Boomers, Millennials, and Generational Recovery

How to swap margarine for butter

A couple of years ago I read Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food.” This fascinating book changed my thinking about food and all its effects, but it also opened my eyes to another truth—the power of tradition and things handed down.

One of Dr. Shanahan’s primary arguments was that for millennia mankind has figured out how to eat to get the nutrients we need. Different climates require radically different ways of getting those nutrients, but somehow people always found a way and passed that knowledge on.

Then, with the 20th century rise of “experts,” we all abandoned the centuries of traditional knowledge in exchange for the latest idea backed by some corporate sponsorship. We stopped trusting our parents and grandparents and started listening to the radio, tv, and now the internet.

For example, butter, eaten daily by your grandparents, great grandparents, great great… and so on, suddenly became dangerous. It should be replaced with margarine, we were told. Google “Danger of margarine” if you want to see just how disastrous this recommendation is. And this is but one of countless examples of awful, even deadly ideas that gained a footing because we abandoned traditional knowledge.

Nutrition is only one way in which we abandoned tradition, though. The ways of life our society has come to know post-1930 or so is radically different than the ways of life humans knew for hundreds of years prior.

We’ve abandoned traditional knowledge about the value of the family beyond just the nuclear. We’ve abandoned traditional knowledge about masculinity and femininity. We’ve abandoned traditional knowledge about children. We’ve abandoned traditional knowledge about debt. We’ve abandoned traditional knowledge about the value of hospitality. The list could go on.

As nutrition has shown us, sometimes our backwards, out of touch, tech-illiterate, supposedly less intelligent great grandpa and grandma may have known some things that we don’t.

Here’s why understanding this can help today’s generations relate to one another.

Countless words have been said about the animosity between Boomers and Millennials. Gen X and Gen Z are quieter in these discussions, but all four living generations are out of step with each other to varying degrees. These divisions affect the ways we live, what we value, what we want to see from the church, and more.

Some of this is inevitable, as young people and their predecessors are not the same and will not always see eye to eye. But the part that is not inevitable should be our focus. We can do something about that.

What can we do? Realize we’re all figuring this thing out as we go.

There is an arrogance in younger people that thinks their predecessors got everything wrong, and they themselves have all the answers.

However, there is also an arrogance in older people that insists they did not make any mistakes and any negatives in society were somebody else’s—usually “those kids’”—fault.

Our predecessors cut off the tether of tradition, let us drift off to find our way on our own in the sea of postmodernism, and said “Good luck!” before living out their days on the solid ground they inherited. Now we’re so entrenched in this way of doing things the older laugh at the younger for not knowing what the older neglected to teach, as this loathsome meme shows:

Why is it funny, though? Boomers were the first to feel the brunt of that lack of direction, and for that younger generations should give them grace.

It only makes sense many mistakes were made while navigating those uncharted seas. For that older generations should be the first to admit that, even though they may have been doing their best, they got some things wrong. They made some mistakes for which their children and grandchildren are left to bear the consequences.

They are the generation in which Sunday youth sports took hold. They are the generation in which the church followed the culture’s lead on things like fornication, divorce, smutty entertainment choices, the removal of God from education, and more.

Again, they should receive some measure of grace as they were left by their predecessors to limp along in the dark. But they also need to be able to look back and say, “I would do such and such differently” and “We assumed this was what we were supposed to do, but now we know better.”

Instead, there is often a fierce defensiveness. As one lady at a recent Gospel meeting defiantly said, “As parents, we did everything right.” But we can see the world around us. If everything had been done right, society would not be in absolute decay and our churches would not be shrinking generation by generation. The quickest way to lose respect is to insist your record is spotless when everybody can see the spots.

More importantly, it often seems the goal is not to help the successors learn or to make a better path for their grandchildren, but rather to defend their own name. But the only way forward is to stop caring about who’s to blame and start trying to get things right.

As a young person, it’s easy to make the same mistake, finding blame and lining up the complaints. But again, we have to give grace in that these are people who were dealt a bad hand. It is not the Boomer’s fault his parents swapped margarine for butter, and holding it against the Boomer is unfair and unbecoming. In fact, the Boomer is suffering the consequences of that decision even though it was not his fault. In a lot of ways we shouldn’t be upset at them, but for them.

In sum, it has to stop being about who’s right but rather what’s right.

The best way to bring the generations together is for young and old to have the humility to realize we have been left to rebuild tradition on our own, and we’re going to need each other to do it.

The older should realize that though they did not receive traditional knowledge, they did learn some things from experience along the way and should share them—even the bumps and bruises of their mistakes. The younger should realize they don’t have all the answers, and though they may rightly see errors in some things that were done before, we will need guidance to help right the ship.

It is not unlike 2 Kings 22, when the book of the Law was found under Josiah’s guidance, or when Ezra read the Law to the resettlers in Nehemiah 8-9. When people realized how badly things had gone astray, some of which was their fault but much of which was their predecessors’, they did not set about divvying up blame. They repented and did better.

The best thing young and old can do today is to repent and start charting a better path. The worst thing we could do is continue to make each generation keep having to figure things out for themselves. Let’s work together to start rebuilding traditional wisdom that will last long after anyone remembers what a Boomer or Millennial is.

P.S. - My new 13 week guide to Mark’s Gospel is out now! You can buy at Focus Press or Amazon.