A rite of passage. . .

At some point in the life of a youth, the typical pattern of rebellion requires you to disown your father.  He who was once your everything is not suspect, hopelessly outdated, and perhaps even irrelevant.  For the youth this happens just long enough until you find yourself echoing what your father said -- sadly, sometime after he has passed away.  It is the wisdom of youth that your father once knew everything until he knew somethings until he new a few things until he knew nothing.  Then, at some point, you awaken to a renewed appreciation for your father and may even come to believe he did know almost everything.

This is not without its pattern in faith as well as life.  It seems that those of a certain generation grew up with great confidence in the faith of their fathers until they didn't.  They began to be suspect of the great minds and voices of the generations who went before -- even of Scripture.  It got to the point where the heroes of their youth became the boogeymen of their middle age.  Tragically, some have not progressed beyond their childhood rebellion against the faith and the house of their fathers.  That seems to be a common affliction for boomers and perhaps we are not alone.  I will admit, however, that the older I get the more appreciative I am of the great fathers of the faith -- both the Lutheran ones and those who were long before Luther.

The obligatory rite of passage which casts suspicion and rejects those who went before has given rise to all sorts of rebellions that have become normal in the minds of many.  The rejection of marriage and its Biblical order gave birth to a feminism in which male and female meant little as labels and the only measure of equality was the freedom to be the other.  The rejection of sex as a gift to the married and for procreation gave birth to intimacy which was more or less only for personal pleasure with even love being optional.  The rejection of the shape of creation as male and female gave birth to a fluid gender as secure as the feeling of the moment and without a real definition to know what either of those genders actually means.  The rejection of the true diversity of the God who became flesh in order to make one people from many nations, tribes, races, and ethnicities became the fake diversity in which only the rejection of the traditional is allowed and which seems to be still all about sex.  I could go on.  You get my drift.

What is most distressing, however, is that our growing familiarity with Scripture has led this youthful rebellion to reject the voice of God's Word or qualify it through the reason and/or experience of the interpreter.  We are not merely rejecting something but God Himself.  As soon as we treat the Scriptures as less than God's Word, we render mute the voice of God to address us with His timeless Word.  As soon as we take a position hostile to the claims of the faithful of the past about that Word, we build a wall between those who went before and ourselves.  As soon as we approach the Scriptures with a skepticism we would not dare to use against science or the prevailing fake science of the day, we turn God's Word into a battlefield in which His voice is lost in the clamor for control of the landscape.

How odd it is that some come to the faith with the enthusiasm of a true believer because they have been lied to or disappointed by the relevant truth that anchors no one only to end up sitting in the pews with a people who have long ago gotten over the faith and tamed the mighty God!  I find myself at odds with my own feel good generation so full of itself when it comes to truth.  It is not that I did not go through the rebellious period as a rite of passage, I did go through it and left it behind me.  Once I spoken and acted and thought like a child.  No more.  Those whose youthful rebellion against tradition and Scripture continues are caught in the loop of their own ignorance, presuming that their childhood and youthful fancy is the truest thing of all.  Hopefully, they will realize at some point that they have foolishly extended a youthful rite of passage and turned it into the cardinal virtue of their identity.