The Institute for Family Studies has released a list of legal and policy recommendations to protect teens from the dangers of social media. Among the recommendations are age verification laws, parental consent requirements and shutting down social media platforms at night for teens. Other countries have tried to restrict young people’s access to technology. For example, a few years ago, France banned cell phone use in schools for children up to 15 years old.
Monitoring teen engagement with social media should be a no-brainer. someone else not Convinced that something needs to be done, just consider teenagers on TikTok exhibiting Tourette-like tics, not to mention the rapid-onset gender dysphoria crisis initiated within social media communities.
However, the fact that the government can now be the last line of defense by setting certain limits on social media means that the other lines have failed. In particular, families have failed to protect children from what threatens them most.
It is a modern application of one of the most useful ideas of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, who lived at the turn of the 20th century. Kuyper has been jokingly called the “patron saint” of the Colson Center. Towards the end of his life, Chuck Colson described how Kuyper’s thought was influential on his own, particularly in understanding how Christians were called to interact with and influence the culture around them.
Christians could best influence society, according to Kuyper, through the sphere of our family, the cornerstone of society. During his lifetime, Kuyper worked in various spheres of culture, not only writing as a theologian, but founding a university, running a newspaper, and eventually becoming prime minister. Throughout his various careers, Kuyper has proposed and championed a concept called “sovereignty of the sphere”.
“Spheres,” as Kuyper understood them, are the social groupings, or domains, that make society function. He saw them as interlocking “cogs” that work together. In his message at the inauguration of the Free University of the Netherlands, he explained that each sphere – such as science, art, business, government and family – has “its own law of life”. and “its own head” or leadership. Ultimately, Christ is sovereign over all life. His most famous quote is: “There is not a square inch in all the realm of our human life that Christ, who is Sovereign of all, does not cry out, ‘Mine!’ It is Christ who turns “the wheels to turn as they were meant to turn.” Not to oppress life nor to bind freedom, but to make possible the free exercise of life for and in each of these spheres, isn’t this an ideal which imposes itself on any noble sovereign State? [or leader].”
His idea that the duty of the head of a state is to facilitate the “free exercise of life” reveals that in many ways Kuyper lived in a time similar to ours – a time when people called to the revolution. Kuyper was so uncomfortable with this anarchic approach that he called his political party the “Anti-Revolutionary Party”. According to author Michael Wagenman, Kuyper believed, “Human beings are called to act in a responsible manner in which ‘the course of our historical development can only be altered by gradual change in a lawful manner.’ But this is accomplished through responsible reforms rather than outright revolution that seeks to usher in a manufactured utopia.
If the language of ushering in a “manufactured utopia” doesn’t sound familiar, just search Twitter for “anti-racism” and “revolution.” The crisis of the state, believed Kuyper, revealed a crisis of the family.
Kuyper viewed family leadership as “responsible for good order in the family” rather than the “head of state”. The government should only intervene if parents are not doing their job. He insisted that “the central government can only take charge and execute what is not (and so long as it is not) properly taken care of in the petty spheres of life” .
If the government is to control the good order of the family, it should only be temporary. So the government can encourage good family order, like tax deductions for college savings plans, but a secular government controlling family life can get weird quickly, like removing a child seeking a transgender identity from a woman’s home. Christian family. This is one of the reasons why Christians should recognize and defend parental rights.
Going back to the subject of teenagers and social media, it can be said that restricting their access to social media is a good idea. But that’s the job of the family, not the government. When families are well, society is well. It is these cogs of spheres that work well together. A society is only as virtuous as its families.
This month, if the Colson Center has helped you better understand the realm of family, if it has helped you think about being big enough for this world and living in it for yourself, would you consider doing a gift of any amount? Go to colsoncenter.org/september.
Release date: September 7, 2022
Photo credit: Tim Mossholder/Unsplash
The opinions expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Christian Headlines.
Breakpoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint comments offer incisive content that people can’t find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio show, BreakPoint offers a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends. Today, you can get it in written form and in a variety of audio formats: on the web, on the radio, or in your favorite podcast app on the go.
John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview and radio host of Breakpoint, a daily national radio program offering thought-provoking commentary on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
