Young People Ask . . .

Can I Trust Grown-Ups?

“DON’T accept candy from strangers. Never get into a car with someone you don’t know.” Mom’s familiar warnings tipped you off that all is not well in the world of grown-ups.

“Never trust anyone over 30,” became the slogan of antiwar protesters a few years ago. They expanded on mother’s warning: “If it is safer without their candy,” they reasoned, “why accept their advice?” What do you think? Was that too extreme, or was there some truth to it?

Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels

You have good reason for caution in sizing up what the adult world offers. Opportunists make you their target, legally or illegally; so watch your money. “Penny pinchers are rare among the under-21 group,” observed U.S. News & World Report in 1981, “and firms are scrambling to tap the lucrative market.” Even in countries where young people don’t have much spending money, illegal child labor attracts commercialists. “From the age of 5 in some places, in mines and on farms, in sweatshops and on city streets, . . . the exploited children number in the millions, and their ranks are increasing.”​—The World’s Exploited Children: Growing Up Sadly, 1980, U.S. Department of Labor.

You might ask, though, “Should I trust older people in the right situations?” Trusted friends enjoy one another’s company; they rub off on each other. Usually their personalities become richer, more interesting. Why? Because, regardless of age, “people learn from one another, just as iron sharpens iron.”​—Proverbs 27:17, Today’s English Version.

So, What’s the Problem?

“I get along with adults. But I can’t really talk to adults,” admitted one 15-year-old girl. She explains why: “I think of adults as adults, somebody you watch out for.” Many youths, feeling the same anxiety, watch what they say around adults.

This could explain why some young people settle for superficial relationships with grown-ups. “I never had an honest relationship with adults, it was always a surface one,” admitted Therese, a young New York woman who as a teenager never trusted adults. “My motto was, ‘Don’t give too much information to adults​—you might be sorry later.’ So I just told them what they wanted to hear and kept what I did for fun my secret.”

But fear of being exploited or hurt​—physically or emotionally—​is only one reason for this distrust. With many it stems from a bitter taste of

Adult Hypocrisy

“I met some of these guys,” said an insurance company stockholder after certain executives embezzled an estimated $500,000,000. “They looked fine to me,” he maintained. “Clean-shaven, clean shirts, nicely dressed. They certainly didn’t look like crooks.” But they were. Looks can deceive. Often adults cover up gross corruption with a facade of respectability. So young persons may ask, “If adults aren’t honest with us, why level with them?” Yes, “Who needs their advice if what they say is for show and not for them to do?”

But remember​—hypocrisy is not limited to today’s adults. Jesus Christ called some in his day “hypocrites” and “whitewashed graves, which outwardly indeed appear beautiful but inside are full of dead men’s bones.” Yet Jesus did not tell us to disregard all their advice. He said: “All the things they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say but do not perform.” Evidently some of their advice was based on sound principles that would benefit anyone.​—Matthew 23:3, 25-28.

Have you noticed some adults who “say but do not perform”? This can be discouraging. But why go against good advice​—especially Scriptural advice—​just because another does not follow it? That would only mean that two, instead of one, would lose out.

You can best cope with hypocrisy in older people when you recognize it also among the young. “I thought serious hippies, like my friends and me, were better, the ‘chosen ones,’” Tom explains. “We would survive when the world crumbled under its own corruption. But we sometimes approved of ‘cheating the rotten system.’ My best friend started a gardening business. It made me mad that he wasn’t honest. I saw he was using our viewpoint as an excuse to be unprincipled. We young people were doing the very things we protested against.” There has to be a better way.

Be Selective

“While in high school,” reports Therese, “I didn’t trust adults at all, but when I became 18 something changed my thinking. I learned to see who is worth trusting and who isn’t. I met some adults who convinced me that they could be honest, caring and very open with me.” She was learning to be selective.

Therese met Janet and Dan, former hippies who had shared her disgust for the hypocritical adult world. They had lived in a commune with other youths. There this couple found that peace and love were preached but not practiced in daily life. Janet and Dan had since become Jehovah’s Witnesses. They explained to Therese, openly and honestly, why their life now was better.

“I went to the Kingdom Hall with them and was deeply impressed by the older Witnesses,” Therese relates. “They treated me at their level and did not talk down to me because of my youth. They took an interest in me, asking about my life and freely volunteering information about their own past​—what changes they had to make and how much they valued their present way of life. Because they were so open and honest​—not trying to impress anyone—​I was drawn to them.” Therese admired the principles they lived by. She saw no hypocrisy. It was her way of selecting older people whom she could trust. You can show the same discernment.a

Benefit by Trusting People

“When I began to trust adults,” Therese points out, “I discovered goodness in people of all ages. If a person was 30, 50 or 80 he or she had learned things I could use. I quit being so apt to view negatively what someone older said.”

Experienced people in authority​—parents, teachers, office supervisors and foremen—​have valuable resources to share if you establish a rapport. “A person’s thoughts are like water in a deep well, but someone with insight can draw them out.”​—Proverbs 20:5, TEV.

To “draw them out” may take initiative​—especially in the beginning. “I had to force myself at first to greet and speak with older ones,” confessed John, who now at age 24 can see valuable results. He had resolved not to associate just with his youthful peers. But this Detroit, Michigan, youth added: “I didn’t always know what to say, but I would shake hands and say ‘Hi.’ To my surprise the older person usually warmed up to my interest and carried the conversation. I realized it wasn’t as hard as I thought.”

How did John benefit from such mutual trust? “You learn so much more by talking with adults,” he observed. “With kids your own age, after you’ve talked about girls and music you are about done. But adults have the experience to broaden and enrich you.”

So why not take the initiative in trusting grown-ups? We all like to be trusted. Trust someone and most likely he or she will respond. If someone you trust disappoints you, learn from the experience. Don’t turn bitter. (Proverbs 25:19) Hypocrisy in the adult world doesn’t have to defeat you. With caution and selectivity not only can you trust older people but you will be further ahead if you do.

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 13]

Warm conversations with adults can be enriching