Did Half-feral, Wildling, Gen-X Fumble the Ball?
I half joke about my Generation, X (which is the coolest gen name there ever was), being raised as half-feral wildlings, which is kind of true. We brag about how we were oft left to fend for ourselves like no other generation because before us they had moms at home and after us they had figured out organized child-care. Being, half-feral wildlings, however, had an incredibly bad downside. As a generation we did a terrible job of raising our own kids. Sorry, millennials, but the lion’s share of what you get a bad rep for is our fault.
We didn’t want you to be left in a “Lord of the Flies” survival of the fittest situation and we also wanted to live vicariously through your childhood by giving you everything our parents couldn’t afford to give us. At the same time, we kind of turned off the rule system which generations before us had handed down. We didn’t make you do a lot of things we had to do if you didn’t want to.
One of those things was church. Now, obviously there was something missing by the time we were growing up. Most of my generation decided church and knowing God just wasn’t all that important once we were adults making our own choices. Maybe we saw how some of our parents were 60’s radicals in their youth and we branded their later conformity to traditional Christianity as hypocritical? I don’t know, my parents came of age in the 50’s.
Whatever it was, there was a huge disconnect between the people of my parent’s generation- us, the untamed mullet-wearing, hard rock listening, wildlings of the 70s & 80s- and the people who became adults in this century. Somewhere along the line, a lot of us dropped the ball.
Paul addresses this concept in 2 Timothy 1:3-7. I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
And a bit further down in 2:1-2. You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.
The ball has, certainly, been dropped somewhere along the way in our culture. I encourage all of us, whether you are a “silent generation”, “baby-boomer”, “Gen-X”, “millennial”, or even “Gen-Z” or those coming after, let’s work hard to pick the ball back up and pass it on, even more so than our grandparents did because we’ve lost ground and it will take extra work to regain it.