The sun burns down living God's bright stamp
At Peace Branch Horse and Bible Camp,
Where we're splashing in the water, joined in song,
Swimming with the spirit the whole day long
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God.
The girls have looks and the girls have rules.
They came here from their Bible Schools.
They can make you pay attention
to the way you dress and eat,
Make you trip over your over your own two feet.
They kneel down on thier towels at night,
Their nightgowns glow with a holy light,
And we pray for the sinners and their drunken car wrecks,
And I vow that I'll never get high and have sex,
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God.
Cause God made every leaf on every tree,
Each grain of sand, God has a plan
for what we're meant to be,
I've got wait for God.
Dear Lord I plan each day
the things I will not do or say,
But I'm driven by a passion is it only there to tame?
It fills my heart and it calls my name, and
This world that you made for us,
I know I know its dangerous,
So I ride a lot of horses, I never ever swear,
It's sort of like praying I'm just not there.
Oh God, God is watching
Oh God, God is watching
But God made love, God made the river run,
And cowboy boots and bathing suits
and the boy's skin dries in the sun.
Help me God.
Help me know four years from now,
I won't believe in you anyhow,
And I'll mope around a campus and I'll feel betrayed,
All those guilty summers I stayed, but
Then I'll laugh I fell for the lure
Oh the pain of desire to feel so pure,
And I'll bear all the burndens of my little daily crimes,
And wish I had a God for such cynical times
Far from today.
But for now I'm your sacred vessel, Rip me open,
I'll spread your world like a milkweed pod,
Yeah I'm your radio station,holy transmission,
Even more like a lightening rod,
A lightening rod, a teen for God.
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God, and God is watching
I'm a teen for God.
5 comments:
why do you see it as depressing?
I don't necessarily find it depressing, I find it very typical of teens raised in evangelical churches. They follow rules they don't have convictions for just so they can be a good Christian....a pure holy person - and yet, four years later they are cynical, and questioning, and doubting, and wondering why they were so sold out for a God of such pettyness. A God they have trouble seeing. A legalistic God. A false god. And then we just have to pray that God will be able to reorder their thoughts, and questions, in such a way that they can see he is there, and much bigger and more real and powerful that the God-in-a-box they have given their teen years to.
Unfortunately some people never get it....
I'm there with you Karen. :) I think this song has a "caution" for youth workers and churches. what are we teaching our kids? what are we telling them? what are we showing them? I think we need to be more honest instead of giving them some pre-fab, boxed up "youth" version of faith. to me this is where we have gone wrong and this song, if any thing puts a BIG red mark around it. I wish more people would hear it and learn.
ok, i finally read the lyrics. i'm with Sarah_s...the song is incredibly depressing.
i think the gerbmom addresses why it is depressing. that incredible sense of loss and failure and distance is depressing.
all that sincere effort that typical churches put into creating a safe environment for their youth does not equip members to cope with the less-than-perfection that is the reality of being human.
and, Happy New Year, everybody! (meant sincerely)
I think that, to some degree, there's going to be a process here, you know, that you [when a teen, that is] have these ideas, and within your small world that seems to be all that is there, then you enter a larger, more complex one, and there's not a seamless transition.
Certainly, everyone has to come to the point of confronting honestly the, say, atheistic proposals, and I can remember thinking, as a twelve-year-old, when a preacher mentioned that we might at some point be going through this sort of thing, well, anyway, I thought to myself, "Who would ever even DREAM of such a possibility?"
Ten years later, I was in the throes, very much, of trying to be interllectually honest in a decision on whatever side of the question the truth might be. Actually, it helped a lot that a MATURE person had mentioned that people go through that. He'd given some advice that was sage, at the time, so I wasn't unprepared. Also, it meant one wasn't a complete weirdo or, you know, heretic, to have to deal honestly with a question.
Intergenerational contact is often able to smooth the way for people so that they don't feel like an absolute freak when going through what everyone else goes through, eh?
We've, maybe, ghetto-ized youth to some degree, consigning them only to YOUTH leaders.
Sexual temptations, for example, are not just for the teen, are they? One preacher said to the group, "Just as many fifty and sixty-year olds are messing up their lives in that area as teens." Which is pretty balanced, that statement, in its assessment, and which means that people can share strategies for struggle,etc.
Back to your thought about churches and the sometimes anomalous situations/people there, I was reminded of your statements, Jewels, this a.m., when Ecclesiastes was read:
"Furthermore, I have seen under the sun that in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness." Ecclesiastes 3:36
As one elder said, onetime, "In the local church you'll find the spiritual, the not-so-spiritual, and the downright carnal."
Sometimes, also, the spiritual and the not-so-spiritual do not particularly notice much about the downright carnal, cuz the downright carnal don't always show the complete evidence of their downright carnality to them, and stuff like that. Just, maybe, to persons new or such.
So glad you're writing again!
A She
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