The family Thanksgiving dinner was finished and the plates had been cleared. The adults sat at the table sharing opinions about some of the current events of the day. Fourteen-year old Chad remained at the table listening with interest as the adults talked. At on point he attempted to express his opinion on a subject, but his mother scolded him. “Just go out with the rest of the kids, Chad. This is an adult conversation.”
How would you have felt if you were Chad? Unfortunately, it’s not an uncommon scenario if today’s families.
Western civilization has gradually embraced the practice of emphasizing individual generations above the larger inter-generational family or community. We even identify these groups with generation-specific labels like Boomers, GenX’rs, Mosaics, etc. It’s as though our capacity to think and process life in the context of a whole community has diminished significantly. This generation—all the generations living at a given time—has been replaced my generation or that generation terminology.
Postmodernism, the dominant worldview behind America’s cultural mood today, influences this separatist attitude. Underlying most postmodern thought is the assertion any ‘truth narrative’ should be rejected as the basis for any view of how the world works. As a result, a postmodern worldview considers the individual to be the supreme authority in matters of relevance. Thus, the current generational disconnect is accepted as normative. That’s because everything is a matter of individual preference. The past has little to do with the present. Yet without a narrative that expresses who we are, why we are here, and how we should relate to each other and our Creator, the generation gap only continues to widen…at a very high cost to all.
Happily there is a growing sense among many young adults that something has been lost without an historical truth narrative. They may not know what that means, but deep down they know that our rights-driven culture in which the individual is elevated over the community somehow feels out of sync.
Even the church—one of the few places in our culture where ALL the generations come together in one place at one time—offers little clarity. Our families walk in the door of the church and are immediately separated into ‘life-stages’ or ‘departments’ with little or no meaningful interaction between them. The church may be multi-generational, but it is far from inter-generational in most cases!
It is this dangerous disconnection and growing restlessness that I want address with your help. I believe God established and ordained a truth narrative in which the generations live with, learn from, and give to one another as a family. This biblical idea of family and the body of Christ is at the heart of this narrative. In this truth is the profound mystery of a singular unit with many parts, yet always one body.
The patriarchs, prophets, apostles and our Lord himself used the term ‘this generation’ to speak of a connectedness and shared life that blesses and benefits everyone of every age. I believe most of us long for that re-engagement of meaningful connectedness for this generation as expressed by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:16. “From him [Christ] the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Tell me what you think. Do you agree that we are a society that is predominantly multi-generational but not very inter-generational? What do you see as the primary obstacles for restoring a relevant and meaningful inter-generational culture in our families, our churches and our communities? Do you have examples of communities or families that are doing it well?
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Cavin. Have an example of something our family did with four other families at the time that Jim and I were raising our family that we believe is the best thing we’ve ever done outside of GrandCamp, which will always be FIRST!! Pressed for time today. Will try to share before end of week.
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Cavin. Have an example of something our family did with four other families at the time that Jim and I were raising our family that we believe is the best thing we’ve ever done outside of GrandCamp, which will always be FIRST!! Pressed for time today. Will try to share before end of week.
I believe it is in spending more time together. Recently, three generations
of the women in my family met for lunch. As we talked, we got into a discussion of geneaology, and also about things that mattered to all three of us. If we hadn’t spent the time together, we would never have had that discussion. It was a sharing of three generations.
Janet, thanks for the comment. It’s good to hear from you. The women in my family did something similar just last week as they went to tea together and shared their stories.
I thoroughly agree! The Bible gives us many examples of the importance of communicating with and influencing and blessing our kids and grandkids. Secular psychologists tell us the same. As a society, as Christians, we need to place a proper emphasis on our kids and grandkids. Thank you for helping make that happen!
Linda
P.S. Would it be OK if I quoted parts of this in my blog? I promise to provide a link back to this post.
LT
P.S. #2 I tried to sign up to receive your blog on e-mail but after filling in all the blanks I could see, I kept getting this message: » 104:API Key can not be blank
Do you know what I’m doing wrong?
LT
The story I wanted to leave earlier on this site I now have time to tell. It is this: For six and a half years. when my husband and I were raising our family, we met with four other families for Bible Study every two weeks all year-long, from September through May, and then usually did one big overnight activity in the summer. We followed the Scripture stories of each weekend’s Catholic liturgy, because we are all of that faith tradition. So, instead of the children going to Sunday School, and the adults going to Adult Bible Studies, parents studied WITH our children all of those years. We took turns hosting this large group (there were 30 of us in all: 10 parents and 20 children, spanning ages from 8-22 when we started). As time went on, many of the college kids even came home some weekends to be with us! We always had lots of food (the kids were active athletes on their school sports teams), and had lots of fun, too! We drew names to allocate members into about five or six discussion groups, which met in various rooms of the host home, after the scriptures of that day were read. Then we came back together to share the highlights of each group’s discussions. We inevitably followed that with an “action” for the week, upon which we all agreed, so that we were putting God’s words into action in our everyday lives.
To this day, we all recall those years with the fondest of our family memories! We supported all of the “family group” kids in their school extra-curricular activities, attending band competitions, football and basketball games, school plays and musicals, and graduations. And as the older ones moved on and eventually married, we began attending all the weddings. We were Christ to one another in the truest sense of the word. It was awesome! And inter-generational! And it worked! And best of all ~ we grew mightily in our relationships with the Lord, and with one another.