Dr. Joe White is a youth minister, and author, who runs Kanakuk-Kanakomo Kamps in Branson, Missouri. He is a good friend of Dr. James Dobson. Dr. Dobson calls him a "youth guru" and feels that he (Joe White) knows more about youth than anyone in America today.
The following are some excerpts from the first part of an interview/discussion with Dr. White, by Dr. Dobson, in a Focus on the Family broadcast in 1994.
The Setting: a desk decorated with gift wrapping and Dr. Dobson, Mike Trout, and Dr. Joe White sitting around it with handcuffs on their wrists.
Dr. Dobson begins by asking Dr. White, "What in the world do you have in mind for today?"
Dr. Joe White replies by saying: "Well, Jim, I have in my mind the gift of grace. I am surrounded by...teenagers...and other kids...and their parents. The teenagers that surround me...and the kid's lives that I am fortunate enough to be intertwined with...[sigh] are handcuffed from the table of grace....
"...there are four cold winds that are blowing in the face of the teenage crowd in America...that are keeping them from being able to approach this table of grace. Our kids are handcuffed!
"...and as I share these four winds with you....I can almost feel these cuffs tighten around our would-be 16 year-old wrists today...
"...[first] the cold wind that is blowing out of Washington, DC....and the government that's eradicating Christianity around every corner, the celebration of homosexuality, the 'heroing' of the abortion advocates, the condom push, and the free/safe-sex agenda....and don't think for a second that 16 year-olds aren't affected by the winds of Washington, DC. That wind is hitting kids right in the face. And the handcuffs tighten....
"...then there is the wind of the public schools. As you know, in a systematic extermination process of Christ and His Word: the watershed...in 1962 when they were robbed of prayer, and then in 1963 when the Supreme Court declared the Word of God unconstitutional in the schools, and then in 1980 when they declared the Ten Commandments unconstitutional, and then in 1987 when they declared God in the public school unconstitutional, and then in 1991 when the Supreme Court handed down the decision that school-fostered prayer at graduation was unconstitutional, and in 1992 when they handed down the decision that prayer at sporting events was unconstitutional, and then in 1993 the court in Louisiana even declared the teaching of standard, traditional, monogamous marriage relationships was religious and unconstitutional !!....and so the cuffs tighten further....
"...and the third set of handcuffs, of course, comes from the media where kids, just an average teenager, on network television, sees over a hundred thousand sexual innuendoes, and ninety-two percent of those are outside of the marriage relationship. And then intertwined with the TV scene, of course, is the secular rock music scene where...Van Halen [for instance] said "We celebrate all the sex and violence of television"....well, everywhere a kid turns in the media the wind blooows him in the face and blows him away from the table of grace...
"...and finally the peers. Kids hunger to be accepted by their friends and almost all of their friends have bought into the lie. And the kids hunger for affection, and their hunger for acceptance draws them into their little teenage peer crowd that's so, bless their hearts, so misled and so far away from the table of grace. So our kids are handcuffed, Jim, they can't get to the table of grace..."
Dr. Dobson: "...I would have to say, Mike, that this man [Joe White] probably knows more about the teenage experience and adolescent life than anybody in this country, and probably than anybody that I know around the world. You [Joe White] have spent your life working with them. You've got four of your own. And you're seeing them, what you're telling us is that you're seeing them coming into [your] camps in shackles...they are bound by the things that are happening culturally."
Dr. White: "Yes sir, it's a sad sight....It's so sad, Jim. Mike and I were jogging in the neighborhood yesterday and we saw these two young boys, probably age 11, as we ran through the neighborhood...and as I looked at those two young boys, so free, and so happy, and so ready for the world, I just painted a picture in my mind of what's around the corner for those two young men as they hit puberty and as they hit adolescence, and they hit the tough, tough times of growing up as a Christian kid. It makes my heart break..."
The broadcast tape has much, much more. He goes on to relate how parents need to come alongside their teens and befriend them if they are exposed to these four oppressors. Dr. Joe White has a booklet entitled, The Gift of Grace that accompanies this topic. You would do well to obtain a copy of this broadcast tape and listen to all of it. This fellow knows what he is talking about.
COMMENTS:
This "table of grace" he speaks of is, in essence, Jesus Christ, and all that He embodies and offers: love, joy, peace, hope, acceptance, self-worth, good self-image, life purpose, meaning in life, reason for living, etc.
The "four winds" Joe White speaks of (government, public schools, media, and peers) are oppressors that are preventing America's youth from feasting at this "table of grace". Young people are being hindered from receiving the blessings that Jesus has to offer.
It just so happens that government (public) schools are the primary mechanism in our society that provides the medium that empowers these enemies ("four winds') of youth. The age-segregation of public schools maintains and propagates the youth sub-culture and promotes peer dependence. The government mainly uses the institution of public schools to promote its agenda in the form of condom distribution, school-based health clinics, sex-ed, multi-culturalism, evolution, the new tolerance, compulsory education, etc.
Greg
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