Goth Culture Among Teens

Most likely you’ve noticed them – Goths dressed in black, to include hair, make-up, and nails. Maybe you are a Goth. Maybe you’re experimenting with the Gothic identity. Maybe you’re concerned about a Gothic teenager or sibling. Do you have reason to be concerned?

Although Gothdom is too diverse to do justice to its definition here, many Goths like to brood on darkness and to essentially surround themselves, even shroud themselves, in darkness. Black clothes are often an expression of the black, depressing thoughts allowed and even encouraged to stew in the Goth’s mind. This is honest. There is pain and death and depression in the world, all of it resulting from sin. The ringleader of sin was Lucifer, a commanding angel created by God.

Many Goths are very sensitive, intelligent, and creative individuals. They are open-minded and value being set apart from mainstream culture. They like to be accepting of all people and tend to stay away from those who are judgmental and narrow-minded. Of these, too many of them have experienced abuse or extreme hardship early on in their life, creating a disposition in their mind that identifies well with pain and death and depression. Developing an identity from this disposition becomes a way to deal with their experiences, giving them a sense of the dignity that had been taken from them.

Even though Gothdom usually expresses the reality of pain in all its far-reaching aspects in the person and in the world, there is also true spiritual and mental danger as a result of this practice of ruminating on death and despair. The opposite of death is life. And the opposite of despair is hope. Life and hope is literally the lifeblood of Christianity. Jesus came that we might have life. The life he spoke of was dynamic.

Jesus is the way to eternal life (John 14:6). Everyone is an immortal soul. When our bodies stop taking in oxygen and die, our souls – the will, mind, and heart of who we are – lives on. We will live on either in paradise with the Lord and other beings that He has created. Or we will forever be in hell, conscious of only agony and loneliness without any hope of life.

Jesus also leads us to abundant life (John 10:10). When we trust the Lord by dealing with our issues according to the instructions in the Bible, we experience a sense of deep rest and joy. These are rooted in the reality that Jesus is King, God the Father is sovereign, and He will help us and never forsake us. There might be pain from the dying of our flesh (our insistence to hold onto anger and cynicism), but the result of living in God’s ways through Christ is a sense of well-being and wholeness.

To dwell on death and thoughts of doom is to also reject all variety of life. It is to stake out one’s identity apart from our eternal identity that has been in wait for us to discover since the beginning of the world (Ephesians 1:4).

What do you think about this?