My Father's Generation: The Great Ones

Last week I encountered one of the "great ones." My neighbor across the street has had her father and mother visiting them for a few weeks, and I had an opportunity to talk with Bill, her 80-something father one afternoon. By the time I was done listening to him I had tears in my eyes for a number of reasons and I walked away fully aware of why Tom Brokaw entitled his book about this generation "The Greatest Generation."

You see, Bill was in the Air Force during World War 2, and he told me some of his stories and talked about the price that his generation had paid to secure freedom for succeeding generations. He specifically talked in detail about the Normandy invasion (D-day) and his role as an Air Force photographer, etc. As he did so, I was stunned at the cost in lives that was paid on just the first day of the invasion that eventually set Europe free. Although historians are not agreed on exact figures for casualties, there is agreement that several thousand allied troops died on just the first day of the invasion. And total US military deaths for WW2 approached 300,000 and the total for deaths (civilian and military) from WW2 is about 61 million people! I knew these facts at one time, of course, but they were just facts for a history exam until I got older! Now as I hear my father or people like Bill talk about things like the Great Depression and World War 2, I marvel at the strength that men and women of this generation exhibited.

So I have pondered what made my father's generation so great. I don't have a lot of answers to this, but I do know this: my father's generation was the last values- or principles-based generation in in the Western world. They were the last generation to believe that there were things worth dying for and that the good of the whole outweighed one's personal fulfillment, rights, etc. Beginning with my generation, western culture shifted to what J.P. Moreland and others call a "thin culture" (see his book, Kingdom Triangle). A thin culture is not values/principle-based, but instead focuses on individual comfort, pleasure, happiness, etc.

So what does this have to do with simple church? Well, I am not sure, but I do know that the Kingdom of God has always been based on values and that unless those values (i.e., the character and will of God) inform and shape our behavior we will be indistinguishable from the culture around us. I also know that many voices are predicting much suffering, even for the western world, in the days ahead (economic collapse, famine, terror, etc.). Will the believers in the generations following The Great Ones be able not just to survive but shine like stars under such circumstances? We will, if we heed Andrew Murray's words (from his book God's Will: Our Dwelling Place).

"The first concern of most Christians in trouble is to be delivered from it. This may not be the most important thing to be concerned with. The one great desire ought to be: in nothing to fail in knowing and doing the will of God. This is the secret of strength and true nobility in the Christian life."

Thank you, Bill (and Dad), for leaving a legacy and paying a price that few alive today can fathom. May we who follow move out of our thin lives into the path you purchased with your lives.


Tom, the least of Abba's children