Barna Updates

April 27, 2004

Category: Recommendation

I received an email in my inbox from the George Barna group. Many times I have been appreciative of the reports and statistics that they present as it relates to the Church in today’s world. Today’s report was no exception.

Our latest survey explores the moral views of teenagers on a hot topic these days: music piracy. We discovered that most teens – even born again Christian teens – do not have any moral qualms about downloading free, non-promotional songs from the Internet or copying CDs for their friends.
“People wrongly assume that teens are just looking for an excuse to rationalize stealing music, to reduce their sense of guilt. But that misses the point: their entire outlook on life – not just about music – revolves around the ‘whatever works,’ postmodern philosophy. According to this philosophy of hyper-individualism, moral behavior is essentially a private, personal matter. Desire, emotion, and personal experience become the benchmarks for determining right and wrong. Authority, truth and even language are viewed as subjective creations of society.”

Funny thing happened a few weeks ago when I was talking to a father of teens in our church about looking for a song online that he wanted me to hear. I said, “I could probably find it online and download it, but that wouldn’t be legal.” He was surprised by that statement because he was under the assumption that it would be legal for me to download it if I wasn’t using it commerically.

If he doesn’t have the story right, how can his kids be expected to think it’s not illegal to download music?

Posted by pablohart on April 27, 2004 09:50 AM

Comments

Authority, truth and even language are viewed as subjective creations of society

as an adjunct member of this seemingly alien group Barna calls postmodern youth, i should comment. this research simply proves again that the older generations' fear and misunderstanding of the younger ones causes unnecessary problems.

i think it's great that young people think authority and language are subjective creations of society. they certainly are. but to assume they think (T)ruth is also such an entity is a false assumption. the logic probably goes more like this: the music industry has acted unjustly by overcharging and operating in a system that bastardizes real art and packages what will sell. we are doing the right thing by downloading musical art, taking it out of the hands of corporatized schemes and back into the free consciousness of the human mind.

this isn't looking for an excuse to relieve one's conscience, it is a simple choice to act out a known truth. the known truth is not much different from an already-established truth: stealing is wrong. yes, stealing from record companies is wrong. but the postmodern youth are forcing society's heirarchies and corporations to "face the music" and know that their entire system is based on thievery.

Posted by nathan at April 27, 2004 10:52 AM

i just came back and read this and thought, what a load of crap i wrote.

i think what i was trying to say is that postmodern youth are not necessarily void of moral absolutes.

that's better :)

Posted by nathan at April 27, 2004 9:38 PM

yeah, i think your second try is much closer to the "Truth."

however, there is a point to be made that the "powers that be" or "the man" must be challenged. if it's going to take this sort of illegal thing to get their attention and bring in new change, i want to cast my vote for a 'YES' in that election. but i still have a problem with it being illegal. i just can't bring myself to doing the wrong thing especially when Jesus teaches us to "give to Caesar what belongs to him."

i dunno.

Posted by pablohart at April 28, 2004 9:32 AM

but Jesus broke all kinds of laws to prove points. his favorite to break were sabbath laws.

Posted by nathan at April 28, 2004 9:49 AM

yeah, but...

Posted by at April 28, 2004 10:53 PM

in response to jesus breaking laws...

jesus was a "liberal" rabbi and his yoke/teaching was that the greatest law was the shema, love the lord your god with all your heart, mind, etc. and the second was like it, love your neighbor as yourself. in jesus' mind he was breaking sabbath laws (which were in his mind farther down the list) but keeping his own teaching by loving his neighbor, therefore healing him. he was doing a greater good. he was also challenging the "conservative" pharisees about the order in which they placed the importance of the commandments. jesus even says the sabbath was made for man, not the other way around. so in essence, he didn't break any laws.

secondly, stealing is stealing. it's against civil and moral law. i'm all for civil disobedience to prove a point but to say jesus did it is not the (T)truth? if people want to take a stand against the "industry" that makes music, or software or whatever else you can steal, don't buy anything from that industry. get your friends not to buy anything from that industry. and yet, there is a problem with that because that industry helps people produce their art, product or ideas. so kill the industry, and you may have a bigger problem on your hands.....

Posted by dumond at May 2, 2004 8:56 PM

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