Peer Pressure
“I probably wouldn't have gone out, bought alcohol and started drinking if it were just me," says 17-year-old Darren Roberts (not his real name). He stopped drinking and smoking two years ago, but his hands still shake when he's around cigarettes. Even now his firm resolve can't dent the craving for nicotine. Quitting drinking was a little easier. "I'm not going to say that I was an alcoholic," Darren states, "but I'm sure I had a mild addiction." Darren is a nice kid. He has a great sense of humor, and he's intelligent. His parents are homeschool leaders, and they raised him in a strong Christian environment. He's your typical home schooler.
At the age of 13, Darren played on the home school basketball team with his older brother. Their best friends were three of the other guys on the team. "We got together and had our fun time," he remembers.
At first their way of having fun, practical jokes here and there, was innocent enough. But they quickly moved on." After a while what you're doing gets boring," Darren explains. "You have to take another step."
The first small step in the wrong direction was experimenting with smoking. Its element of risk made it all the more exciting. Not long after followed alcohol. "It wasn't really that we made a big decision, 'Let's drink'," Darren recalls. "It was just something we did."
What started as "something to do" became a habit. " At first we would drink occasionally, whenever we had a lit.. tie money to buy something. After awhile it got to be that we always had to have money to buy alcohol." Getting together with the guys now meant getting drunk with the guys. None of the parents had any idea what was taking place. "We were all 'goody-two-shoes' in the eyes of our dads and moms."
In time the close group of guys disbanded as jobs and other responsibilities drew them apart. But that didn't mean the habits they'd strengthened in each other ceased. "I was at the point where I could drink alone and not feel bad about it," Darren says.
This lifestyle lasted for almost two years; but when his older brother got caught and ended up leaving home, Darren realized that the path he was on was leading nowhere. He made the decision to quit everything and turn his life around. His 19-year old brother was not so fortunate. He's still drinking heavily, hasn't graduated from high school, and has trouble keeping a job.
For Darren, what he and his friends got into seems like a bad dream. "It wasn't one person leading everybody down the tubes," he says, trying to make sense of it all. "It was all of us encouraging each other."
Not a Public School ProblemBy the world’s standards, Darren and his friends’ story is pretty tame. Teenage drinking is run of the mill; it’s relegated behind drug abuse, teen violence, and sexually transmitted diseases. At least Darren has straightened up; at least he's still alive. But for home schoolers, Darren' s story is something of a rude awakening as to just how susceptible they are to the negative influences of peers. Many people fail to recognize that peer pressure is not a public school problem. It's a human problem. Many families viewed home schooling as a safe-haven from peer pressure and its negative effects so rampant in the schools. But as a generation of home-educated young people step into their teen years, families are being faced with an unforeseen and, for the most part, unanswered dilemma: How can we provide social interaction for our young people and yet avoid the same negative influences that prompted many of us to home school in the first place?
Homeschool support groups and church functions have offered a semi-controlled environment.
But for many, the home-school support group is no longer a place where teens can meet other "nice homeschooling children." As the home-schooling movement has expanded, teenagers from varied backgrounds and families have been folded into the home-school group's meetings and activities. Some have only been home schooling for a short time, and others may be students the public schools have kicked out.
When families turn to the youth groups of their churches, they're met with a similar situation. Many church youth groups are structured to attract the average unsaved, public school teenager. And obviously it is the average, unsaved teen that needs help. But in some cases, the values and standards of these unsaved kids end up controlling the attitudes and behavior of the entire youth group.
So families are realizing that, although home schooling shelters a student from constant influences of 2Oth century school life, they must still address the problem inherent in all human relationships, the problem we call peer pressure.
The definition of peer pressure is for the most part self-explanatory. The word "peer" refers to those who are your equal in abilities, qualifications, age, background, or social status. When used in conjunction with teens, it almost always refers to age. Peer pres~ sure then is nothing more than people your age pressuring you to think a certain way, act a certain way, or do a certain thing. Peer pressure is for any age group, but because of underconfidence and desperation for approval, teenagers are often less resistant to peer pressure. Peer pressure has negative connotations because teens seem to have a knack for coming up with very harmful and negative things to pressure each other into doing.
Bending to peer pressure is the easy way out. You let everybody else think for you, make your decisions, and guide your life. Having somebody else make these decisions wouldn't be half bad if the people making them were wise veterans of life. Unfortunately, peers in your teen years are not. They have the same amount of life experience under their belts as you do: not a whole lot. It' s this fact that makes teenage peer pressure the most dangerous kind around.
The Blind Man and the ElephantJohn G. Saxe
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind…
The first approached the elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The poem about six blind men who examined an elephant (see excerpt on preceding page) and came up with six inaccurate versions of what an elephant was like, provides an amusing insight. Each one felt a specific part and came to a conclusion based only on the small amount he had felt. The problem, of course, was that these poor men were blind. They couldn't see the big picture and so to anyone who could see, they made fools of themselves.
In a similar sense, this is what happens with teenage peer pressure. Teenagers come together with limited experience and try to make sense of life. They come up with all kinds of values, standards, and ways to keep track of what's valuable and what's not. It ends up being really skewed. Just like the blind men, they cannot see the big picture of how the small part relates to the rest of their lives. They end up making judgement calls like, "The person who wears this type of clothing and does these certain things is the ideal." Or how about the Spur Posse, a group of guys in California who concluded that sleeping with as many girls as possible made you more of a man. They became heroes at their school when national attention was given to their practice of keeping score of their sexual conquests. On the flip side, many girls feel that only by having a boyfriend are you really worth some~ thing. The list is endless. But it is all pooled inexperience.
If you're bending to the standards your peers are setting, you're in for trouble. You're making your decisions based on the leading of "blind guides". Jesus said in Matthew 15: 14, "If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
Sadly, teens who are in a "blind leading the blind" situation often fail to realize it. Not only are they unable to recognize that their companions are unwise, they also fail to see how they're bending to peer pressure. It happens without much thought.
In evaluating your life for areas where you're being led by blind guides, it's important to realize that there are two settings in which pressure takes place. The first is in the large group: for most teens a school, a youth group, or home~ school group are examples. This is the setting that gets the most attention. The second is in the close relationship with one or several best friends. This is the setting that is sometimes overlooked.
The large group exerts a general pressure on its members. I t directs the trends in clothing, music, entertainment, and "political correctness". The pressure to conform varies. It is not usually a spoken or written guideline; it's just what "everyone" is doing. The pressure can be avoided by keeping quiet or by putting on the appearance of conformity.
The pressure which takes place among close friends is not so easy to escape. You can't fake it with them; they know what you stand for, what you really believe. The nature of close friendship is that you care more about them and their opinions than those of anybody else. What your best friend approves of or disapproves of exerts great pressure on you. This pressure is personal and forceful.
For this reason you will find "cliques" in any large group of people who have certain characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the group. Their closeness gives them confidence, and they care little of what the others think of them. Darren's story is a negative example of this. The majority of the kids on the team didn't drink and would have thought drinking very wrong. The large group pressure was there, and it was positive. But the influence of Darren's three closest friends, his companions, was stronger.
The Power of CompanionshipWe must recognize just how powerful companionship is. In his book Gaining Favor with God and Man, William Thayer writes, "Companionship is education, good or bad... There is no halfway work about its influence. If it ennobles, it does it grandly; if it demoralizes, it does it devilishly. It saves or destroys lustily."
Harnessing the power ofcompanionship for good is the most important part of standing against negative peer pres~ sure. You cannot avoid the power of companionship, but you can avoid bad companions. By choosing the right companions, you choose not an absence of pressure, but a pressure to excel in the right areas.
You don't always get to choose the large group setting that you are in; a Hebrew in captivity did not choose to be in Babylon. But he could choose his close friends and stand with Meshach and Abednego in not bowing down with everybody else. (Danie13:1-30) Resisting negative peer pressure involves making wise choices in the place where the influence is the greatest.
The integral ingredient to solving the problem of negative peer pressure is good companionship. In order for a teen to choose good companions, he must first see the big picture.
The key to seeing your teen years in relationship to the big picture of your life is found in spending more time with those people who can see life in perspective: adults. Now you might say, "That's crazy! Who wants to spend more time with adults? Besides, none of the adults I know like hanging out at the mall." The point, of course, is that you spend time with adults doing the things that make up their normal routines. Go to your parents and not only ask them to include you in their own lives but also help you think of other strong Christian men and women to do the same thing with. Being with them, observing them at work, and even working beside them will give you a chance to get a taste for the real world.
The only reason teenagers can convince each other to do life destroying things is that they can only see their lives as they are right now they're only feeling one part of the elephant.
By spending more time with adults, you will begin to see how certain actions reap certain consequences. You 'II see what characteristics and qualities are really important in life. Then when pressure to do something potentially harmful comes up, you won't stumble into it so easily. Like a person watching the blind man feeling the knee of the elephant, no amount of pressure will convince you an elephant is like a tree. You’ll have been looking at the big picture too long to be fooled by a blind guide.
The Puritans had a saying, "Have good companions or none." The idea was that having no close friends was better than having close friends who would influence you for wrong. Again and again the Bible stresses the danger of bad companionship and warns against it. Proverbs 4: 14 emphatically states, "Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evil men," and 1 Corinthians 15:33 "Do not be misled: Bad company corrupts good character."
This raises the question of how much interaction Christians should have with people who, regardless of whether they claim to be Christians, are living sinful lives.
To answer this question, we must understand the difference between being a servant by showing God's love to someone and caring about them and being a companion with them. There is a difference.
Many point to Jesus's life and say, "Jesus was a friend of sinners! He wasn't too good for them so neither am I." It is true that Jesus was a friend of sinners. Unlike the hypocritical Pharisees, He deeply cared about people's slavery to sin and wanted to set them free. Jesus spent time among prostitutes, tax collectors, and other blatant sinners of the day; but they were not His companions. Jesus's time among these people was always a time of ministering to and influencing them. They were not meeting any of His personal needs. He was meeting theirs. Companionship speaks of a close fellowship between people. Jesus's companions were his disciples. No one became a companion of Jesus until they left behind their sinful way of life.
The bottom line, then, is that we can be servant-hearted to people who are living sinful lives by caring about them, talking to them, treating them with respect, and praying for them; but we should never make them our companions.
In today's world it's easy to survey the available companions around you and decide that since no companion is better than a bad companion, you'll resign yourself to staying home and having no friends. This is the wrong attitude to have. The potential that companionship has to work for good in your life is too great to neglect. While warning against the negative influence of bad companions, the Bible also speaks of the value of good companions. Hebrews 10:25 says, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another. .." and Ecclesiastes 4: 10 "If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!"
Acts 4:13 relates a wonderful example of the power of companionship totally transforming Jesus's disciples. It says the priests of the temple who opposed the disciples were "astonished" when they witnessed "the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men...they took note that these men had been with Jesus."
The factor that set these uneducated, average men apart was their companionship with Jesus. They had walked with their Master, eaten with Him, and laughed with Him. Somewhere along the line they had begun modeling themselves after Him. The exciting aspect of all this is that we have this same opportunity today as Christians.
We can listen to His words preserved in the Bible, talk with Him, and model ourselves after Him. Because we become like those we spend time with, Jesus is the first companion to pursue with vigor.
Jesus, of course, is the only companion you'll find who is perfect. Every person you know from adults to teens has character flaws and areas you would not want to imitate. Proverbs 20:9 states, "Who can say, 'I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin'?" This being understood, we still want to search for companions who are excelling in righteousness and growing in maturity and closeness to God. There are two important characteristics of a good companion:
1. A good companion does not hinder you from serving God. In Galatians 5:7,8 Paul questions the churches of Galatia who were being distracted and led astray by false teaching, "You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?" Later Paul refers to this person as "The one who is throwing you into confusion..." The people in Galatia were straying because they were running with the wrong crowd. If you're running a good race in your life and striving to serve God, a good companion does not "cut in" on your race or try to confuse your direction. Instead, he runs alongside and encourages you.
2. A good companion spurs you on. Hebrews 10:24 says, " And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds." The picture of being "spurred" is not a very comforting one; it's uncomfortable; it's biting and driving. A good companion is not one that makes you feel comfortable about your walk with the Lord or commitment to excellence. A good companion spurs you on to higher ground.
Stating what a good companion should be like is unfortunately much easier than finding companions who meet the standards. It's not a matter of a short personal ad that reads, "Strong Christian seeks friendship with like individual who will challenge and encourage." Proverbs 18:24 says, " A man who has friends must himself be friendly..." Finding good companions and developing relationships requires work on your part.
Initiative is making the first move. Developing relationships with good companions requires that you view yourself not as a victim of your relationships but a person who can step out and develop good relationships. If you already have a good companion or "best friend" that is challenging you in your walk with God and helping you run a good race, then you should try to strengthen this relationship. If this person is truly a godly influence, he will help you stand against the negative peer pressure from others around you. Ecclesiastes 4: 12 says, "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. "
If you do not have a person like this, then you should look at your circle of contact-your church, home-school group, etc., and see if there is anyone who you believe will not distract but rather spur you on to serve God.
If there doesn't seem to be any person like this, the next step is to look outside the circle you normally move in. Have you considered becoming involved in a ministry outside of your church like a Crisis Pregnancy Center or outreach to the elderly or homeless? The type of people involved in this kind of outreach are more likely to be serious about serving the Lord. Have you considered people outside of your peer group? Using the same discretion you would with someone your age, look for opportunities to be companions of those who are older and wiser.
Integrity is wholeness and completeness. Part of finding and keeping good companions is being a good companion to others. To be a good companion you need a wholeness and completeness in knowing your standards, beliefs, and goals. Without this, you will never have the kind of compan ~ ions God wants for you. You will either drive good companions away or ruin those who have potential to be good companions.
The final quality to have in place when looking for good companions is honesty .If you fail to be honest with yourself and your parents about the true nature of your friends, you're likely to become the companion of fools. Often the character of friends is something only you will see. Many of the worst companions are the best at making a good impression with adults. When the authority figure leaves, their true colors are revealed. Being honest with your parents about what certain friends are really like and what they stand for will provide support if it's necessary for you to distance yourself from these friends.
Pressure to conform to accepted standards is not necessarily wrong. But in the midst of a generation that has turned their backs on God, more often than not, the accepted standards are not acceptable to Christians. Resisting peer pressure is a struggle for all people. Home schoolers are not exempt from this. But in them lies a hope for a generation unafraid to go against the flow of society and culture. The battle begins in the teen years. Your struggle today is training for the dark days ahead. Pressure to conform to this world will always be present. Are you willing to go out of your way to find companions who will spur you on and strengthen you to withstand it? Are you willing to see the big picture of your life in light of the hope Christians have beyond this world? We serve a God who broke the power of death. Leaning on him, we can break the power of negative peer pressure.
I AM A FRIEND TO ALL WHO FEAR YOU, TO ALL WHO FOLLOW YOUR PRECEPTS.
Psalm 119:63