OK, Zoomer
The folly of dismissing the wisdom of our elders
“I would not do that.”
This was the advice of my older friend, Bill, regarding a change I wanted to make in my first year as senior pastor of my church. I was 30 and a young leader and eager to bring life to this struggling congregation. Bill, who passed away a few years ago, became a father figure and mentor. He pastored several congregations and was, at this time, engaged in interim ministry. He was the interim pastor of our church before I became the pastor.
Yet I decided to do what I was going to do anyway. Bill, I thought, was a nice, kind man, but steeped in the old ways of doing ministry. He was old enough to be my grandfather.
I regretted that choice. Thankfully, it wasn’t a big enough change to hurt my leadership long term, but it did serve as a painful lesson: don’t dismiss the wisdom of your elders.
That was almost two decades ago. I’m kind of in the middle space now, where I find myself still receiving wisdom from older, wiser friends and dispensing wisdom to students, friends, and my house full of my own teenage kids. Yet I’m disquieted by a sort of society-wide resistance to received wisdom. It’s the “ok boomer” reflex we have toward ideas or opinions that are older than six months.
I hear it sometimes in Christian discourse about some of the wise men from the late twentieth century. What they say: “They did good work, but this is a new era, a new context, and they don’t have much to say about what we are trying to do today.” Think J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, Chuck Colson, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Tim Keller, Richard Land, Adrian Rogers, John Stott... well, I could go on.
I hear it in the discourse often about sports, which is a passion of mine. Every new exploit is the greatest of all time or the worst of all time. I hear it in the conversations about politics, where I’m sometimes told by some younger thinkers: “Ronald Reagan’s conservatism doesn’t work anymore,” And I’m thinking, well, I still think pro-life, pro-family, religious liberty, peace through strength, and free markets are pretty good things.
Of course, times do change. New challenges replace old challenges. We should learn and adapt. What’s more, older folks should heed what Paul urges Timothy in his leadership: “Don’t let anyone despise your youth (1 Timothy 4:12).” I am quite bullish on this generation, especially this up-and-coming generation of Christians.
Still I think we should not throw out the wisdom of our elders. Scripture has a lot to say about this. Consider Proverbs 23:22, which urges: “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.” This can refer to actual parents, but I believe it might also refer to moral and spiritual fathers and mothers. Why listen? Well, as Job 12:12 says, “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”
Age doesn’t always translate to wisdom. We all know old folks who are unwise. But in the aggregate, there is an earned insight that can only be acquired through experience. My pastor friend had been where I had been and knew that the decision I was about to make was foolish. He’d seen that movie before. This is why gray hair in the Bible is not seen as a liability but as an asset (Proverbs 16:30. We should see it this way as well.
The best young voices I know consult their elders before making a huge decision. They study history before considering new ideas. They are humble about their own strength and impact. Timothy didn’t chafe under the mentorship of Paul. Paul flourished alongside Barnabas. Elisha asked for double the wisdom of Elijah.
The truth is that the church needs the next generation with their bold ideas and innovative strategies. But we also need the wisdom of the elders. The nation and the world need an intergenerational, unified church. Let’s say no to “ok boomer” and say no to the cranky dismissal of youth.
Here are a couple of my recent articles. The Dispatch asked me to write a piece reflecting on Senator Ben Sasse’s cancer diagnosis. Here’s a bit of what I wrote:
To many, this may come across as pie-in-the-sky, a comforting myth that helps you get away from the cold, hard reality of death. But Christians really believe there is another world coming, that this broken reality will give way to a world made right by the one who made it. Christians really believe that because Jesus rose again after his death, we too will rise again, body and soul. This is the hope about which pastor Tim Keller wrote in his final days. It’s what allowed Dietrich Bonhoeffer to whisper, before he was executed by the Nazi government, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.”
The hope of the eternal doesn’t erase the reality of cancer in a fallen world. True Christian hope is not flippant about death. The 11th chapter of the Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus, standing before the rotted corpse of his friend Lazarus, weeping and overcome with rage. Christian theology teaches that death is an aberration, an intrusion into God’s good creation, the work of an unseen enemy. It is an attack against God himself, who fashioned humans in his image. Even the most devout Christian doesn’t welcome a terminal diagnosis, doesn’t shrug when loved ones are taken early. Because we see humans as God sees them, we are repulsed by death, sickened by violence, and must be defenders of human life.
Sasse rightly pledged to fight his cancer and we should all pray that God, through the human instruments of advanced medicine, heals his body and gives him many more years. Death isn’t natural—to fight death with the materials of God’s creation—is the natural thing. Yet, the inevitability of what comes for us can be faced with an otherworldly kind of joy.
You can read more here.
I also wrote for World on the 50th anniversary of the rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the most evil regimes in human history. It’s a sober reminder of the reality of evil and of the tragic fruit of Marxism and communism:
A half century later, we rightly recoil at one of the worst genocides in the 20th century at a time when the term “genocide” is cheaply thrown around by activists. It’s a stark reminder of the logical end of the Marxist philosophy that promises utopia but only delivers suffering and death on a mass scale.
Today, too many, even in America, are indifferent to the idea of communism. A recent poll showed that 34% of Americans under 30 had a favorable view of the totalitarian ideology. And so many more are open to proposals that reflect communism’s softer cousin, socialism. The newly minted mayor of New York, for instance, has spoken fondly of the “warmth of collectivism.”
The only conclusion is that we’ve forgotten recent history. The 20th century reveals the mass brutality and suffering brought by Marxism, with at least 100 million dead and many more millions consigned to a miserable existence. Cambodia’s killing fields are just one snapshot of a brutal portfolio.
Ronald Reagan was right to call communism “the focus of evil in the modern world.” There is a reason that everywhere it is put into practice, Marxism seeks to destroy Christianity. Christianity elevates the dignity of the human person and orients the heart toward one another and toward the Creator. Communism destroys the conscience, treating people as cogs in a system, forcing conformity to the state, which is ultimate.
Read more here.
I thought I’d also mention some books I’m currently reading. This year I decided to bone up on some leadership ideas, so first in that pile is The Essential John Wooden.
I’m listening to 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How it Shattered a Nation.
And, every morning with my Bible reading, I’m walking through A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life
Lastly, a few more reviews of my book In Defense of Christian Patriotism dropped. One by Jon Woodyard of Southwest Baptist University and another for Providence by Michael Lucheese, a former Capitol Hill staffer and assistant editor of Law and Liberty.