According to the study, “Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind.” Admiration for virtue or skill and compassion for another person’s physical or social pain were cited as specific examples of emotions that the brain needs more time to process than other kinds of information.

What are the implications of this study on children? Given their widespread use of digital media tools that encourage high speed communication, snippets and sound bites, fast reactions, and multi-tasking, are we inadvertently leading their young, developing minds into moral attention-deficit-disorder?

A lesson in swearing??? Teaching kids to shout obscenities??? What on earth was that teacher thinking?!!!

The article went on to cite a parent who said, “This is a total disgrace. Our children go to school to gain an education, not qualifications in swear words. Most kids had no idea what the words meant and were forced to grow up faster than their parents want. Heads should roll for this.”

The idea of teaching young kids to shout obscenities is absurd, outrageous, and infuriating. That is not the kind of “free speech” teachers should be encouraging.

Don’t get me wrong. We believe in encouraging kids not to “stuff” their emotions inside. In fact, one of the novels we publish is called Violet’s Hidden Doubts, a story about a Victorian teenager who struggles with troubling doubts and fears that she feels she can reveal to no one. (She wrongly believes she is responsible for her father’s accidental death.) When Violet eventually reveals her feelings to her mother, she finally gets the relief she’s long been seeking. In this book, we model for young girls the importance of expressing their inner struggles with parents, trusted friends, and godly advisors. But not through swearing.

When I was about twelve years old, I picked up some nasty language from my peers at school. Like most bad habits, it caught on easily. My mother warned me that she was going to “wash my mouth out with soap” if I didn’t stop “talking like a guttermouth.” One day, which I vividly remember all these decades later, she actually made me stick a bar of soap in my mouth. Guess what? It worked! In that very instant, I learned the virtue of self-control. That was the end of my swearing, and the only “lesson in swearing” that I ever needed.

I am not advocating washing your child’s mouth out with soap. What I am advocating is taking a real hard look at where education is going. Just this week we watched as violence, window-smashing, and fires erupted in London during the G-20 Summit. You can bet that a lot of those violent protestors were shouting obscenities. Perhaps if as children they had been taught self-control, we would not be witnessing such lawlessness.

But who’s the one really being deceived? 

The Bible says that all things that are hidden will be revealed. It also clearly states that we will reap what we sow.  

Sow deception and, rest assured, one day you will reap deception. Sow deception and, no matter how smooth or shrewd or “well-intentioned” you may be, one day you will reap what you sowed. Proverbs 16:25 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” 

Deception is never a work of God. It is the tool of God’s enemy, the devil. When we deceive others, we partner with Satan in his scheme to bring division and destruction. 

Deception, in the end, always has a high cost. As surely as day leads to night, deception leads to broken trust and broken hearts, neither of which can be easily restored apart from a divine work of God. 

Deception destroys the very foundations of relationships. To go on with a relationship after a betrayal requires having to literally start over with the fundamentals. Deception bankrupts relationships by emptying the “bank account” of positive “deposits” made over the years. In business, one act of deception can destroy decades of hard and fruitful work by scores of good people who built a solid partnership. 

Deception also destroys reputations. Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” Besides causing resentment, bitterness, and temptation to retaliate, deception ushers in lost loyalty, lost respect for your authority, and lost confidence in your integrity and sincerity. It converts your once trusted name to a question mark, at best. 

Let’s face it, even people like the accused master swindler Bernie Madoff probably did not become a crook all at once. Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, he most likely deceived people a little bit here, a little bit there, until pretty soon it became natural. 

We tell kids these days, “Just say no to drugs.” Perhaps we need to also teach them, “Just say no to deception.”

Maybe that is why I am still uncomfortable with Facebook (as much as I like it).

After years of requests from friends and relatives, as well as personal and professional curiosity, I finally signed up for Facebook and joined the social networking phenomenon. In my opinion, Facebook is amazing—truly a wonder to behold. It’s a one stop place to communicate with your friends, keep up with relatives, express yourself, support causes that you love, exchange photos and messages, build your own personal global community, and much more. Facebook is not just a social networking site, it is a revolution. It is fun, interesting, and exciting—a world of endless discoveries, thrilling reunions and reconciliations, captivating experiences, and unlimited self-expression.  

Yet, from what I have seen, it is also a place where smart people forget about normal, healthy boundaries. Out of a desire to describe their personality and express their uniqueness to their dear friends, people reveal all kinds of things about themselves to their vast and growing list of Facebook “friends,” most of which are not in that inner circle of truly close friends. Facebook does not let you distinguish between levels of friends (e.g., intimate friends verses distant friends), and I can tell you from experience that it is very hard to turn down “friend requests” from a stranger when that stranger and I share a mutual friend who has recommended me.  

In the old days, we were taught that personal privacy was something to be guarded and cherished. We were taught that “Big Brother” looking over our shoulder was a bad thing. You literally would have had to hire a private investigator to discover what is now freely revealed by people online. It’s almost as if everyone is “undressing.” 

But this isn’t the beach. 

Even if a person is immensely careful about what he or she says on Facebook, he or she can’t control what friends say or do or post, and how that might reflect back on the person. The digital world has not changed the fact that who we associate with does say something about us. Do people really understand the implications of posting so much “behind-the-scenes” information?

I can’t help but wonder how many people will not get the jobs they wanted, the publishing deals they sought, the favorable references they needed, or the unswerving loyalty they expected, because of what they exposed about themselves on social networking sites. 

In this brave new digital world, how do we teach young people not just internet safety, but wisdom and discretion?

Proverbs 17:28 says, “Even a fool is thought to be wise if he holds silent.”

So violent video games encourage kids to be more violent. Gee, what a concept. Once again research proves the obvious.

For those of us who have long been concerned about the impact on kids of sexualized toys and tv shows, one has to wonder why such a common sense connection needed ‘groundbreaking’ research to prove it.