Kids These Days

In today’s gospel, Jesus leads off his lesson with, “Today’s generation is an evil generation.” I am not one to critique our Lord and Savior, but in my experience as a teacher, it’s hard to sell any major life advice in a message laced with the “kids these days” mindset. Judging a younger generation for eating tide pods (for a purely hypothetical example) is completely justified, but further alienates the rebellious youth. Blaming older generations for our problems today hypocritically ignores the fact that they too were once brash and reckless, and like every other generation were the product of their respective upbringings. Every generation, while young, feels misunderstood and underestimated, but then reaches an age where they have hard-earned wisdom to pass on, only to be frustrated when they find an audience filled with rebellious, misunderstood youth. Everyone looks to blame both older and younger groups for the problems we face, and forgets to look for solutions. But this is nothing new. The quote: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners; contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter” is attributed to Socrates over 400 years before Christ. It’s almost as if human history is a great reminder of how flawed we are, and how bad we can be at learning from our mistakes.

So when criticizing an entire generation, is Jesus being too harsh? Not a chance. He is pointing out the importance of remembering our past clearly, and recognizing the impact our biases have on memory. Jesus reminds the crown of Jonah’s repentance at Nineveh. He warns them that, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid to waste and house will fall against house” as we have seen time and time again (I’m paraphrasing). He challenges them to remember their past and to learn from it. Jesus’ message is simple: it is easy to judge and divide, but it is so much more important that we empathize and understand. It is important to learn from our history while recognizing how flawed we all are. As Mary Schmich said (much more recently than Socrates), “You too will get old. And when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.” Today’s readings are a great reminder to respect the imperfect wisdom of older generations, while also appreciating the eagerness and imagination of the “kids these days,” even if they are a bit impulsive or arrogant…

Author: TJ Howard, Science Department