This article first appeared in the print journal, Fall 1990
Teenagers today pay a high price as they learn (if they learn) how to make ethical decisions. In Going to Extremes (Plume/Penguin Books), author Joe McGinnis gives us a graphic picture of the tuition one pays for lessons learned the hard way in real life:
Yesterday’s evidence of the predatory nature and the overwhelming power of the grizzly had made a strong impression, and this skin of verbal protection within which we were trying to encase ourselves (the guide had commented that “99.9 percent of the time a grizzly bear would not attack a hiker”) seemed pretty thin. Especially with the memory of the bear in the night still so vivid. Even if he had, eventually, run away. That had not been a paw print; that had not been just a blond hair in a tree; that had not been simply evidence of a kill from months before. That had been a live grizzly bear. Weighing four hundred pounds, maybe five hundred pounds. Standing only fifty yards from us and staring at us. It was going to take more than probability theory to make me feel comfortable. Well, [the guide] said, upon further consideration, a grizzly would be reluctant to charge a group of hikers. One person, or two, might be different. The trouble was, no one really knew for sure. The evidence, such as it was, was based only on input from survivors. People like ourselves, who had witnessed a bear behaving in a non-aggressive manner. The people toward whom a bear behaved aggressively generally did not get to deliver their reports.
Why Kids Choose Wrong
One reason we must take the time to help students make ethical decisions is because the cost for bad decisions is just too high. It isn’t easy, and it won’t be quick. But helping students make ethical decisions may be one of the most important life skills that we can teach adolescents.
There are probably as many reasons for the bad decisions teenagers make as there are teenagers. If we will help teenagers make ethical decisions, we must consider the reasons for their unethical decisions.
•Overbearing parents. In You Try Being a Teenager (Multnomah Press), author Earl Wilson notes that parents hinder their children’s opportunities to learn decision-making skills by making one of three mistakes: underestimating the problem (“It’s obvious what you should do”), overestimating the problem (“You’re thinking about what?!”), or taking decision-making responsibility away from their children (“I’ll decide what’s best for you”). How will kids learn to make ethical decisions if they’re not allowed to at least make their own decisions?
•Lack of convictions. Somewhere along the line, we forgot that if we want students to just say no to something, we first must encourage them to just say yes to something else. Few teenagers today hold strong ethical convictions, growing up as they have in a culture that refuses to admit to established standards of right and wrong. As John Naisbitt observed in Megatrends, we live no longer in an either-or generation—it is now a multiple-choice generation.
Faced with decisions and armed with little sense of right and wrong, teenagers find it tough to make the right decision.
•Naive peers. Teenagers make bad decisions because they rely on the judgment of friends who make equally bad decisions. To complicate matters, adolescents don’t understand how naïve they and their peers are. They may be sophisticated. They may have experienced a lot in a short time. But they have, after all, been alive only a few short years—and time is often the greatest teacher. The more time that passes, the more history can teach us, and the more our certainty and cockiness is tempered by experience.
Tufts University child psychologist David Elkind terms this phenomenon “adolescent egocentrism.” Kids believe that, while their parents are basically benign people who mean well, they really don’t understand what it’s like in the real world of adolescents. Well-meaning adults try to offer counsel to young people, but their words are drowned out by the counsel of kids’ peers who are as naïve as the decision-making adolescent is.
The apostle Paul warned of the impact that negative peers and bad relationships can have on decision making: “Don’t be misled. Bad company corrupts good character” (
•Fooled by appearances. The first bad decision in history was made by a woman who based her decision on appearances: “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye . . . she took some and ate it” (
Little has changed since that first sad chapter. Today’s teenagers are growing up in a culture that readily and intentionally encourages all of us to make decisions based on looks. Breweries spend millions of advertising dollars annually to convince television viewers that sports and beer go together. We have the Bud Bowl, the Coors Ski Competition, the Bud Lite Player of the Week. What viewers aren’t told by breweries is that drunken Philadelphia football fans so disrupted play last season that alcohol was banned from the stadium. Beer companies don’t go out of their way to give us the full picture—and we usually don’t take pains to look beyond the pictures we are given. So what constitutes an ethically sound decision? In the face of these obstacles, is it even possible for teenagers to consistently make ethical decisions? Is every wrong decision necessarily a bad decision? Rich Van Pelt, president of Alongside Ministries, draws from his extensive counseling experience in isolating three essentials of an ethical decision.
• A good decision results from adequately attending to the process of decision making. In other words, a good decision is made after considering options, goals and alternatives. It is not a knee-jerk decision. It is not an impulsive decision.
•A good decision results from carefully considering the consequences of one’s choices. It recognizes that choices are not made in a vacuum. Choice A will affect choice B, which will in turn affect choice C. An ethical decision factors in this reality: choosing an option will increase, decrease, or at least amend subsequent options.
•Finally, a good decision—even if it’s not a right decision—is one in which the decision maker assumes responsibility for the consequences of the decision. This consideration assumes that God can use wrong decisions to effect good things if we are willing to own our decisions. The only mistakes we make that we cannot learn from are the mistakes we do not admit. If we can help kids accept responsibility for their decisions and their consequences, those decisions will ultimately prove to be ethical decisions—because, right or wrong, they are decisions the kids can learn from.
Custer Had It Easy
But where is God in these criteria of a good decision? It is worth observing that both Christian and non-Christian teenagers can make ethical and unethical decisions. Of course, for them to make the best decisions—Christian decisions—they need the instruction of God’s Word. Yet even if they are ignorant of God’s Word, they can still benefit from what Van Pelt calls good decisions.
Unfortunately, describing ethical decisions is easier than making them. Too often we oversimplify the process. “Just say no,” we advise. ” All you have to do is . . . ” Even after the enemy had been identified and the objectives were clear, none of Custer’s options at Little Big Horn looked good. Basically, it boiled down to fight (and die), run (and die), or surrender (and die—perhaps slowly, at that).
Do you see how the scenario looks to kids in the throes of a tough decision? For all they can see, their options are to please God (thereby losing their friends and becoming lonely), please their parents (thereby displeasing both God and losing their friends, in some circumstances), disobey their parents (thereby displeasing God again)—and on and on. Maybe Custer had it easier, on two counts: his options were fewer, and he didn’t have to live (long) with the consequences of his choices.
Like Custer, our teens are surrounded by dilemmas that require decisions. The dilemmas are not always of their own making, and the options aren’t always attractive. But students cannot appeal for a few more years to grow up, and it’s unrealistic to expect problems to evaporate. In the heat of battle, in the real world, in everyday life, kids are confronted with an endless parade of choices and options and decisions—ready or not, here they come.
Here are four stages we can steer kids through as they ponder ethical decisions.
1. Consider the dilemma.
The first step in making an ethical decision is giving careful consideration to one’s goals. We must help our kids ask, “Where do I hope to find myself as a result of this decision?”—that is, what do they want to gain from this decision? What are their goals pertinent to this decision? What are the consequences of each option? Which of the options lead them most directly toward their goals?
This stage helps both Christian and non-Christian teenagers consider consequences and outcomes in light of their goals, hopes and dreams: “If I want to go to medical school, I cannot afford to become pregnant in high school. I may become pregnant if I have sex with my boyfriend. The only sure way not to become pregnant is to not have sex with my boyfriend.”
It may be true that this kind of thinking leads more to pragmatic decisions than to ethical decisions. Lacking the counsel of Scripture, however, it’s the best place to start.
2. Seek God’s will.
We make a big mistake at this point if we become timid. What if the kids don’t care about God’s will for them? Even if they want to know God’s will, can’t it be presumptuous to tell them what God’s will is for them? And what about the times when we just don’t know what his will is?
I believe that when students come to us with an issue about which God has clearly spoken, it is blatant negligence not to tell them what in fact it is that God has spoken.
Our kids already have plenty of counselors, peer and otherwise, who need no invitation to advise them without reference to the will of God. The very reason teenagers come to us is because they can trust us to share with them what God says about their dilemma. “Thanks a lot for being honest,” a student recently responded to me after I told her point-blank what God’s will was about her decision. “I knew you were probably going to say that, though I hoped you wouldn’t. Maybe I came to you because I knew you would.”
To be sure, we will encourage them to open the Word and discover for themselves what they can. And when we do advise about God’s will, we should do so with humility, gentleness, and acceptance. But we must say what we know to be true about God’s will and not hold back.
At this stage it is important to distinguish between what Chuck Swindoll calls precepts of Scripture and principles of Scripture. Precepts are nonnegotiable, like posted highway speed limits. They are signposts God puts in his Word that tell us what we are and are not to do. Precepts are those obvious statements God makes about various issues: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind,” “Do not lie,” “Do not steal,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Do not commit adultery,” “Turn the other cheek.” There is no doubt about God’s opinion in these matters.
But what about questions that fall between the cracks? Maybe no one argues with God about refraining from sexual intercourse before marriage—but what about the infinite gradations of sexual intimacy short of intercourse? Here we are guided by principles. Although a specific speed limit is not posted, we still might find a “Drive carefully” sign. Principles are guidelines, not specific laws. We make the call. The decision to drive 35, 45, or 55 is ours, depending on our skill, the weather, road conditions, the dependability of the vehicle, etc.
Similarly, we read in Scripture that God often makes his will known not only by specific rules and laws, but also by the more general guidelines of a principle. For example, though Paul gave no specific law about what foods were clean or unclean, he gave this basic principle: “Make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way . . . Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (
The tendency among us, unfortunately, is to hammer home the precepts but neglect the principles. If students are to make ethical decisions, we must instruct them in both. Even teenagers usually know when they’re on the verge of breaking a scriptural precept, but they don’t often know until it’s too late that they’ve broken a principle. You realize you were driving carelessly only when you have a wreck.
And what happens in kids’ minds when they must decide between two biblical principles that collide? The business associate of John’s dad calls after work one day. Dad’s tired. He whispers to John, “Tell him I’m not home.” John knows it’s not right to lie to his dad’s business associate, but he also knows that the Scripture teaches obedience to parents. What does he do?
Sound ethical decisions require that students consider the will of God—both his precepts and his principles. “How can a young man keep his way pure?” the psalmist asked. “By living according to your word” (
3. Weigh complications.
Here the plot thickens. In real-life situations there are usually other factors to consider in weighing an ethical decision. We cannot responsibly apply God’s principles without heeding a host of details that seem to muddy an otherwise clear, black-and-white decision. One night after a Bible study, a girl posed a sincere and troubling question for me.
“I know you’ve told us that if we are Christians, we should date only Christians,” she began. “Well, I’ve dated five of the guys in this youth group—and they were all hands. The only boy who treats me like a lady sits next to me in English class—and he says he’s an atheist. Who should I date?”
Wrestling with complications like this with students isn’t as neat as dispensing Bible verses. Wading through such mundane, messy decisions is simply the frequently uncomfortable reality of advising students in their world. Seldom are there airtight cases for deciding one way or the other. Students need you more than they need your answers.
4. Decide to decide.
Finally, students must be brought to a point of resolution if they are to learn to make ethical decisions. Most bad decisions by teenagers are not the result of deliberate sinning, but of deciding nothing at all.
Few kids leave home on a Friday night intending to break Commandments Four through Seven. What happens instead goes something like this—they go to a basketball game, where someone suggests that they take in a movie. On the way to the movie, they meet friends en route to a party, and our original group decides to join them. When they get to the party, kids are getting wasted with drugs and booze and slipping off into the bedrooms. Before they know it, these kids are making decisions they hadn’t even considered. It won’t be because they decided something, but because they decided nothing.
As we work with teenagers in their decision-making skills, it is important that we push them through a plan to a point of resolution. And as they think through a tough situation, do not allow them the freedom of vague platitudes and evasive answers.
I chuckled the other day as I watched a father chase his son through a department store. He finally caught up with the youngster directly in front of me on the rising escalator. The boy asked his father if they could go upstairs to the toy section. The father, obviously reluctant to enter this adventure in Nintendo-lust, replied, “I’ll think about it.” For every second that he was postponing a decision, however, the escalator was relentlessly carrying father and son up to Toyland.
The escalator continues to carry our students along, too, unless we deliberately get off or turn around and fight our way down the up-escalator. We kid ourselves if we think we can withdraw from the process. Not to decide is to decide.
For most of our students, the issue is not one of losing our bearing somewhere in the grizzly-infested Alaskan wilderness. The situation is actually more perilous. Our students are looking at a horizon of choices and decisions that can be pretty intoxicating to an adolescent. They are expected to find their way without any moral compass whatsoever. To complicate matters, their “enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (
It’s serious business. The risks and difficulties are very real. But in the moral wilderness of our modern culture, students need willing guides to help them learn the way to make good, sound, ethical decisions. ¨
