Yesterday as my friends and fellow officers were descending 3 Peaks in Japan (pictures will be posted soon), one of them made the comment, "Our economy and our entertainment industry completely revolve around adolescent girls." The more I thought about this, the more I realized that it is true to an extent. It's not just adolescent girls though, it's the young in general. Americans idolize youthfulness and the younger generation so much that, it is not uncommon for Americans to enter a "mid-life" crisis at age 40 wishing they could be young again. Now even more absurd than the "mid-life" crisis is the "quarter-life" crisis which some people in my generation, "the twenty-somethings," are supposedly encountering. Even if you have not experienced something as ridiculous as a "quarter-life" crisis, the fact remains that in general, we (evangelical Christians included) have made much of what it means to be young instead of looking forward to and admiring what it will be like to be the older generation.
This is how the Hebrew culture worked. The younger generations placed the oldest generation on a pedestal. The oldest generation was the one that had fought the fight and proven themselves faithful to God in the face of obstacles and trials. They had wisdom to give because they had lived life and had by the grace of God, overcome it's challenges. They knew God better because they had known Him longer. They were the ones who were responsible for passing down the stories of God to the younger generations. The Hebrews did not believe that youth had much to offer besides physical strength. Proverbs 20:29 says, "The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old." The pinnacle of one's life was not twenty-five, instead the pinnacle was when one could pass on wisdom gained from a fruitful life to the younger generations. The old were not cast aside to live out the rest of their days in a nursing home, so that their kids could selfishly live out their youthful pleasures. Instead, the old were kept close-by and revered. Their job was to teach the younger generations the things of God.
I put these pictures up of my grandparents because they have been a great example to me of what it means to follow Christ in this generation. I seek their advice regularly. I not only look up to them, but also look forward to being in their shoes one day!
I'll end this with Job 12:12 "Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days."
