Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash
Let us consider the people of Nineveh. Roughly around 760 B.C., the prophet Jonah confronted the wickedness of the city, resulting in a religious awakening and a swing toward monotheism. Thus, the people were spared from judgment.
Fast forward slightly over a hundred years later to the days of Nahum. Wickedness prevailed in the city once again. Most of the people who were old enough to remember the revival of Jonah were gone, and Nahum arrived to proclaim a similar but more elaborate message. This time, they were not spared. Shortly thereafter, in 612 B.C., Nineveh sat in ruins.
It took the Assyrian city five generations; for early Israel, not so much. Flip over the Book of Judges and we find the infamous cycle of rebellion, judgment, repentance, deliverance. Starting with the man Othniel, after he delivered Israel, "the land had rest for 40 years" (Judges 3:11). Then wickedness reigned again, and then came the Moabite oppression. Ehud rose up to deliver the people as the second judge, and there was peace for 80 years. Then came Deborah, whose work ushered in another 40 years of freedom before the cycle started again. Then came Gideon, after whom 45 years of peace ensued, before Israel turned again. Are you seeing the pattern? It took Israel an average of 1-2 generations for the spiritual climate to dry out. May I suggest that the primary reason for these frequent fallouts may be the lack of transmission of the knowledge and fear of God from one generation to the next? How would I guess this? It's the crazy possibility that members of the generation that went through one season of cultural wickedness lived to see the next in 40 years--and probably did nothing about it.
Thus these I believe are the two greatest failures of every generation, which I still see to this day:
1. The failure to impart healthy values to the generation after;
2. The failure to receive and learn important values from the generation before.
On one side, it is irresponsible not to pass on the wisdom, customs, and beliefs that sustained you in life. On the other side, it is arrogant to think that you can figure out this thing called life without the guidance of the past, let alone do it better than they had.
That being said, it is at this point where I must unpack the layers of what we are talking about. At the same time as I am calling to retain the teachings of the past, I am also calling to renew them. We must be both adamant traditionalists and ardent progressives; I don't mean progressive in the postmodern sense (assuming it makes any sense at all), but truly progressive in seeking the renewing of the world. There is a reason why we human cultures propagate endlessly into new generations; so that we don't grow so old that we die of chronic stiffness. It is the job of the young people to birth our long-held value systems into new life, and I say we let them have at it. The problem is that these youngsters, more often than not, don't so much evolve our value system as much as kill it. They kill off more than they have to replace it with.
That's not to say there ought not to be any killing involved, however. Every time something evolves, something needs to die; in order for the rocket to enter orbit, the thrusters need to fall off. You can trust the next generation to be merciless in their critique, but that is all it must be: a critique, not a rebellion. You ought to renovate the house, but ripping it off from over your bed is not such a good idea. It is naïve to think that you can usher in a better world with your tiny brain and 20 years of life experience. You need to be at least a thousand years old to formulate anything that could possibly reach that goal. But good news! By seeking out the successes, failures, and even folk lore of ages past (not to mention your own parents), you can have the wisdom of centuries to augment the energy and imagination of your youth. In a way, you can be bigger than you are. I would also argue that that is what culture ought to be: a wise sage with a young soul.
We are responsible for what we pass on, or fail to pass on, to those who come after us. We are also responsible for learning, or failing to learn, from history. This applies on the large scale of culture as well as the smaller scale of the family unit and the individual. As for me, I am determined to be an exception in these two greatest failures of every generation.