While preparing the graphic for this article below, it occurred to me that in the naming of Generations, it is a construct that creates even greater separation between the generations. We have family lines that include Great Grandparents, Grandparents, Parents, Children and Children's Children. Those are our true generations and we don't want to create anymore separation than is built in to the vast differences of minds and hearts that exist between Great Grandparents and Children's Children - and all in between! We want to emphasize the threads that bind us together, not the things that separate us from each other in families. It is the devil's job to separate us, it is the work of the LORD to bind us together closer in love, respect and just honest to God care for each other. Yeshua said to love your neighbor as yourself. We need to realize that we are to love the generations of our families as we love our our immediate household. This is family as I remember from my childhood...many things have indoctrinated us away from how we used to view our extended families.
The younger generations consistently judges the older generations as faulty in judgment and execution of the things of life. I'm a Baby Boomer and we did it too. We thought they had royally screwed up family relations and the country. It is part of the idealism of youth and also the arrogance of inexperience always assuming they would be far superior to the ethics and morality of their elders.
For me, I think the Baby Boomers certainly did not do a better job of family relationships or how the country should be run than their parents or grandparents. It was our inexperience that assumed we could do way better than they did. First off, all the "free love" missed the whole point of real love.
Was there hypocrisy in family relationships in the 1950's & early 60's? Of course there was. There has been hypocrisy in family relationships since the dawning of mankind...or at least to that point in Genesis 3:6. Many Baby Boomers grew up and recognized that stable society and stable families could not exist in the hippie lifestyle so many thought was "the answer." But without finding God in the process, we just developed our own generational failings - one being the materialism that has become the main focus of American life.
When the children we raised raised their own children, we were now three degrees removed from the real answer in life. I saw a quote on Facebook the other day, the gist of which was that when God is not in the midst of our families, we are only 2 generations from complete Godlessness in our family line. I also read how because of the godliness of one, that light that only Yeshua/ Jesus imparts to our lives, it can impact children and grandchildren even after we have gone to our reward.
That is a hope to hold onto as we are confronted with younger generations who believe like we did as emerging adults in decades past - that we are morally, ethically and practically superior to those who brought us into this world. In time, they will awaken to their own hubris. Life and experience has a way of removing that illusion. Humanity is humanity. Without the LORD revealing His Salvation to each of us, we only stumble through life wondering why we can't make all the pieces work.
The reason I began writing this is because I believe to a degree there is some of this within the spiritual family of God too. That many young spiritual adults still have strong degrees of the secular morals & ethics replacing God's Word as the highest authority. Yes: I am speaking of the sexual accusations boom going on right now.
Reading the latest explosive expose on Julie Roy's Report, I was shaking my head at the family explosion of yet another major ministry. The parents had approached a family situation in the way people of my generation would do that - within the family confines, not calling the cops, seeking to work through the accusations among family members privately. You know, I believe the same was probably true for how things were handled regarding the sexual accusation against the Gateway pastor. His pastor, I was told, was former police so he should have known better - YET I believe the older pastor handled the situation the way most Christian pastors would of their generation. And I am not far off of the same viewpoint: Because I read in my Bible - Matthew 18 specifically - that we are to forgive those who trespass against us and put it on the altar for GOD to judge. That is the exact opposite of the current generation of young people who are of the mind that God's instruction takes a back seat to calling the cops and pursuing our own justice in the courts.
Like the case of IHOP, the latest sexual accusation "mishandling" did not come about until a promotion that was expected was denied. If we continue to skip over that fact, we may fulfill the state's legality, but in the process we are going to demolish families and congregations. I do not think it worth it. I pray God will begin to show a better way. I fear this generation's view of morality and ethics is a time bomb of relationships.
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