Thu, 2008 Jan 10

Generations

Posted in General at 03:57 by jmorgan

Something I hear from Christians a lot, especially middle-age or so, is discussions of how much worse (rude, etc.) today’s kids are than those in the past. I’ll grant that, being twenty-something, I cannot speak with particular authority as to whether youth are getting any more obnoxious, worse-behaved, etc. Having studied a bit of history, I’m very skeptical of any “Those were the good old days” stories.

More importantly, to me, is how this attitude attacks people at one of the points in their lives when they most need encouragement. I had the blessing of parents and some other adults who were always very encouraging to me, but during high school I saw in one of my friend’s life, in particular, how the adults in his life always tore down “his generation”. Everything that could be attributed to his generational group was at least questionable. His response, naturally, was to try out most of the things his parents claimed to be evil about his generation, never mind that these activities (smoking, cussing, rock music) were quite common in their generation. The good news, I suppose, was these adults were so stuck on those things (none of which I have any moral issue with) that they didn’t get around into driving him into, say, murder. Hatred of them, probably.

At what point in one’s life do you look at kids and teenagers and stop seeing their potential, indeed, stop seeing great things they’re doing right now, and focus instead on your perception of what’s wrong with their generation? I hope that I never get to that point. I want to be excited about what each new generation can bring.

Maybe it’s because I’m at the stage in my life where I want kids. A lot of the folks I know who whine about “today’s teenagers” seem to regret having children. But maybe the causality is reversed. Perhaps it’s because all they did was whine about their children’s friends and culture that those same children go through so many struggles later in life.

Or, I could be full of shit. But, I’d rather err on the side of encouragement, at least in theory. In practice, I maybe tend to err the other way. Uh-oh, introspection.