Generations
We’ve all heard a lot of talk lately about generations: builders, boomers, busters, millennials, and the upcoming generation Z. I personally like the analysis done by marketing companies rather than sociologists. By this count, we have the Depression Era, born between 1912 and 1921; The GI Generation—aka, the “Great Generation”—born between 1922 and 1927; “the Silent Generation,” born between 1928 and 1945; The Baby Boomers Part 1, born between 1946 and 1954; The 2nd Wave Boomers, born 1955 to 1965; Generation X, born 1966 to 1976; the Millennials, born between 1977 and 1994; followed by Generation Z, 1995 to 2012—altogether, that’s eight generations spanning 100 years. If we have anyone here who was born before 1927, then we officially have eight generations gathered together here at First Pres.
If eight seems like too many—like we’re splitting too many hairs to define age-based identity groups—then we can do what many people do and simplify the scale, reducing it down to four generations: The Silents, the Boomers, The Xers, and the Millennials. Sorry if you fall outside the grid or else object to being thrown in with a group you don’t like to identify with (like me, I don’t count myself a Baby Boomer at all).
Why all this about generations anyway? Because we are evangelical—we are trying reach all generations with the gospel—and that means we have to know the sentiments, the interests, and the significant questions of each generation in order to reach them on their own terms.
In some recent reading, I came across what one author considered the key, significant questions for the Boomers, Xers, and Millennials—the core questions that make them different. The writer claims that the key question for Boomers is “What is true?” For Xers, the key question is “What is real?” And for the millennials, the key question is “What is good?”
Whether or not the generations really parse out that way, these questions reveal the movement of 20th century philosophy, at least in popular thought, and gives us a way of looking at the world that may help us fine tune our ministries.
In fact, we’re going to use these three questions like lenses by which to see not only the differing generations, but Easter Passion narrative. We’re going to walk up and through Easter with these three questions as our lenses.
First, we have “What is true?” the question of the Baby Boomers. Two texts from John’s Gospel:
John 8: 31-32
31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 18: 37-38
37 Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
WHAT IS TRUE?
We all have truth issues, but for the Boomers, this is the key question. It also raises problems, because what constitutes truth has been under assault for, oh, at least 150 years. We inherited ideas of what truth is that continue to shape what moderns call “scientific” knowledge.
1. Historically accuracy. We say something is true if it is historically accurate, meaning not spun or twisted to fit someone’s personal bias or interest. Did it really happen? If so, then it is true.
2. Verifiable. Something is said to be true if it is verifiable, which I take to mean something that is called true from more than one source or perspective. If one witness reports a scene, it may or may not be true, but if two or more witnesses testify to the same event, then it is verified and thereby true.
3. Provable. Usually, this means reducible to mathematical terms. If something is provable—either logically or mathematically—we call it proven, or true.
4. Repeatable. We call a study true if its tests yield the same results again and again. If it is repeatable, it is consistent, reliable, true.
For those interested in truth, the highest good is something like accuracy or excellence in measurement.
Consensual Truth
Still, it is not enough for something to merely seem to be true; there must be a consensus of truth—a true for us within a community—one which everyone agrees to. This leads to the common belief that there is a complete truth—a true for everyone—which undergirds all commerce, politics, education, and law. This kind of truth is in severe crisis, chiefly due to personal truth.
Personal Truth(s)
There is my truth and there is your truth, but no longer a single, overarching truth by which we determine that I am in the right and you are in error because your truth does not align with my truth (and you can forget all about either personal truth being in line with that overarching truth, because the consensus is now that there is no way of knowing that greater truth except through our personal truths).
All Truths are Relative
Your personal truth is true to you because of your personal perspective, but it is wrong for you to assume that what is true for you is true for anyone else, the thinking goes. All humanity is fallen, so we all operate with flawed lenses and partial awareness of truth at best.
No Rulers
Another sense of true is straight, like a wooden board that is perfectly straight is said to be true, or like the flight of an arrow, if perfectly straight, is said to be true. But there is no perfect straight edge with which to compare the straightness of boards. You think your ruler is straight, but from my perspective it is a little bit crooked, and vice versa—all are relatively straight, therefore all pursuit of capital T Truth is all about authority and power—about me insisting that my straight is straight and your straight is crooked. Truth is enforced by power, war, and the narrative of the victorious.
When Pilate, the voice of Roman-world power, asks Jesus, “What is truth?” we hear in his question the collective voice of doubting humanity—modern and postmodern philosophers—resisting and denying the truth if only to maintain the semblance of independence. Pilate—like all doubters—doesn’t see the plain truth right in front of him because he will not see the truth. Truth gets covered up by pretensions to power—masks wielded to hold power against others—and this leads us to our next question.
WHAT IS REAL?
Matthew 6:5
5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
The first characteristic of being real is simply being un-hypocritical. Gen Xers see a world of phoniness, or at least partial phoniness, to which they uphold the high value of being authentic.
The “what is real?” question full incorporates the psychological worldview, wherein being or becoming whole derives from the truth of personal honesty. For these, the “real” question trumps the “truth” question, because people can speak the truth from behind a mask of deception.
The goal is to know who you are, to be self-aware, or “woke,” which means your are other-aware. Your concern is less with advancing your own agenda than it is truly understanding that everyone has an agenda and understanding others’ realities.
For these, authenticity the highest good. In the past 30 years or so, theology has been flooded with the virtues of authenticity and authentic being.
Keeping it Real
To be real is to speak from one’s true, deepest self. We don’t front; we keep it real.
And yet there are problems with this question as well. People may wear masks as ego defenses or as strategies to gain personal advantages, but behind the masks, down there in Reals-ville, what are the inherent realities of humanity?
Let’s keep it real: deep down, humanity is just as full of greed, envy, selfishness, rage, and no-good-ness as we might imagine. Humankind is fallen and flawed, so as all of that “real” emerges, so does a lot of stuff that no one really likes or approves of. Keeping it real has its limitations, and what is real is not necessarily good, which is why we have
another question.
WHAT IS GOOD?
Mark 10: 17-18
17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
Looking for Good
This one is for the Millennials, and it is indeed a profound question, people can be true and real yet not good. Any band of thieves—among themselves—can be truthful and real, but if that’s all the further we look at them, we will miss that they are not good (and we don’t mean merely from one point of view).
Good vs. Different
Millennials have grown up in a world of culture wars, which means a mad fragmentation of values. “Do not judge” has been their chief dictum, their number one commandment, so they have been taught to see all things as equal and thereby equally good.
Without judgment, they have not learned what could be called “good judgment” from poor judgment. Here is good news: he millennials are hungry for wisdom.
How do we come to know what is good?
Millennials don’t really know, because they think of different qualities simply as different, not as better or worse. This can be applied to cultures, lifestyles, sex, and sexuality with equal effect. Things which former generations called bad are simply called “different,” and differences are all to be tolerated. By this logic, people are guaranteed to get burned from time to time, so there re-emerges the question “What is good?” because what is good is really needed, desired, and longed for.
As to what is good, Jesus offers the key question:
“Why do you call me (or anything or anyone for that matter) good?”
What do mere human beings even know of what is truly good? Yes, we have apparent goods and relative goods as serves our own purposes, but what is really, truly Good with a capital G? According to Jesus, only God: God alone is good in that way.
The further good news is that the Millennials, unlike the former generations, have begun to ask a wonderful question; namely,
“What is Godly?”
There is great hope in this question, as it is the starting point for all who seek God.
Unlike the search for generic truth or the quest to become personally real, we know that seeking God and his kingdom can truly lead us somewhere worthwhile! †