By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

The newspapers headlines announced the tragic news. A young man from the Atlanta area, an 18-year-old still in high school, was killed on spring break as a result of a fall from a hotel balcony. A further reading of the article revealed that the teenager was climbing on the balcony to avoid a hotel security officer. Police at the city by the beach said that alcohol was a factor.

I thought of the grieving parents who had undoubtedly given permission for the teen to attend spring break with his young friends. I imagined that they probably had financed this young man's trip that is taken by tens of thousands of other high school students every year. And, as I thought of the sad scene of these distraught parents standing by a casket on a rainy day, the only words that formed in my mind were, "Well, what did you expect?"

During my nearly 18 years of living in the metro Atlanta area, I have grown used to the fact that otherwise caring, intelligent parents give their children their annual blessing to go off to a week of "surf, suds, and sex."

And make no mistake about it this is the essence of the yearly migration known as "spring break." Anyone who wishes to know what goes on during spring break only needs to watch MTV, talk to young adults who, in their teen years, made the journey to the beach alone, or just take a vacation at the beach during this hectic week. Spring break is all about spending a few hours at the beach, getting drunk, and having promiscuous sex with strangers.

A few years ago, my family and I were vacationing at Daytona Beach during spring break. Near the end of that week, a teenage girl, a high school student, fell from a hotel balcony to her death. Her parents were nowhere near Florida as the young lady enjoyed a week of freedom in a hotel with other minor children.

The nasty, hidden fact is that, every year, unaccompanied teens are injured, raped, assaulted and killed.

Another year, my family spent the week at Panama City, Fla. Among the scenes of youthful abandon that I recall from that week is the picture of two girls, age 12 to 14, dressed in bikini tops and shorts trying to hitch a ride on the busy strip at 10:30 p.m.

Think your child isn't in danger? The predators of the world know all about spring break, too. Spring break is a Mecca for perverse men looking for young, unsupervised females.

Think your child would never drink? In Panama City alone, police expect to confiscate 10,000 illegal identification cards from underage revelers. An entire illegal industry has sprung up catering to the desire of teens to drink themselves into unconsciousness. A report on Good Morning America last week revealed that, without sophisticated equipment, even the police are having a difficult time separating the fake I.D.'s from the genuine. For many high school and college students, spring break is just a week long drunk.

Today, thousands of young men and women in their 20s are suffering the lingering effects of sexually transmitted diseases contracted at the nation's beaches during the annual break. The formula is simple: (1) young teen men and women together; (2) unsupervised away from home; (3) scantily clad; (4) drinking alcoholic beverages; (5) with access to hotel rooms. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens when these elements come together. Disease, pregnancies, and abortions are all a sad reality of the aftermath of spring break.

Whenever I question the sanity and intelligence of parents who send their children off to the beach by themselves for a week, I always have parents who accuse me of being legalistic and teens who howl that such incidents do not really happen. But 30 years of helping families pick up the pieces of spring break has convinced me that teens who do not take advantage of the free flowing booze and sex are rare individuals indeed. And church kids are just as likely as non-church goers to give in to the prevailing culture of wanton hedonism.

Our three sons were livid with us throughout their teen years because we refused to allow them to go off alone to Panama City or Daytona or Myrtle Beach. We also declined their urgent requests to go to these places with other unattended teens.

"But why can't we go?" they would whine. "Don't you trust me?"

The answer to that question was easy. "No."

Any parent who trusts a teenager to act like a responsible adult in these surroundings is living in a world without reality. It didn't help that even many parents in the church were allowing their children to trot off to the surf alone.

Once, a son pointed out that one of the leaders in the church was allowing his child to go to spring break with a bunch of friends and was even paying for the week. "Why don't you do what he's doing?" my young man asked.

"Because I'm not stupid," I replied. Unlike the parents of the young man who fell from the balcony a few weeks ago, I knew what to expect.

[David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church in south metro Atlanta. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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