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He was sent to a counselor to be fixed so he could return home and live non-rebelliously in his parents’ home, the ones who were partially at fault. Truthfully, Biffy cannot be fixed and then sent back into his chaotic home. That is a bridge too far: he cannot be expected to live a peaceable life while waiting until he turns 18 so he can leave. Yes, there is grace for Biffy, and he can receive a degree of help, but the problems he is experiencing do not lie exclusively with him. Biffy’s problems are a manifestation of the systemic issues that exist within his home. To truly address these issues, the parents will have to change, too.
Though I have counseled children in the conundrum that Biffy is in, it has always been critical for the parents to understand the full extent of the situation. If they expect a counselor to untangle in two hours—or even six months—what they have spent a decade or more helping to entangle, they will be disappointed. With this view as a disclaimer about parental participation in teen rebellion, I met with Biffy to talk to him about God, life, home, hope, and the future. It was a delightful conversation. Kids like Biffy are almost always open and ready for someone to love them, care for them, and offer hope-filled and practical counsel. Biffy was no exception.
I found him to be articulate, humorous, smart, ready, and willing to talk about his life. I also found him to be deeply hurt, angry, and hopeless about the life he is living and the life he expects to live in the future. As with all the folks I counsel, I draw pictures to illustrate spiritual truths. Jesus was the Master Illustrator, who seemingly could take any physical or concrete idea and connect it to the abstract and spiritual parts of our lives (see Matthew 5:19, 5:24, 5:26, 5:28). So, I began sketching out a few visual ideas for Biffy to help him see spiritual realities. The following are four separate sketches I made for him in one infographic.
Biffy retreats to YouTube while at home. The only escape he can find from the chaos is to watch endless reels and videos on YouTube. The arrows in the top left represent the anger from his parents: the criticisms and harshness from his dad and the general barbs flung around his home. Biffy says the barb-throwing is relentless. He cannot escape it unless he hides inside YouTube. He knows it’s not right to retreat, but the sense of hopelessness and desperation is palpable. Retreating protects him from disappointments. The truth is that he feels like a prisoner inside his home.
The tactic he uses to protect himself has become his jail. He is incarcerated, which is part of the reason why he is so angry. On the outside, the bombs are dropping. While on the inside, he is growing in frustration. His only hope is for Christ to break into his prison and make a divine rescue. I asked him if he had ever prayed about his circumstances. He said he had prayed many times. That is when I wrote the word “help” inside his little self-imposed prison. I encouraged him by pointing out that God was answering his prayers, evidenced by the very fact that we were meeting.
I drew a second sketch—top right—to clarify what he was describing. Biffy told me that he would love to know God, but there is so much noise in his life that God’s voice is hard to hear. Not only is he in prison, but he is a little person in a big, loud world, and the “voice” of God is muted. That is what you see in the second sketch—note the little God in the right-hand corner. The loud, unkind voices of his parents are enormous, and he feels very small and helpless. This perspective is another root of his anger, in addition to the frustration of hiding inside his self-constructed YouTube prison.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? (James 4:1).
Biffy desires to be set free, but he senses he is living out a prison sentence with no means of escape, and his parents are blind to their role in the problems. They see rebellion. They don’t see responsibility. While it’s true that Biffy must account for his anger and rebellion, which we did discuss, his parents must reckon with the toxic home environment they have helped create.
There’s no need to ask if someone is being controlled, so I did not ask Biffy. We are all under the management of something or someone. Our finiteness demands that we look outside ourselves for help and security. The question becomes: What is controlling us? In Biffy’s world, it’s the chaos and dysfunction of his home. His parents’ anger, his reactive sins, the unending conflict—all of it has grown large in his life. The noise mutes the voice of God and eclipses the redemptive work that could be unfolding in his life. So, we talked about the need for Biffy to have a bigger God. The path forward begins with him recognizing what he already knows from sketches one and two: he is in a prison and overwhelmed. Sketch three—bottom left—gave him a new category, a greater God who could rise above the fray and take authority in his life.
There was a ray of gospel hope here: Biffy attends his local church meetings weekly. He’s made a connection with the children’s ministry director, too, and though his parents don’t go with him, they allow him to go with his neighbor, Brice. I told Biffy about Jesus—how He, too, lived among sin-filled people in a hostile, mocking, and abusive world. We talked about how Christ was not merely disliked; He was hated, betrayed, and violently murdered (Isaiah 53:2–3). The gospel message resonated with Biffy. You could see the transformation begin building in his eyes. He was hearing about a Person who had walked a similar path, who could actually understand his sorrows and struggles (Hebrews 4:15). It wasn’t sympathy from afar—it was Immanuel: God with us.
At this point, Biffy had only known one kind of faith: self-reliant confidence in his survival strategies. It was all he had. His responses to life were instinctual. He didn’t see another way. He didn’t have enough understanding of God to put off the old self and respond differently to the chaos in his home (Ephesians 4:23–24). His belief in escapism was a desperate grab to preserve sanity. It was self-confidence, not surrender (2 Corinthians 1:8–9). But as we talked more about Christ’s suffering and love, he began to perceive how there was an alternative path—faith in God, trust in a Savior, a Redeemer who suffered like him, and a hope rooted not in escape but in transformation. His challenge would be walking out his faith in a home that remains unchanged. Choosing between hiding inside YouTube or hiding in Christ would be a moment-by-moment decision.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:2–3).
He joked—half-serious, half-resigned—that he’d get to try this out the moment Mable returned to pick him up. He was right. Counseling offices are controlled environments. The real test is always when the person re-enters the chaos of everyday life. Biffy was realistic. So was I. My heart ached for him. Though he had gained clarity and direction, he knew he’d be walking a lonely path, at least for now. His parents weren’t walking with him.
Take one final look at Sketch #4. The last thing I wanted to give Biffy was hope from a position of power, not self-power, but God’s power. If he could, by the grace of God, hear, believe, and praise the Lord in the middle of chaos, then God would grow larger, and the chaos would diminish in its controlling power. The barbs from his parents would not hurt as much. His urge to run and hide would have less sway. The turmoil would slowly begin to subside because the issue is not whether we’re controlled, but who or what is controlling us. If the Lord is controlling Biffy, then he’s no longer defined by what his parents do or don’t do. That kind of internal transformation would give him spiritual influence in his home. Rather than merely being shaped by it, he could begin shaping it and them.
You cannot need someone and love someone at the same time. One desire will always dominate. Until now, Biffy has needed his parents to be loving and civil. When they were not, he reacted, ran, or rebelled. Because his need for them was stronger than his love for God, he had no power to love them in return. My hope and prayer for Biffy is that he will so embrace his relationship with his heavenly Father that his trust in God’s love will overshadow his need for Mable and her husband to love him. If this happens, he will be free, not free from his circumstances, but free within. He would be released to go on the offensive, doing what his parents have failed to do: to love God and love others well, regardless of the environment (Matthew 22:36–40). This worldview is how Christ loved us. It was more important to Him to love us than to be loved by us, and because of that, we were transformed, releasing us to go and do likewise.
We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
God doesn’t promise to remove all chaos, but He does promise to rule over our stories. When He becomes your controlling influence, you are no longer defined by who hurt you, who failed you, or who didn’t come through for you. You are free, not because your life is calm, but because your heart is no longer at war with a fallen world. You’re under new management. Stop measuring your peace by your circumstances. Start measuring it by your proximity to Christ. You don’t need perfect parents, ideal friends, or leaders to walk in love perfectly. You need a greater vision of God. Let today be the day you trade escape routes for surrender, survival for trust, and reaction for redemptive action. What Christ has done for you is greater than what anyone has done to you. Will you live like it?
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
