A Unique Generation
1950’s Baby Boomers grew up in a unique age. We have seen it all: the Family Friendly Moral decade; the Radical Anti-Establishment, Free Love decade; the Do It If It Feels Good, You Only Live Once decade; the Me First, Only I Count decade; and throughout all of it we saw a real, and active, creator of the universe, miracle wielding, because-I-said-it would-happen God.
The Next Greatest Generation
The stage was set for us in the decade prior to our birth. Our parents were part of the greatest generation, our fathers were the war heroes of World War II and the Korean War. The end of the war brought a new prosperity to the country, and with a nation of booming babies a decade of family friendly, father knows best media programming emerged. Moral-centered half-hour entertainment featured families, doctors, western heroes, boys and their dogs, red-headed comedians and more. Even our comic books were scrubbed clean by the Comics Code of Authority and Congress swept the threat of a Communism takeover out of the country.
A Healthy Dose of Bible: At Home or Church or School
But 1948 was a particularly significant year prior to our birth. Several events in that year would have eventual profound impact on our beliefs. Our parents were largely practicing Christians. During the war wives prayed for absent husbands involved in a conflict thousands of miles away, while men in foxholes prayed for miracles for themselves and their brothers. So by the 1950’s, reunited once again in the land of the brave and the free, grateful parents introduced their children to a good and great God. We attended Sunday School whether we wanted to or not. We were the last generation where Sunday School lessons still crossed over into public schools in our reading and history lessons, our music, our opening morning prayers. We were familiar with God, Christ his son, and all of the Biblical heroes and their stories. But a couple of religiously significant events happened in 1948 that would expand that culture.
God is Still in the Miracle Business
In May of 1948, the U.S. and England led the United Nations into a vote that would recognize the former state of Palestine as the new state of Israel. A nation that had not existed for nearly 1900 years suddenly and abruptly popped into existence. A new nation of Jews who spoke the old language and practiced the old Judean faith from the law and the prophets just as they did 1900 years ago. The significance of this took many of us years to realize. It did not take our God by surprise. I have a 1919 Schofield Bible. There is an interesting note at the bottom of the first chapter of Isaiah that reads: “While many in this age believe the prophet is speaking to them when he talks about a future Jerusalem in a modern Israel. And while many will find this hard to believe, he is actually speaking to future Jews who will occupy a real future Israel. God says this will happen, and this will come to pass in His time. When, no man can know.” I keep this gristled old bible as proof that the things God says will come to pass, do indeed, come to pass.
God’s Word is Still True and All Men Still Liars
Also in 1948 the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls ended speculation that the Bible was a recent manipulated construct of men. From the early 1900’s, learned men were instructed by “higher critics” that like men, who evolved from monkeys, the Bible was not the inspired word of God, but a collection of myths and convoluted histories that evolved too. They were told that devious men changed and edited text over the years to manipulate a religion by recreating its meaning. Various humanists over the years alleged that everyone from Constantine to Pope John conspired to add and delete text at will or cover up gnostic texts they said were part of the original. In 1948, the son of Edgar Caycee, a medium from Virginia Beach called ‘the sleeping prophet’, published a book about his late father and his belief in Reincarnation. The son, also named Edgar, alleged that his father believed men lived multiple lives and that the original Bible proved it. He said the Nicine and Trent Councils among others ‘edited out’ all references to reincarnation from the Bible in the late third century, A.D. I mean, without this confirmation, Caycee’s thousands of ‘previous life’ readings for a lifetime of customers could be called into question as fiction. How embarrassing it was to make that statement in 1948, months before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It would take years to carefully discover that the entire old testiment was here and in multiple copies. And it did not include gnostic or heretic texts. But most amazing of all, the texts were sealed more than 100 years before Christ was born. Critics like Caycee were proven wrong. Higher Critics who ‘assumed’ scriptures like Mica, or Isaiah that gave specific prophecies about Christ were written well after he was born, were left proven wrong again. The comparison between text from 100 B.C. and present day Hebrew text from which the English Bibles of our day are derived, are, if not exact, are only minorly not so, with no discrepancies in doctrine or meaning. Archeology as well as biological sciences brought more and more proof of the Bible as God’s truth from the late 1950’s to the present. For most baby boomers this brought more conviction that God is real.
The Last Generation Without Free Love
Our heroes were noble, moral, God-fearing. We were ten years old or maybe teens when the world began to look crazy. Young adults wore long hair and beads, kissed everyone except the police. They filled the streets with noise and nudity. They popped pills, smoked dope, drank or shot themselves into oblivion. And except for communes never had children. Abortion became a word in school. Bibles and prayer were banned from school. Vietnam was a place perpetually in the news. We were too young to understand much of what all the ruckus was about, and thus, never bought into any of it. We raised our families, trying largely to pass on ideas and values that seemed largely out of step with the rest of America. Some of us have successfully generated yet a third generation of conservative Christians.
The Quiet Generation
A number of analysts have called the Baby Boomers of the 1950’s, a leaderless generation of followers. I would not go that far. If we have a third generation of Christian conservatives in a hostile progressive world it is not without leadership. What it was, however, was quiet leadership, not by the vocal antics we witnessed of the generation ahead of us in the 60’s, but practical leadership by example.
Bullied Right Out of the Debate
If we have failed to grasp the leadership reins of the country then it is because we have allowed the most raucous among us, the most vocal, to have their say, loud and long. It’s not that we agreed with abortion — but other than defending our pro-life beliefs we were told it was “illegal” to impose our beliefs on others. While we believe in heterosexual marriage only between one man and one woman we were called intolerant and bigoted if we did not allow others the American freedom to make other choices. We held our own beliefs, struggled at times to relay them to our own loved ones, and struggle now to fit into an America we barely recognize.
Like the Turtle: We May Be Slow, But We Are Sure
If, in this present world, we are having any success in keeping our Christian values and expanding them into our extended family, it is only because we know our faith is real. Our God is real. And. As we exercise our obedience, so He extends His faithfulness. And therein lies the key to America’s future. As we reach and teach our families and friends, hearts are converted one person, then one family at a time.
One With God IS the Majority
We didn’t destroy communism in Vietnam; we couldn’t have nuked it out of Russia. However it collapsed on its own like a house of cards. No
matter how loud or chaotic the current stock of rebels are, their socialist causes without divinity behind it will fail as it always has. Love and charity coupled with family and responsibility has always overcome all chaos. It transformed a nation 200 years ago with God’s help. And if we continue to partner with Him, will do it again.
The Way Back
God told us how to get back; He told us how to get our nation back. It doesn’t involve politics or voting. And we don’t have to shout down others or force them (as they do) to conform. His instructions to His own are simple:
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14
