Titus 2:1-8: “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded. In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.” If it were my mission to seek whom I may devour, steal, kill, and destroy, one of my first objectives would be to divide the young from the old. That would keep the older from sharing their knowledge and wisdom, particularly their knowledge and wisdom about my activities. At the same time, I would rob the older of the vitality and strength of the younger, making them a bit more vulnerable. Getting these groups apart would be a big win for me, but how to do it? I would need to convince both parties that they had nothing to gain from the other. That is simple enough: tell them that they live in radically different environments, leading to different beliefs, values, and perspectives. Point out the lack of wisdom and virtue in the young, and the lack of compassion and charity in the old. Play upon the hubris of one, and the weariness of the other. The cue de ta would be to develop an entire science of division that could stratify age groups into separate camps. Split the single race, the single nation, and the single community into tribes of generation, and now I have them.
Generational Divisions
When every generation stands alone, you can keep playing the same trick over and over. Nobody from the last show is talking to the next audience. Even if they are, no one in that crowd is listening. It is brilliant! And the only hitch would be if there were some overriding connection that transcended all generational divides.
There is, of course, just such a transcendent thread that would bind generations together. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that God has loved us and sent His only Son to live a perfect life, to suffer and die in our stead, taking the full penalty for all of our crimes against God, and to rise again in victory on the third day that He might we also might be raised in victory over evil and death. Editor’s note: Amen!
That is a timeless message relevant to every generation. Indeed, the Gospel implies that all generations have the same fundamental problem and that there is only one correct solution to that problem. The solution is life in Christ, a life of faith-affirming grace. So, in Christ, we believe the same thing, we trust the same person, we walk the same path, and we seek the same end. Whatever difference there might be between the older and the younger, the commonalities far outweigh them.
We are prone to forget that grand reality because the lesser perceptions are so often flung into our minds from all directions. I believe the tensions of everyday life, such as economic unrest, changes in the workplace, eroding morality within the culture, and political corruption, exacerbate our concerns. Those concerns gradually grow into mistrust, and then into disgust.
We hear of a monoallelic lack of attention span in Gen Alpha, of selfishness in the Baby Boomers, non-conformity in Gen-X, or laziness among the Millennials, and we take it for granted because it is simple. All Millennials are lazy; Jared is a Millennial; therefore, Jared is lazy. That is neat, tidy logic that lets us make quick and easy decisions in the world. However, it also has faulty logic: at least I hope it is! We have probably all been on the receiving end of these sorts of documents, but have also dished them out. What comes around goes around.
Now, you probably are not making this kind of logical conclusion dispassionately. After all, we are all in this society together, and what one generation does or does not do affects everyone else. If you came before the Millennials, you might hear that they are lazy and wonder what will become of all that you worked so hard to build, or who is going to take care of things when you cannot work anymore. If you are coming along after the Millennials, you might wonder what sort of a mess you are going to have to clean up. We have something tied up in all this, don’t we?
Yes, of course we do, and, understandably, we care enough to wonder and to worry; but what are we doing with all that? God wants you to care about the generations before and after your own. God designed His community to connect the generations, not to separate them. He intends for the older and the younger to seek each other out for help regularly. I fear our churches have bought into the modern mythos of generational divide, and perhaps that is why there seems to be so much wrong with successive generations, they have not been guided. The guides were told these kids were uninterested, and they were told they needed no guides. It is all a big lie.
Prove it? I will ask you this question: how can we know a whole generation’s heart? The idea of a survey that could include the honest input of every single member of any generation is absurd. Only God could deal with that kind of information. He knows the hearts of everyone in every age, and to all of them He commands the older to teach the younger, and the younger to respect the older. Let them help each other.
I believe a good place to start is by remembering that not one of us can rightly handle the knowledge of a whole demographic, even in a localized area, so we need to deal with individuals. Then maybe I should stop calling you a boomer, or an alpha, or a Gen-Xer, and perhaps you should stop calling me a millennial. One thing I am sure of, we should all remember that we have been shown a lot of grace, and so it comes on us to offer a lot of grace to others.
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