Because our social roots have been methodically severed for 80 years now, we assume that’s just how human life operates.
Every generation has to reinvent the wheel—deciding where to live, choosing a social circle, inventing their own traditions, deciding whether family obligations “serve their lifestyle,” and ultimately, choosing whether they want to be religious.
In short, we don’t think generationally.
Culture—shared values and practices, what I often describe as “what we do here”—has been traded for individualism.
Somewhere along the way, after dozens of generations of passing the baton and blessing children with hard-earned wisdom and prosperity, we listened to Rousseau and decided it would be more fair to let everybody begin the race at the starting line instead.
The result? Atomization. Rampant individualism. The death of generational progress in favor of freeing everybody to re-learn everything for themselves (often wrongly). As Bob Dylan so brilliantly yet unintentionally diagnosed our disease, “All I can do is be be me, whoever that is.”
This individualist thinking has majorly crept into the church.
We don’t expect our children to be Christians: we hope they’ll be Christians.
If that doesn’t make sense, consider the difference between parents who expect their kids to get into a good school and build a solid career, versus parents who hope their kids do those things. The commitment level is just different. Expectations oblige the parents to provide structure, discipline, and aid to reach the goal. Hope doesn’t oblige the parents at all.
And if Deuteronomy 6 teaches us anything, it’s that the Bible views generational faithfulness as something that should be expected, not hoped for.
It starts with God placing a condition on His blessings in the Promised Land. The men of Israel were going to have to love and obey God, and they were going to have to teach their sons and grandsons to do the same (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). They were to practice their faith with God, and use their example to teach their sons why they did so, and why it was critically important that their sons do the same (6:17-25).
Having discussed this subject before, I can already hear the responses: “Kids have free will! We can’t make them do anything!”
Yeah, great. Nobody said we could. But is that your response to Deuteronomy 6? “Not fair, God! They choose for themselves! I can’t make them remain faithful in the land.” Thankfully, they weren’t infected with deadly individualism the way we are.
We’re so individualist we don’t think generational faithfulness is something we can even strive for. If it happens because our kids choose it, great. If not, oh well, what else were we supposed to do? (Cue the 4th generation Georgia Bulldog fan who has bought jerseys for all of his children chiming in to tell me that that’s just not how it works.)
That’s not good enough.
Those of us who remained in the church after reaching adulthood are not still here because our parents took away our free will. We’re here because our parents trained our wills. That’s literally what parenting is for.
And for their troubles, other Christians call our parents lucky—lucky that we just so happened to choose to stay in the faith. Sorry, but that’s not how it works.
We have to think generationally. When we do, major changes will result.
We will treat the youth dropout rate like the five-alarm fire that it is
One of the biggest tells that we believe in individualist Christianity rather than generational Christianity is that we know we’ve lost the majority of our young people for decades, and yet we do little more than shrug our shoulders and point out that we can’t force anybody to stay.
Many older Christians—preachers especially—get mad when you point out the decline. Why? If the shepherd left the 99 to save the 1, why are the 45 ignoring the missing 55? If we were serious, the wayward souls in our congregation would be on the prayer list well ahead of the sick and the injured.
But we keep pouring all our efforts into bringing in the lost when we can’t even keep our own in the faith. Every soul brought in the front door is matched (at least) by one sliding out the back door.
When we think generationally, we’ll stop worrying about “sounding too negative” by talking about the problem and start getting serious about doing something different than what we’ve done to get us in this situation.
We will expect our leaders to model generational faithfulness
We’re so committed to individualist Christianity that most don’t even think elders need to raise Christian children (1 Timothy 3:4-5; Titus 1:6). We just don’t think it’s important.
But what could be more important for the future of the church than that we have some people who have figured out how to raise children who remain in the faith? We want presidents who have been successful governors, we want general managers who have been successful managers, so why shouldn’t we want elders who have been successful fathers?
Generational Christianity will seek out the leadership of those who have proven they can develop faithfulness in their own home.
We will raise our expectations for the young
This is where hoping children pick up Bible knowledge and a walk with God diverges most from expecting them to do so. We hope the young take an interest in the Lord—most of them don’t, and the few young men who do are funneled into ministry training. Why?
Don’t we need electricians and mechanics and lawyers and physicians who can teach a Bible class, too? After all, where are our elders going to come from? Where are the Godly women who are going to instill generational faithfulness going to come from?
We have to stop hoping they hang on and start planning for what part of the body they’re going to fill.
We would take extreme care with their influences
If you think you’re going to answer to God for your children’s faithfulness, you’re going to monitor the people they hang out with, the entertainment they watch, and the sites and apps they frequent until they are mature enough to wisely choose their influences for themselves.
Too many Christians dismiss this part of the equation, but faithfulness is often just a matter of loyalty. Either our children will desire the acceptance of their teachers, their friends, and their online community, or the acceptance of God, their parents, and their family of faith.
We cannot keep letting our kids get discipled away from us.
We would treat marriage outside the faith as unthinkable
God could not have been more clear about the costliness of this decision in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 7:3-4, Joshua 23:12-13), but we treat it as (at best) little more than a questionable idea. In generational Christianity, there is no debate to be had.
If my children and grandchildren are going to be faithful, one of the most important things I can do is marry a spouse who will help me strive for that goal and . Doing otherwise would definitively prove generational faithfulness is not really important to me.
Conclusion
Individualist thinking tells every generation to choose. Generational thinking tells the next generation that the choice was already made in our family, and tells them why it is a good choice that they should continue to honor.
Yes, they have to make it their own, but they can do so carrying the blessed baton that was passed down to them, with full intention of passing it down again. Like Israel, if we can’t do this, God will not prosper us.
We have to abandon individualist Christianity in favor of generational Christianity. Our nation depends on it. Our churches depend on it. And, most importantly, our family’s souls depend on it.
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