The twenty-first century faces a war with no name and no marked battleground.  The casualties are our youth.  They come from every address and ability and they are being squandered in what was once considered the lifestyle of only a degraded few. 

Our feel-good culture, eroded by bad behavior, bad choices, and for many teens a succession of very bad days has drugs, alcohol, suicide, eating disorders, violence and the occult just a quick step from the corner lemonade stand. Some youth survive the onslaught; many do not. 

Today’s youth face a society with blurred lines of right and wrong and in many cases, no wrong at all.  Teens are raised amid decay in families, schools and the streets on which they live or roam.  Gangs have stepped in to fill the void of family; media, fashion, peer pressure and popularity now dictate what were once decisions made at the kitchen table.  The scenes are ugly, scarred and riddled with pain.  Youth are forced to live beyond their years and to make decisions not even contemplated by their parents: Do I drink? Take meth?  Smoke? Use birth control? Join a gang?  Bring a gun to school or even stay in school?  Do I distinguish myself by the way I dress, tattoos, the color of my hair?  Or my sexual preferences?  Should I consider suicide because my life is sad and hopeless?

Who failed the youth with birthright and promise?  Parents?  The system?  The entertainment industry?  Friends?  Religious leaders? School administrators and teachers?  Our youth reflect our self-indulged culture. The radical shifts of the last century have shaped a society that cares less, craves more and seeks pleasure over peace.  Social structures that have grounded our sense of connection are disappearing; communities are collapsing under the weight of youth misusing agency.

Parents who are solid, God-fearing, citizens are watching their precious youth slide into the dark abyss that was once considered the under-belly of society.  It’s not so different for those parents who themselves play close to the edge.  Without question every family is vulnerable.

Counseling loads in the best of communities as well as the government clinics are bulging with what we call “troubled” youth.  “Troubled” is not even close to the diagnosis.  The common terms “at risk” or “acting out” do not even begin to indicate the depth of the problems swirling around teens.  And families.  Put simply, the errant youth is manifesting a brain gone wrong. 

We call it imprinting.

Stamped into our minds C imprinted C  is what happened today; what we saw; what we said; what we took in and what we felt.  That imprinting is more than memory, more that a series of good and bad days catalogued according to date, time and place.  Imprinting is a biological process that takes place in the brain where we do our most selective thinking.  We are born with certain genetic connectors that predispose us to act and think and make decisions and connect those experiences to pleasure or pain.  Imprinting acts upon that genetic structure.  

Teens are still a work in progress; both the body and the mind are maturing. Raging hormones are blamed for volatile and surly responses, for existential angst and resentment of authority.  The explanation of what goes on in a teen's head is far more fundamental.  The brain a teen begins with is not the one he leaves with at the waning of those tumultuous years.  Teens develop the ability to plan, to organize, to manage emotions and complex tasks, to understand and even empathize with others, to exercise wisdom and good judgment.  This happens not all at once or with just passage of time.  It is the essence of learning, the programming of the brain that gives deference to the singular human ability C to think and act responsibly. 

In the past decade science has determined that the brain continues to develop during teen years, brain cells and new neural connections take on new life.   Between puberty and young adulthood, the prefrontal lobe --- the executive portion of the brain responsible for self-control, judgment, emotional regulation, organization and planning --- warps into renewed articulation. Teenage years are the second chance to consolidate circuits for mature adult response.  Extraneous neurol branches get pruned back as a newer and more efficient circuitry takes over. 

Teens have power over the pruning process by what they see, what they take in, what they do.  It can be positive.   Or negative.  At this phase of development, the ability to catch the football, juggle functions and equations, convert musical scores into finger play, compose poetry and make linguini become both unconscious and enjoyable.  Born in these years are the sports enthusiasts, photographers, computer wizards, biologists and architects.  Their choices project direction and give emphasis to budding interests and hence wire their brains for further use.  Teens process information differently from adults.

While teen years are a time for testing to establish personal space, that experimenting need not compromise the soul and its divine possibilities.

And that's the key. 

Amos in the Old Testament spoke prophetically when he described “a famine and thirst in the land.”  So it is today.  Youth hunger for things spiritual; they substitute what they cannot find with those destructive influences and substances that help them feel anything in a darkening, lonely and disturbing world.  They turn to the tools that the world has crafted to fill time and space but those means and measures can never fill the soul.  Only God can work such miracles.  In Jesus Christ is the love and light they are seeking. 

The next article in this series will address: “Can Negative Imprinting Be Reversed?”