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June 2001 Table of Contents
Off The Top Of My Head
My Soapbox
By Jerry Evans
 As I write this article for the Communicator, it is Mother's Day. I dropped Jackie off at Sunday school and drove across town to pick up Mom to go to church with us today. After church we went out to eat with Shanda, Kirk and their two kids. The other kids and grandkids live in other cities. We had a great time. Probably similar to something you did if your mom lives close by or maybe you just did something with your kid's mom. Whatever, it is a great celebration of Mothers and I hope we never quit honoring them.
Dr. Lockerman gave a great message. He has a habit of doing that. Today, since it was Mother's Day, he spoke on raising children. His central thought was... "Children should be raised in such a way that they will be expose to Christ so much that they will almost automatically come to know Him." The key word being almost. While we are charged with presenting Christ to them, we can't choose for them. The choice is theirs.
He used as his text Deut. 6:1-9. His points were
"They need"
1) Exposure to truth in the everyday venues of life.
a. That a parents job.
b. That's a fathers job (I thought this was Mother's day)
2) Visible reminders of things they are suppose to believe.
3) Public heritage of Family faith.
Now there is an outline you can use sometime, I know I will.
After this wonderful message and get together, we picked up a newspaper on the way home. The headlines read, "Teens and alcohol, "it's an epidemic." This story was about Mobile, Alabama, but I dare say it could have been written about almost any city in these United States. "It's an epidemic" said Roger Roberts, a five year state trooper who was recently named Officer of the year by the Alabama chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "Words cannot convey how bad a problem we have with underage drinking. We're at our wits end, if I knew how to do something about it all, I'd be the hero of the year, and there ain't no hero's out here." There were several horror stories about how the kids got the drinks and how they were "partying." The part that shocked me though was when they told of parents purchasing beer for the kids and providing homes and hotel rooms for them to party, and excusing it by saying that "they are going to do it anyway so this way I know where it's going on." "Providing alcohol to minors is more that illegal," says Virginia Guy, executive director of Mobile's Drug Education Council, "As much talk as there is about peer pressure, nothing influences kids as much as parents." (See points 1,2,&3 of message outline above)
Last week I read that traffic crashes were the number one cause of teenage deaths and that at least 30% of those crashes were alcohol related. Today on the news they told of "Million Mom Marches" across the country and their main complaint was kids and guns. EXCUSE ME!!! I certainly don't want kids to have access to guns either and I stand with them on that issue, but while kids with guns are killing tens or hundreds, kids drinking are killing thousands' and maybe tens of thousands and nobody is saying "Stop producing beer so kids can't get their hands on it." The government has sued tobacco companies for producing a product that harms people and yet this industry is given a free pass for doing something at least as harmful maybe more?????
Well that's my soapbox for this issue. I have never used this magazine for a purpose like this before but with Jackie and me having a new Grandson, (Andrew Collins Evans, the Collins part is named after me) born last week, and that being our sixth grandchild, (thank you very much) I guess I'm just worried about what kind of a world we are leaving them. I'll step down now and go play Grand Paw.
Jerry
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