The Generation Gap

I have been enjoying some time with my youngest child and grandchild this holiday season. It struck me that my daughter and I have about the same age difference as my father and I had. That got me thinking about my relationship with my dad and how similar it was compared to the situation I find myself in today. The biggest difference is that I thought of my father as old when we were at this stage. By comparison, I don't feel old at all; perhaps he didn't either, but he acted older, I think.

My father’s experience was vastly different from mine, so it stands to reason that he might have felt different. My dad lived through the Great Depression and served in the Army Air Corps during WWII. By contrast I lived through the “Great Extravagance” that blessed/cursed most of us Baby Boomers and missed being drafted into the service during the troubled Vietnam conflict. I am also mindful of the fact that people are just constituted differently. In one of my favorite Christmas movies, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s father remarks that George is different from his brother because, “You were born older, George.”

There are genuine differences between my experience and my daughter’s too. I had Howdy Doody and The Wonderful World of Disney. She had Saved by the Bell and 90210. My married Rob and Laura Petrie slept in separate beds; her teen DJ spent a night in her older boyfriend’s apartment. My experience included Hippies’ free love and the mantra “sex, drugs and rock and roll” as scandalous; hers includes gay pride and feminism as civil rights. I knew of a few “bad girls” who were considered sluts; she is not uncomfortable with the idea of “friends with benefits.”  I had a few friends with whom I shared the occasional Kodak moment; she has hundreds of Facebook friends with whom she shares every waking moment. I had family dinners around a table every night; she eats every meal on the couch in front of the TV. The times they are a changin’.

So I can see that she may rightly feel as different from me as I felt different from my father. Likewise, I may be fretting needlessly over the differences I find between us, yet I am convinced that there are some things that should be passed unalloyed from one generation to the next. The command of the Shema to keep the law always before our children, echoed in Ephesians, is surely one of those things. I know that my own reception and application of the “law” unsettled my parents somewhat; there may be justifiable adaptations of the “law” in every successive generation such that parents will always feel that way.

The struggle to identify and defend the absolutes is what brings me grief. I can see from the lofty height of six decades and a historical perspective (lost on most of our current young generation) that some of the adaptations undertaken by successive generations have been departures from truth. No matter what else may change, one thing remains: the only way to truth and life (eternal) is through Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life. As I was so eloquently reminded last Sunday, the path to victorious Christian living, the abundant life as Jesus called it, is the way of devotion to Christ.

Historically this practice has been called “spiritual discipline.” Whatever it is called today, I trust that if my daughter and her generation seek an intimate relationship with Jesus, everything else will fall into place. I know I can trust God to do that; I just need my heart to hear my head say so. The generation gap is not what matters; the gap between our Lord and us does. May every generation strive to keep that gap as small as possible.