Levi Johnston, PlayGirl, and Youth Culture

Walt Mueller:

His name is Levi Johnston. He's a nineteen-year-old teenager we first met during the summer of 2008. He was thrown into the spotlight because he was the boyfriend of Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol. Soon after the unknown Palin was thrust into the spotlight, it was announced that Bristol was pregnant to Johnston.

Think about what's happened in the 14 short months since. There's a baby and Levi is out of the Palin family picture. But that doesn't mean he isn't in pictures. All this week the media's been pumping out info on Johnston's photo spread in the upcoming January edition of Playgirl magazine. What it appears Johnston is pursuing more than anything else is celebrity, fame, and fortune. Sadly, a host of people will buy into it and fall "in love" with Levi.

It will be interesting and sad to see how this already-sad story continues to play out. It offers what I think is a clear peek into where youth culture is and where it's headed. It tells us about what our culture and our kids value in life. It tells us just what "image" our kids desire to be conformed to. It also tells us just how difficult it's getting to lead kids to an understanding of the image to which they should aspire to conformity. Those of us who love and minister to kids long for them to go in one direction, while almost everything else in life pushes them 180 degrees in the opposite direction. What was once seen as vice is now pursued and embraced as virtue. I think if we were given the opportunity to stand outside of our culture and see it for what it really is, we'd see just how pathetic we've become.

The NIV translation of the Bible tells us in Acts 17 that when Paul walked into Athens and laid eyes on the landscape covered with idols, he was "greatly distressed." I'm afraid that our kids are living in the midst of stuff that leaves them "greatly impressed." Let's hope and pray that even though we live in the same landscape, we won't lose our ability to see things for what they really are. We have to. . . . for the sake of our kids. Like Paul, our distress should motivate us to serve as signposts pointing to the cross. . . the only source of transformed hearts and lives.