Now, do those thoughts sound very familiar, in today's generation? It is a road to ruin. It's a road to ruin, total road to ruin. Now I want to just talk a little bit about the Princess Syndrome. The Princess Syndrome goes something like this: when children become the focus of all the attention in the family, they become like little princesses. It's all about me, and it's all about what I feel; and if I'm unhappy, you've got to make me feel happy. If I want this, you've got to give me what I want. The loss of fathers in family, bringing order and identity, has contributed to this. The breakdown of families has contributed deeply to this; and so we have a generation arising, and actually they've all got a princess syndrome - it's about me. I want to look good, I want to feel good, I want you to meet my needs, so don't tell me anything that will upset me.
So we'll have to change our education system. We won't have a pass/fail! In my life, I don't know about you, but all my way through life, there were many pass/fails. You got the job; or you didn't get the job. That's a pass/fail isn't it? Why would you hide from someone, that real life works that way; that you sometimes get things, sometimes don't? That's actually life, and if you qualify, you get; if you don't qualify, you don't. This is actually what you experience in life. Why would you hide from a generation these realities, and give them kind of soft-grades? I'm all for education, and for improvements in education, but what I'm seeing is a generation arising, that's actually got like a princess syndrome. It's all about me, and what I feel, and what I want, and you coming through for me. It's actually not the understanding that this is the road to ruin.
So there's a whole season in education, where there's this focus on the esteem of the child. Fine, but actually our esteem is not found by cultivating and nurturing self. It's actually found by identifying with Christ - totally, radically different. So when you pamper people's esteem, what happens is, you don't help them. It becomes more, and more, and more about me. Then, let me tell you, when you come into the kingdom with that mentality, then you know what? God, it's still all about me; and so when I pray, I want you to bless me and help me; do this for me, get me this, get me that; and that moment something goes wrong, and I don't get what I want, now I'm having a hissy fit. I don't need to go into all of those, but you can see that there's a generation emerging with a great sense of entitlement, and what they need, is to be challenged over this. It's the road to ruin. What you need is, a cause to live for bigger than yourself. You need a person to connect to, and a cause to live for. You need to get outside yourself, and into something bigger.
Every time you get into yourself, you decrease and become smaller and smaller. It's when you get caught in something bigger than yourself, you grow in capacity, and start to flourish. In fact actually, we're designed that way. We were never designed to be the centre of the world. We're designed not to be the sun. We're designed actually, to have Christ as the centre of our world, and from that perspective we establish who we are. One of the things a child has to establish, in the family, very clearly has to be established: who is in charge; and if mum and dad don't establish they're in charge, that child gets the princess syndrome, it's all about me, and then there's this spoilt-brat kind of deal, where they want everything, and they fuss and create tantrums, all kind of deal when they don't get their way. They come into church, they do the same thing, and I've seen many people fail in their walk with God, for this reason. They never got, that it's not all about me. They just didn't get it, because our society cultivates that.
It keeps presenting that. All the advertising's directed that way: you will be happy if you have this, you'll be happy if you have that. You just need this. Oh, you can get it right now - three years and you don't have to pay a thing! It's interest free all that time; but what they're not telling you, is actually you don't need it to make you happy, because after you've got it, by the time you come to pay for it, you'll be unhappy. So it's not all about me, so we need to realise that. Of course there's a whole thing here, you may have heard about a guy by the name of Narcissus in Greek mythology. He loved himself actually, that's the best way to describe it. He was in love with himself, and he wanted everyone to admire him. He was very beautiful, wanted everyone to admire how beautiful he was; and so everywhere he went he expected everyone to say: oh, you're lovely, you're wonderful, you're beautiful, it's all about you. We've been watching that TV series called Big Bang Theory, and for Sheldon it's all about him. The whole world is about him, and his obsessions; and of course this is the extreme of it, it's all about him, and it's disrupting and dysfunctional in all relationships. So Narcissus, it was totally about him; and so all his relationships, what he wanted was people to give to him, but he didn't want to give anything back; and so he destroyed all relationships, rejecting everyone, until one day he sat by some water, and saw his own face. He thought that looks amazing, that's a wonderful person, I like that person; and touched the water, and the water moved, and the person was gone - a bit shocked because the person's gone. Then he looked into the water again, and there it was, he saw himself. He became captivated by himself, and in the end, he began to wither away, and just grow old and die, even though everyone tried to help him. So when you use that term Narcissus, it's someone who's totally preoccupied with themselves.