My bad boy era
The solution to avoiding the peer pressure of the world is to embrace Christian even more so.
Yes, it’s true: I had a “bad boy” era.
But I wasn’t wearing black leather jackets and riding a motorcycle. I didn’t have a toothpick constantly sticking out of my mouth, nor did I have slicked-back hair.
Nothing like that.
Because I was in first grade.
I know, it’s hard to believe because I’m so well-adjusted today, but briefly, as a first grader, I entered a time where my brain completely betrayed me, and I did stupid things. Famously, I punched a kid for no real reason other than I had a crush on his sister, but he didn’t like me. Then, when I got written up for that, I tried to hide the slip from my parents—only for it to be discovered and my punishment to increase tenfold for lying.
And I recall my strange friendship with a guy named Jake. Yes, we shared a name. I was Jake D, and he was Jake C—absolutely nothing confusing about that! I don’t remember much about Jake C, but I do know he wasn’t always the best influence on me. On one occasion, as we sat around the lunch table, for no reason he dared me to spit out my chocolate milk onto the floor.
So I did.
I slurped some of the chocolate drink from the miniature carton and spit it out onto the linoleum floor of the cafeteria. Why did I do this, you ask? Because Jake C said so. Because my brain was far from being developed. And just my luck, the janitor had seen the whole thing, standing not far away (was this Jake C’s evil plan? We’ll never know). He gave me a wet rag and told me to clean it up.
I eventually grew out of my “bad boy” phase and put my chocolate milk-spitting ways behind me. However, the desire to conform, to fit in, to act like the cool kids—that’s hard to shake for anyone.
As someone who has spent too much time for my own health and sanity teaching middle schoolers, I’ve witnessed so many instances where in real time you can see brains shutting down and kids making incredibly stupid decisions to fit in. These moments straddle the fine line between “comical” and “I am incredibly worried about this future generation.” However, I’m sure that anthropologists may never come to understand why middle school boys must jump and touch the doorway every time they pass through a door.
In adulthood, we just conform in different, less obvious, and less obnoxious ways. We jump on bandwagons for sports teams, musical artists, and sports teams cheered on by musical artists. Office culture develops around nodding in agreement with whatever the boss says, even though you don’t really believe it. We watch a show with our significant other even though we don’t super like it. We participate in zany social media trends and viral challenges because someone tagged us.
Simultaneously, America preaches individuality as the highest virtue while in practice we all just act like everyone else. In theory, we understand it’s bad to give in to peer pressure. I mean, we teach teens to “just say no” and have them act out skits to get them to practice holding their own when their friend Brian offers them a cigarette after the JV basketball game. My elementary school counselor told us to “stand tall like a giraffe” and hold out our hands while saying “no”—her solution to literally any problem. We have received the message time and again that we should stick to being ourselves—everyone else is already taken.
Scripture agrees that there is a negative aspect to conforming.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
-Romans 12:2a
Yet, the solution is not the same as what the world offers. I don’t think the Biblical authors could even wrap their heads around our modern sense of individuality. They’d say stuff like, “I’m sorry, what? You’re saying that someone can make a MAJOR life decision without consulting their family or community???” In Scripture, life isn’t seen as an individual struggle against conforming to sin but as the struggle between either conforming to Christ or conforming to the Devil. But you have to “conform” to something!
Right before Romans 12:2 told us not to conform, it gave us a prescription: “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” Instead of letting culture make your decisions for you, Paul urges believers to go full-in, 100%, to God. The solution to peer pressure is to link up with God through Christ. The New Testament even puts it in terms that we should become slaves of Jesus!
“Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.”
-1 Peter 2:16
Life is a raging river. You can either let the water pull your boat along with it, or you can paddle against the stream. What you can’t do is just sit there. We are either going with the flow or against it. Those are our only two choices.
If we find ourselves being dragged into explicit sin, popular ideologies, or inauthentic actions, there’s only one fix. We need Jesus. We have to go all out for God. It’s the only thing that can endow us with the strength to escape negative conformity.
Interestingly, most of my fiction has dealt with the pressure that kids feel to fit in. In Super Jake book 1, the Fashion Police wanted everyone to dress according to his arbitrary standards. In Super Jake book 2, Coach Muscles advocates for literal toxic masculinity and shames those who don’t follow his idea of manhood as being buff and punching stuff. While these aren’t religious books, I try to show kids that the conforming powers and pressure aren’t usually something you can just ignore, but something you have to actively defeat with logic, kindness, and occasionally ice cream.
[Which reminds me, I started another newsletter for parents and teachers who want positive role models for their kids!]
In lieu of ice cream powers, we need the greater might of God on our side. Evil can be overcome when we team up with stronger forces. As my dad would remind my brother and I when we leaped from the car to go to school, “It’s a battle out there!” There are powers in this dark world who won’t give up without a fight. So as Ephesians 6:11 puts it, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”
We can get caught up with deciding what spiritual discipline correlates to which part of the armor, but the real point is we need to be invested in God and God’s values in order to protect ourselves. That investment includes devotional time, prayer, reading Scripture, engaging with the church community—all that fun stuff. But ultimately, it requires more than checking boxes; it requires us to go all in 100% as people conformed to God’s vision.
Question of the Week
Leave your answer in the comment section below or reply to this email.
What do you do when peer pressure strikes?
My “Goings On”
Super Jake book 2, “Super Jake and Kool Kenny” is out now!
A book about the applications for artificial intelligence in ministry, called AI for Church and Ministry, will be out in late this month.
Don’t spit out the chocolate milk,
Jake Doberenz
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Great column, Jake. What ages are your two books suitable for?
Thanks. We have grand nieces in the 2 & 4 grades. I was very struck by how the Dayspring middle school student was engrossed in your book - I think the first one.