Moral Maturity
Everyone notices that physical changes take place about the time children become adolescents. In the last chapter, we saw that intellectual changes also take place at the same time. As individuals enter Piaget’s stage of formal operations and are able to think abstractly, they become capable of making new kinds of moral judgments as well. Children are not able to make their judgments of what is right and wrong on the same bases as adults, and we do not expect them to do so. However, at about the age of puberty, we should expect them to make more responsible moral judgments. Many changes have taken place, and these changes have clear implications.
In Bible Times
As we saw in Chapter 1, in Bible times teenagers were adults. At ages of 12 and 13, children became adults and they were held legally and morally responsible. Teenagers were considered to be adults not only in society, but before God. They participated fully in religious ceremonies and were accountable to God for their actions, right or wrong. At the end of the first time his son read from the Torah, the father recited the benediction, “Praise the Lord! I am not responsible for this teenager!” (That is my contemporary translation of “Blessed is He who has now freed me from the responsibility of this one.” Encyclopedia Judaica, 1972, p. 244).