27 September 2019

Have Faith

Young people expect a lot and they are angry and vengeful toward previous generations and often toward God for not meeting their expectations.

Some of my kids find me to be a poor father. I am actually quite a lot like my own father and I think he has been pretty good in the main. Mom was a fine mother as well despite the usual imperfections. My wife and I worked to make sure that we had a better relationship than any of our parents could manage - my parents divorced when I was just entering adolescence and I was determined that I wouldn't do that when it was my turn.  I haven't divorced and my children didn't have to deal with that damaging situation. We generated better circumstances than the previous generation but that just wasn't good enough as far as some of my children were concerned.

It is like climate change.  Children lack any sense of history, especially if their parents never read them Grimm's fairy tales, so they don't understand that things like nasty witches, expanding deserts, damsels in distress, broken world records, simpletons, trends toward heating or cooling, and the powerful preying on the weak have always been with us.  These things are no one person's particular fault and no one person is actually responsible for solving things globally. Individually,
we need to be and do good and better, but "the collective" will always tend toward evil a la the Tower of Babel from that unfashionable Bible.  God typically works on the individual scale, but he will ultimately correct things but do so in a way that might not suit the preferences of short-sighted children.


It's funny - young hellions like Miss Thunberg screech about how terrible adults are, but we know a few things that she can't seem to grasp:  Things work out and Good (actually God) will triumph.  The young have a decided lack of faith on every level. Sadly, they will find themselves with bad results if they continue to ignore the absolute centrality of faith in and action resulting from the goodness of God.

I know I am a pretty bad father who didn't divorce the way I should have and I am not the endless well of resources that every child demands so that they can have a blissful life of ease. However I did learn the lessons my parents and their parents tried to teach me:  God is there and those who stay by Him will enjoy the inevitable victory that He will win.  For my children and their contemporaries, I and my generation falteringly pass this knowledge on to you and you would do well to live your life by it.