I remember (from personal experience too, not just reading magazines or watching movies) President Dwight Eisenhower, 19 cents a gallon gasoline, living rooms without televisions, record albums in mono, milk bottles on the porch, and objective reporters. Wow. That was a long time ago!
One might wonder, therefore, why this distinguished old gentleman
is still involved with kids? Take just the last week. Among our other duties, Claire and I served as judges for a few rounds of the regional home-school speech and debate contests down in Lincoln. A few days later, I spent a morning presenting “A Theology of Children's Ministry” to Kristin Gray's superb team of parents, teachers and youth assistants over at Eagle's Nest Church. On Tuesday, I gave a talk to a lunchroom full of home school students and their Moms who are involved with Classical Conversations, then did another hour with the older students talking about Christian activism and the development of a thoroughly Christian worldview. And just now I've come from a luncheon meeting with a young man trying to decide (after a stint in the military) just what he wants to do with his life.And, of course, there was this week one other very important activity concerning kids – one that we've been engaged in for so many, many years – the sidewalk counseling in which we tried to dissuade young men and women from going into the Bellevue abortion mill to have their unborn babies killed. (Our current team takes Monday mornings. It includes Claire and I, Ruth Denzler, Dick Wilson, Quint Coppi and Mark Morin.)
But I haven't yet answered the question about the age differential. After all, why is someone who fondly remembers when hula hoops and Pez made the American scene; whose boyhood was thrilled with the Mantle/Maris home run race; who remembers not only Woodstock and the “Summer of Love” but “The Day Music Died” – why is such an old-school cat like that trying to impact today's youth? (By the way, if you're a “youth” yourself reading this LifeSharer letter, you can go Google these items to see what I'm talking about!)
Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. But it's not popular. Because it goes against what modern sociologists, educators and other pontificating pelicans have told us for the last 50 years or so; namely, that the much-ballyhooed “generation gap” is something natural to human society and thus, an inescapable reality.
I deny that. Indeed, I maintain that the “generation gap” is only a modern invention, and a doggone sinister one at that. And like other inventions of its era (the Edsel, the 8-track tape, LSD and dry shampoo spray), we should reject it as a bad job...
Check it out the rest of the April LifeSharer letter. You'll find over on this page of the Vital Signs Ministries web site.
