Facing Reality: Youth Exposed

Copyright © 2013 by Mncedisi Nkhoma.

ISBN:        Softcover              978-1-4797-7021-2

                  Ebook                   978-1-4797-7022-9

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Contents

1.    Social Circles

––    Factors to Consider When Getting Into a Relationship

––    Common Grounds

2.    What Marriage Is.

––    The Creator

––    The Institute’s Significance and Meaning

––    As a Sign

3.    Steps Towards Marriage and the Church

––    The Western Steps

––    The African Steps in Brief

––    The Church and its Position

4.    The Big Violation and Apostasy

––    The Little Knowledge About Marriage

––    The Hidden Truth and Perversions

––    The Prophetic Significance of the Current Situation in the Church

––    The Effects on the Young Minds and Their Future

5.    Taking the Final Steps

––    Breaking Curses and Covenants

––    Breaking Away From Former Relationships

––    Knowing One’s Chances

––    The Holier Than Thou Perception and Its Effects

6.    The Dos and Dont’s

––    Information Era

––    Informed Choices

––    Deciding One’s Destiny

Question-and-Answer Segment

Chapter 1

Youth and its energies is all vanity, says the preacher. ‘Contradictorily’ he goes on to say enjoy it in all cases knowingly that the creator will bring you into judgment for everything. ¹

Young people find having to explain themselves. They are surrounded by a lot of choices, responsibilities and are faced with limited time and resources to aid them on decision making. Often life proves too colourful to resist, too fancy to fear, yet too absurd to understand. Little time is therefore spent on the ‘how’ part than the whatsoever.

Worse still, Christians and most religious groups bombard them with their own dos and don’ts and leave them with no option other than a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

A serious rift keeps widening between the elderly and the youth. Sadly, the elders blame it on young people, while they (young people) also say the elders, the seniors (elders) claim young people know too much and ask too much and put it all to disrepute. What they forget is that this is the information era; information is accessible even to the fingertips of a toddler and they are therefore caught unaware in their slumber.

While at times young people say they are being stuffed up with dos and don’ts, what they don’t realise is that fashion, culture, life, and priorities do change but values don’t. Respect and honour for elders does not change, respect for self and humility don’t. They also don’t know that experience is a very rude but best teacher, that to avoid accidents in life is to see through the eyes of the experienced and put on their boots to traverse their roads of their failure and successes to find understanding and wisdom of how to walk your own roads.

Vast information does not make one knowledgeable, knowledge neither makes one understand. Understanding is itself a rare gift that a few hold, it links knowledge and wisdom. It takes understanding therefore to make one knowledgeable unto wisdom.

Therefore I devote this book to help young people understand that life is what they can make it if they are to achieve fulfilling lives and relationships. There are issues that they cannot ignore nor do away with, but choice is one’s choice, for betwixt circumstance and reaction, there is a big space where one can still influence that reaction: it is choice. Personal change for success and sustainable improvement is the only way to reach desired goals. Correct principles and values can make the strong foundations for fruitful relationships.

Social Circles [Support networks]

Though birds of the same feather perambulate in close proximities, bad company spoils good habits.²

Family, friends, and school associates are all important to the lives of young people. They are there to support and improve one’s character. They are cases where these do not provide the positive support needed, instead proves to be the pool of wormwood.³

For sound and fruitful relationships to be encountered there should be a culture that encourages that and has all it takes to protect and nurture a relationship. It’s not uncommon to find that wonderful relationships that could stand were destroyed by poor or immoral social circles and discouraged altogether.

By social circles I mean the people one spends his life around or his lifetime with. It is important to note that we are 80 per cent of what we are as a product of who we spend most of our time with. Issues like habits and norms are brought up and instilled into people’s characters by association. Therefore you can find that most failures and successes are a common feature in a common group. I will repeat, ‘We are what we are 80 per cent because of the people we spend time with.’ It is character moulding in reciprocal. What behaviour is acceptable is cherished and is repeated by most. What failures and mishaps befall one and are perceived as unbreakable are left unchallenged and are accepted as part of the system, to the extent that this repeatedly happens and becomes a comfort zone for these particular groups. It can come to scrutiny if someone does the opposite of the acceptable norm or behaviour trait. This is why change and improvement of an individual is most unwelcome in a clandestine and lawless society.

All it means is, if one is surrounded by people who perceive marriages and long-term relationships as outdated, the probability is quite high that they will also settle down for this perception. Here is where the principle of reciprocal plays a great role. It goes like this, ‘You are what you are because of the people you keep around you, and they are what they are because of spending their time around you.’

They transfer to you what you choose them to. That results in your behaviour trait which is later emulated by people around you and reinforced in that social circle. The same goes for good habits too. Role models are not just for the good but also for the bad. Usually to emulate bad habits goes without say.

The Social Circles

Figure 1

People around you constantly contribute much towards your behaviour. Let’s have a closer look at figure 1. Normally an individual has the group of people at a given time having differing influences and control over one’s life, i.e. family, friends, self, community, media, etc. Each time spent with any of these gives room for them to deposit in you or receive something from you, be it negative or positive.

Self

A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgement.

One needs to learn how best to spend one’s time. Too much time spent alone can be very unproductive and rather disastrous to one’s progress and development. I may not be forgiven by most professionals if I don’t mention what isolation does to an individual. I also am pleased to introduce to you the professor of wisdom, Jesus Christ. He has already spoken in Proverbs 18: 1.

How can one grow in social skills when one does not want to associate? How can one relate when he does not want to spend time with the others? It is very common for young adults to want to isolate themselves because of several reasons, yet in all these, the most prevailing one is the fact that they think they are not understood or accepted. So they go against all wisdom, seeking for anyone who is willing to understand or accept them. Unfortunately, they usually fall into the wrong hands.

Let me also mention that an individual needs to be able to identify with and appreciate him or herself, yet isolation does not bring about this desired outcome. It is advised, however, that one needs to have some time of introspection so as to be able to get in touch with one’s inner self. In the world of beauty one needs a mirror to see one’s make-up and to correct whatever needs to be corrected right behind a mirror. A mirror represents the people you share your time with. Can one have a wonderful time behind a mirror before one gets a good shower? I want to believe it’s not so. A shower is that time one spends in getting to know what they can really offer to the eye of the mirror. This is life. Some mirrors are so unwelcome and have a very prying eye on the areas that are not well done. So, for one to be able to face the mirror one needs to accept, appreciate, adore, and affirm self first before one can go out.

One needs to learn to relate with self first and only then can he be able to relate with the others easily. One needs to accept self first and then accepting others will not be a problem. Therefore to be able to have very fruitful relationships we all need to be able to know ourselves first.

Since this is the focal point, this self requires empowerment, guidance, and coaching in all walks of life. It is this self that needs to be empowered with wisdom and understanding of how the environment around them works. They also need to know how they contribute positively to it. If one individual is empowered they can be very influential in effecting the same positivity in the very environment they exist in and for and can then be very wonderful sisters, mothers, and later grannies. Charity begins at home and chastity begins in self.

Family

The family’s task in every individual is to give, groom, support, and nurture their character. Some young people have a tendency of forgetting what role a family plays in their lives. They always think family gives a lot of unnecessary hassles and barriers. There are cases whereby families also do a lot more spelling out than listening to how the youth feel about it. ‘Charity begins at home’ goes the old saying.

Surely if you can’t make it at home there is nowhere in the world where you can fit. Worse still, no family of your liking can you make. If you can’t establish fruitful relationships with any of your siblings, forget you will ever make one with a total stranger. The family still holds the reigns in all facets of life. It is important therefore for your psychological, spiritual, emotional, and physical growth. In cases where one does not have such an opportunity, I will take a special look at such disturbed social circles. Therefore the more time one spends with their family, the more one grows in all facets of life into a great character that will lead the world and be a good role model. The problem is that most young people want to live as if they fell from a tree trunk. To them there is no background, lineage, or heritage therefore any inheritance. They find themselves existing, not known to them that they do inherit what was never meant for them, that is, all that is not ideal from the world. If you cannot get any inheritance from your family, it does not mean you will go without it all. You do have it but from the world’s own coffer, which is usually poverty and rottenness. This is a dangerous approach to life.

Friends

‘A real friend is the one that sticks closer than a brother in times of distress.’⁴

If you want to know the kind of a person one is, you see him through their associates. Most youths’ destinies and their lives are decided by their friends through peer pressure and influence. One is very unlucky to have bad friends, though it’s true that our associates are what we are or want to be.

They are there for support, to celebrate us, criticise and sometimes save as our mirrors, but there is one important thing one needs to know about friendship and the reason why they make friendships. Some last forever yet some just last a date. There is a writer who said ‘there are friends for a reason, friends for a season and those for a lifetime’. Now the problem is that youths do not realise that this circle is more volatile than they anticipate. Friends of a season are mistaken for those of a lifetime, while those of a reason for a season. Only disaster ends the confusion. Anyway, there are those who do not have this circle; they call themselves ‘reserved’ for what I do not know. They are loners usually kept separate because of their poor self-esteem or unhealthy esteem. They either think too much of themselves or too lowly of themselves, so decide not to indulge. It is not out of a pure reason usually. It is unfortunate therefore. Again the Wiseman says, ‘One isolating himself will seek his own selfish longing; against all practical wisdom he will break forth.⁵‘

These young people also forget that friends mistaken for those of a lifetime usually end up being enemies of a lifetime. They also have no wisdom to choose those of a lifetime into being so, usually on the reason that they are boring and don’t have style. Young people, wisdom is the light on your path that is filled with potholes, rocks, and thistles. Have the power to choose right. Do not be a victim of your poor choice. Let not lack of wisdom deter your journey to your desired destiny. Again, wisdom will help you choose the right destiny.

Friends are very important if well chosen. They improve one’s sense of self-worth and direction in life. Friends are good company towards your destiny. They keep you up to date and interested. But do not spend much time with those that do not urge you to go forward, those that waste your time on petty things. Again, friends are important as a good measure of your own improvement, success or failure.

The Local Community

This also plays a role in the lives of individuals as they are components of it. It is made of behaviour traits and norms that create a commonness and comfortable social environment. This has a powerful force as to moulding individuals and characters. If it is generally a community with a neighbourhood that does not have a zeal for development, growth, or improvement, it usually unconsciously becomes absorbed by individuals as a behaviour trait and later a norm. A norm is a standard that is unconsciously accepted and followed by a group of people, and it has a tendency of separating them distinctively from the rest of the world. I have realised one funny thing about communities, that if it has a weak moral fibre every individual therein is so affected and anyone who wants to challenge this is deemed unbecoming and unfit to be part. Young people are usually the ones who can change this, but rarely does this happen since it upsets a comfort zone in which they find themselves having to take life lightly, evade change and responsibility.

Sins of the Community

The community can determine how a young person can do in terms of self-improvement and development. It offers shallow ground if it is poorly fibred and solid foundation if it’s got a strong fibre. It can result in one being industrious as long as it also is. What should be taken into account is that they can be exceptional cases where individuals from poor communities do grow well into known stars, but one thing should be noted again: it is only a matter of time that such individuals are made to bow down to certain unidentified weaknesses that can cripple and pull them down from their hero status to a zero degree. Young people should understand the role the community plays in uplifting or pulling them down. Therefore, because of association, individuals can be a true reflection of their own communities, until they decide for an improvement or a change on a personal level.

Impact on Relationships

Norms, beliefs, and culture here play a great role. Young people are very much not immune to the aspects of their community. There are certain cherished beliefs and cultures that young people have to follow without questioning. They may be correct or wrong, but they are meant to be respected and followed.

It takes one who knows what they want in life to find a passage and a correct one for that matter. It is good to listen therefore to the voice of counsel and instruction rather than to follow your haunches, especially if you are young and naive. To avoid unnecessary mistakes and setbacks play by the set rules with perseverance, focus, and patience. To be against is to lose one’s name and sense of belongingness.