​What Happened to the Good Old Days?

A Millennial's Perspective

​I am a millennial Christian. Because of my age demographic and the stereotypes that follow it around, older Christians often ask me:

“So, what’s up with your generation?”
​
“How on earth am I supposed to understand young people these days?”

I never know how to answer these questions, and this inability has bothered me for a while. Part of me feels defensive of my generation. Another part of me genuinely wonders why teenagers and twenty-thirty somethings today are apparently so different from those of decades past. Is my generation and the new “generation Z” filled with worse sinners than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations?

I’m drawn to a passage in Romans where Paul condemns the idea that Jews were holier than Gentiles:

“What then, are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” Romans 3:9-10

Comparing generations might be different than comparing people groups, but I think the principle is the same. Every human being born into this world after the fall was born a sinner. Whether you were born in the 1950s or the 1990s, you are just as much in need of God’s grace as anyone else.

So, if millennials and gen Z are not innately worse than their predecessors, what is the big difference between us? The dividing factor, I believe, is this: we grew up in different cultures—cultures that have a hard time understanding each other.

Those who grew up in the early-mid 1900s grew up in a time of limited focus. 

• When people ate dinner with their families, that’s what they did. Ate dinner. With their families. 
• Children played with their friends, but when they came home, they had separation from the outside world: time to think, process, and ask questions.

Those growing up in the 1980s and after became adults in a time of limitless options. 

• We can eat, have a Zoom meeting, help our kids with homework, and text friends all at the same time. 
• We don’t have to wait. We have instant entertainment and messaging. 
• We are inundated by culture like no other generation before us. Our home no longer shelters us. Culture emanates from our phones, laptops, iPads, and headphones. 
• We have access to everything. 

When struggling teens and millennials hear older Christians reminiscing about “the good old days” where everybody went to church and “Christian” was a positive label, they think, “Well, it must have been nice for you to have had it that easy.” It makes them feel defensive, because they can’t recall days like those. In fact, they’re very skeptical that those days ever really existed, because they know their elders are just as sinful as they are. 

Millennials encounter a fast and furious influx of information, temptation, and worldly agendas that previous generations dealt with at a slower pace. Because private lives are now public through social media and YouTube, younger generations want to “know who they are” so they can portray themselves in a specific and unique way to the vast, watching world. This desire has birthed a strong pop-cultural standard of being “true to yourself” and honest with the world about who you are.

Because of this cultural shift, millennials tend to air their sinful behavior more publicly. Homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, drugs, and other topics that make older generations cringe are no longer “incorrect” in our culture, so younger generations embrace these sins as their “lifestyles.” They consider themselves honest, open, and less judgmental than older people.

Why? Because older generations tended to sin more secretively. Sin is sin, whether it is behind closed doors or flaunted in the streets. Millennials simply tend to be honest, even blunt about their sin. I’m not saying it’s good to flaunt sin. But I do ask you, is it good to hide sin?

The simple fact is, nothing about sin is good, except that it points us to our need for a holy Savior. Flaunting it might seem despicable to a senior citizen, but stashing it under the bed when company comes over is equally as despicable to a millennial.

But what about Christian millennials? Do they flaunt their sin in concordance with pop-culture’s need to be truthful about who they are? Nope. They’re stuck. They have the desire to be honest and open about their struggles, but in many of their churches and homes this is not comfortable.

Millennial Christians feel schizophrenic. We’re more at home in the pop-cultural philosophy that hiding our sins is deceptive, but since (unlike mainstream culture) we identify our sins as sins, we’re ashamed of them. We don’t want to air them in front of older Christians who will be shocked and say “Back in my day, young people would never...” you fill in the blank.

I long to communicate this struggle in the hearts of twenty-thirty something Christians, because it is a cultural struggle not necessarily a spiritual one. Why? Because whether we're living in 2020 or we're all transported back to 1940, people are still people in need of forgiveness. ​

This is the spiritual reality. Cultural views of sin may change because the culture is made up of sinful people who don’t like to recognize sin, but sin itself is just as evil no matter the decade. ​​

Jeremiah warned us long before “the good old days” existed that:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jer. 17:9-17

No matter what their age, Christians should not be shocked by sin.
They should not be shocked by sin in the unsaved world.
They should not be shocked by sin inside their churches and homes. 

In our culture, children are bombarded with sin, and they shouldn’t be left alone to process it by themselves or with their peers because older Christians are more comfortable ignoring tricky issues or acting like Pharisees. ​

• Christian parents: don’t create an atmosphere in your home where your child is frightened to share a sin struggle with you.
• Church leaders: don’t set yourselves up as priests above the common laypeople so that those struggling with burdens of sin and guilt don’t feel they can share those burdens with you.

​The younger generations want to have real conversations. They want to address hard issues like sexual temptation, doubts about their salvation, and their fears of being known as a Christian in a society that flaunts sin. But they’re afraid to do this, for several reasons.

Reason #1: Their honest feelings might be too shocking.

Let’s be honest here. No one wants to end up tacked on to a prayer list inside the church bulletin for all the church ladies to gossip about under the guise of sharing prayer requests. We know how it works. So, we keep our mouths shut and envy the unsaved millennials their freedom of expression. 

Meanwhile, no one counsels us on how to achieve victory over sin in our lives because nobody knows about it. No one points us to biblical answers to our honest questions about the sinful lifestyles around us because we’re too scared to ask them.

Reason #2: They don’t trust you not to reject them.

Trust is something that must be earned through consistent love and sincere relationships. 

• If your child hears you disparaging the sin of someone you know, they may never consider confiding in you that they are tempted in the same area. 
• If a newly-saved young couple struggling with marital problems overhears some older couples discussing how they could never understand someone who would even consider divorce, that young bride probably won’t go to those women for marital counseling. The reason? “That was me you were talking about. If you knew my secret thoughts you’d reject me.”

Reason #3: They don’t think you’ll understand them.

Why, you may ask? Because older people are always raving about how they can’t understand young people these days. And people who can’t put themselves in your shoes surely can’t help you. Also, because older people have a hard time admitting their weaknesses to younger people. ​

• ​If parents never tell their children about their past and present sins, their children won’t feel comfortable confessing theirs to their parents. 
•  If a pastor, church leaders, or members of a church are not humbly honest with their own struggles and temptations, younger members in need of counsel will be wary of laying their own lives bare.

None of us like to be judged when we are trying to be honest.
None of us like to be condemned when we are trying to get help.

The last thing I want to do is to place people into arbitrary categories based on their age. This is just my best attempt to answer the questions older generations have asked me.

What I do want to do is encourage Christians, young, old, and middle-aged, to look at each other and see, not millennials and seniors, but sinners created in the image of God and in need of grace, forgiveness, and encouragement. ​

Not everyone needs to be sharing every sin with every church member. So, what do we need?

We need to be a person who other people trust to show Christ’s love.

Whether you’re over the hill, getting close to its peak, or just starting the hike, realize that people aren’t so very different. We all have corrupted hearts that need continual cleansing and grace. 

​We Christians know this. We just need to act like we know it a little more. Remember Paul’s challenge to the Ephesians:

“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:31-32

Every true Christian has been forgiven, undeservedly, from sin. God asks us to extend that same forgiveness to others. ​

• ​Older Christians: Speak kindly of and to younger people who are facing enormous amounts of temptation in our sinful culture. Don’t make blanket statements of condemnation about a generation that God wants to save. Don’t assume that Christian young people are exempt from the temptations that engulf them in our connected culture. Be aware. Be involved. Be trustworthy.
• Younger Christians: Understand that your elders grew up in a different culture than you and don’t accuse them of being judgmental. Go to them for counsel. Be honest and let them guide you through struggles with sin and temptation. Listen when they answer, and be willing to see past what you think of as outdated or prejudiced to see their true desire to love God and others.  

Teach truth. Call sin, sin. But keep in the back of your mind that you are capable of every sin given the right circumstances and the absence of God’s grace. Remind yourself of that when you meet someone you’re tempted to look down on because of their lifestyle. ​

Tell your children that you struggle with sin like everyone else. Demonstrate through your actions that you hate sin but love sinners like Christ does. Then, they’ll know you love them too, even though they’re little sinners themselves. ​

According to R.C. Sproul:

“We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.”

Knowing this, older Christians should expect sin in the lives of younger believers and prepare themselves to be an example of how to recognize, repent of, and turn from it. ​

Show your younger church members that the church is a safe place to share their struggles and temptations. The body of Christ is designed to work together to strengthen the young in the faith. 

Offer counsel, not condemnation. Stand for Biblical truth, but don’t give God a bad reputation by being afraid to touch the sinners. 

Practice truth with Christ’s love, not your own pride.

The younger generations want to have real conversations and address hard issues without feeling that their honesty is too shocking. They want to know they can trust older, mature Christians not to reject them, yet they are not even sure they will be understood. Whether you're on the younger, gen Z side of this equation or the older, more mature Christian side, how have you made these conversations happen?