ways of old are disappearing today, because our liberal society has now found God’s ways have become too restrictive for them. Please don’t join this politically correct crowd that wants to remove God from our money but to allow perverted sex, porn and drugs to become the norm.
Speaking of drugs, if you want to experience the natural highs of God’s perfect order, you must stay away from the sinister and satanic wounding of your physical minds, especially from the first-use drug of marijuana, the most sinister drug of them all because it is a door opener that will take you to places where you don’t really want to go. With its use you will lose the ability to walk with your head held high before God and man. You will recoil from the truth and start to lie. Your conscience will become seared and it will no longer be clear. You will find yourself participating in and approving of things that used to scare you. This is the unnatural and sinister progression of life with drugs. Guilt will haunt you, but only for a time, because you will soon be given over to a depraved mind with its attendant perversions. You will start blaming others for your demise. So think about the price you will certainly pay if you try to gain temporary pleasure from the use of drugs, for you will be prostituting your mind and selling yourself out by not earning real pleasures, in real and responsible relationships. Also with drugs you will soon lose the ability to recognize the true pleasure and sustained happiness, which come from your wanting to
unselfishly give and share with others the true loyalty and love you have to give. This is the love of Christ, the love He freely gave to you; so embrace it and then go forth boldly to share His love instead of recoiling into the shame and darkness of this world. Again, be a peacemaker.
I must repeat, to do well and draw from your learned wisdom keep a clear mind - not one degraded by mind-altering substances which short-circuit the normal pathways in your brain and allow you to experience unwarranted and unearned pleasure-senses which bring along their friends, fear and terror, often followed closely behind by depression. They will leave you convicted in your heart and guilty in your conscience. These substances will severely limit your ability to differentiate between right and wrong and they, along with chat room slander, are major contributing factors in why teen suicide rates have risen so much. I must also tell you that marijuana destroys your short-term memory, subtly at first, but devastatingly after continued use, not to mention the fact that it also causes paranoia in many. So again, protect these things given to you by God at birth – a clear mind and a clear conscience – and you will do well. As an example I have known clear-headed and sharp-thinking students in mathematics and the exact sciences lose the ability to recall facts and figures easily because of their casual use of marijuana. The lessening of their short-term memory should have been a warning to them that their minds were suffering real damage, not to mention the moral degradation that they were opening themselves up to. You may get by using only about twenty percent of your brain’s capacity and still function in a seemingly “normal” way but drug use will diminish the clear, creative and logical thinking that is so necessary for your moral well-being. You may still be able to act out the daily routines of your lives, but how? I say preserve what God gave you from birth and become an exceptional person of Godly principal because exceptional young persons of Godly principal are fast becoming members of an endangered species. To each of you I would like to say this: “You may become normal by just going with the flow but you won’t be exceptional, I challenge you to be exceptional, - each one of you an exceptional person of Godly principal.” You are not called to be popular, you are called to be faithful.
Again, concerning wisdom, if you desire to be great in understanding and have real moral wisdom, (the wisdom of God that far exceeds any physical pleasures gained from perversion) seek those things which are pure and don’t be pushed around by the prevailing winds of your contemporaries. Set yourself apart and choose whom you will serve. Be a leader and take a stand in your own defense, quietly or overtly! Just don’t give yourself over to the ways of those who would lead you astray like sheep to the slaughter of your body, mind, and spirit.
You can expect that the battle lines between good and evil will become clearly delineated when you stand on the side of God, for in the truest sense, God is good and Satan is evil, and they are in direct opposition to each other; therefore, put on the full armor of God, through prayer and the reading and application of God’s word in your lives. This will strengthen you and allow you to go forth boldly with a clear conscience. And contrary to the worldly standards of many young people, your strength in becoming a good leader is not so much one of physical superiority or verbal superiority as it is one of applying Godly moral wisdom to your lives. You need not work out at the gym to become strong for God. This is not to say that a man of great physical strength does not command attention, for he certainly does; but more importantly, when you see that same man humble himself on his knees to God, it commands respect and speaks of his true boldness. I repeat, this is the essence of what being a real man and a true leader is all about - this is Godly wisdom in action.
Now specifically to the young men here, (and I say men because you ceased to be boys and became men at about age thirteen when testosterone kicked in) I want to say this: Dedicate your hearts to do that which you already know is good. Choose the good thoughts that enter your mind and dedicate your hands to do that which is pleasing to God. Preserve your intimate and physical relationships for your bride when, at the right time, she will give you, as a cherished gift in marriage, your heart’s desires because you have earned her love. Don’t waste yourself in meaningless relationships to satisfy the temporal and selfish desires of your flesh, relationships which will rob you, cheapen you, and forever steal from you the ability to take the knowledge of only your brides love into your marriage bed; for in being promiscuous you will always pay a price far beyond any selfish satisfaction you might experience in temporal pleasures. Sadly, I must add that you will incur a debt which you can never fully repay because each of your previous experiences will only become compounded into an insidious debt which may rejoin you at any time.
You won’t fully understand what I just told you for many years because it must be looked at from both sides in life to give it full meaning, but the day will come when you will understand. (You know I could be wrong here because some of you are pretty savvy and are wise beyond your age and have been empowered with the wisdom of God.) But how you act and behave on any particular day that you call today will affect all the days you call your future, and the future goes on for a long time, it’s where you will spend the rest of your life; and when you look back from it, will you like what you see? Will you have been a leader, or did you compromise your morals? This is a personal question addressed to every reader, and it deserves serious consideration.
So in closing, I want to say to every young person, that in your daily involvements (concerning the things which you are permitting yourself to do) that you project yourself forward - an hour, a day, a week, or perhaps even years - to beyond the temporal and see if where your involvements are taking you is where you really want to go. This applies to smoking, drinking, sex, porn or whatever. You must be especially cautious of certain RPG’s and high-end video games. I don’t need to give you examples about the consequences concerning those things because I’m sure you already know them, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to have a mental picture of young people secretly waiting in abortion clinics or sitting in other clinics waiting to be treated for herpes, AIDS, or some other STD’s that they may never be rid of. And it wouldn’t hurt for you to visualize the wasted lives of those who end up in dead end jobs, or worse, because they blew their minds and drives by seeking more frequent and more powerful highs with drugs or sought to amplify the lust of the flesh by feeding it virtual, un-reality porn. If you’ve already cracked opened that door, slam it shut and take yourself out of that picture because you don’t really want to be there. Also limit your involvement in chat rooms and be wary of those who misrepresent themselves in them.
Make wise decisions and be strong before your peers. Follow Godly wisdom and always be ready to give an accounting of the hope that is in you through Christ, and in this way you will become leaders. This has nothing to do with your age - it has everything to do with what you do in the presence of others - so show them by example and some will follow.
POST SCRIPT: Let’s play a little mind game. Close your eyes and let’s do that projecting yourself forward thing - this time far into your future – let’s say to maybe when you are eighty years old. Now picture yourself sitting on a park bench, holding hands with, and gazing into the eyes of, a wrinkled (but cute) old lady. Now try to imagine what you, the old man, might really be visualizing. I can guarantee you, if he has played his cards right, he will only be seeing the sweetheart of his youth in all her glory because of the bond they cemented in marriage many years earlier. (Don’t laugh this could happen to you.) This is virtual-reality in action. You see it happening in real life all the time. Just look around you, it’s there. When you see it, remember, I told you so. And by the grace of God, I pray someday it will happen to you. Be a person of Godly purpose because all the other realities – divorce, drugs, jail, alcohol and pornography are all unacceptable alternatives. You are in our prayers.
IN ALL SINCERITY, MILTON ROSE
A not so old, born in 1941 man,
often accompanied by my beautiful
"1943 model" wife, Susie.