Someone has said “wisdom is what you get just after you need it.”
That’s because wisdom often comes from making mistakes. Unfortunately, after having gotten wisdom the hard way, a person may never face the same problem again. Thus the only value of the wisdom gained is to pass it on to the young so they won’t make the same mistakes.
That’s important because many wrong turns simply can’t be corrected in a person’s own lifetime. Wisdom from those kinds of mistakes is worth passing on. It would be immoral not to.
Today though we have a generation gap that prevents the inter-generational transfer of wisdom.
Back in the 60s the “generation gap” was a novelty. Now we take it for granted– as if it were normal.
But think back if you can to the 60s when the generation gap was still new. The Hippies of that time were notable for two things: One was their rejection of the older generation and the other was their inability to pass on their values to the next.
The disconnect with the younger generation explains why we have no Hippies today, while the disconnect with the older generation brought about a regression to inferior ways of thinking and living. A young generation was destined to repeat the mistakes of its fathers and mothers. Diseases that had almost become unknown began to reappear within the Hippy population.
The same was and is true of spiritual diseases. Alienation between young and old results in a series of Hippy-like generations, cut off from both past and future. Although technology works to obscure the decline, society becomes more and more primitive.
People react to the preceding observations in two stereotypical ways. Some react with soberness.
Others retreat into denial. They become furious rather than admit they are deeply alienated from both their parents and their children. To them, the generation gap is normal– it just has to be!
But the present-day alienation between young and old IS a deep wound.
Thinking it’s normal makes the wound incurable.
–Bill Brewer
Ps 71:18 Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.
Ps 145:4 One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts.
Dt 32:7 Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.
Tags: generation gap, teenage mystique, wisdom
