Someone has described the four ages of man this way: You believe in Santa Claus; you don’t believe in Santa Claus; you are Santa Claus; and you look like Santa Claus. Well my beard is white, my tummy has “done-lap-disease,” and every December little children keep staring and pointing at me while anxiously whispering excited words to a smiling mother. I guess this places me in the last age of man
A more scholarly division of adulthood by Dr. Win Arn suggests five stages of adulthood: emerging adults (18-30 yrs.); young adults (30-50 yrs.); middle adults (50-70 yrs.); senior adults (70-80 yrs.); and elderly adults (80+ yrs.). I suppose I prefer this description of the age groups because it puts me solidly in middle age and not the last stage of man! The American Board of Family Practice indicates you are middle-aged if you: “are between 46 and 65; think more about the past than the future; don’t recognize the names of the new music groups; need a day or two to recover from strenuous exercise; and worry about having money to take care of future medical needs.” Obviously they forgot one of the greatest indicators – you are middle aged when you rely heavily upon your grandchildren to explain the newest technological devices i.e. how to get new apps for the iPad you just bought from Radio Shack!
I have looked at how various generations function and interact with one another and my greatest concern is not how one divides the ages, but how one gets the various age groups to operate cohesively and not divisively. This may require tuning back the rhetoric. For example, one person of a former generation commenting on younger individuals said, “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.” You may have thought those words were lifted from current prose. The words in fact are attributed to Hesiod of the 8th century B.C. Generational tension is not new! It goes way back!
Throughout history various age groups have always had to work at cohesiveness by communicating, respecting, and learning from one another. In the period of my youth, “the turbulent 1960’s,” there was a lot of discussion about the “generation gap” and very little emphasis upon how the various generations needed to connect to one another. Too often the notion is that younger generations do not want to connect with gray, white, or in my case – bald heads! Research does not support that belief. When PBS did a series entitled “American Family: Journey of Dreams” they revealed, “One common misconception is that they [youth] most admire celebrities --athletes, actors, or musicians. A Nickelodeon survey found quite different results. In their study, 80 percent of young people named their parents and 19 percent named their grandparents as the people that they admired most. Recent research has found that feelings of connectedness with family, other adults, the community, and social institutions greatly contribute to the health of American youth.” They added, “Researchers further found that even when a parent is not available, connectedness to another adult is highly protective, as are informal community networks, and connectedness to social institutions.”
Generations connecting with one another were assumed in the early church. Paul wrote to Timothy to “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example to those who believe” (1 Timothy 4:12). As a young minister it was assumed he would engage with various age groups. He was instructed about interacting with various generations and genders, “Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger as brothers, the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all purity” (5:1-2). The early church would have looked with distain upon churches segregating by generational divisions Cp. Titus 2:1-8. Generations learn from one another as they interact, understand, and learn to appreciate one another.
Here is a novel idea, begin by acknowledging someone from another generation. A simple greeting is a start. Look for someone other than your peers with which to spend some time. How about sharing a meal with one another? Engage in conversation and ask them about themselves (what they do, like, think, etc.). When you attend church, you could sit in the section where the old or young folks sit. God won’t mind! He loves to hear praise from every generation and to see them love one another.
