Countdown to 50 - They Weren't What They Were

Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.

On occasion I do the math related to my and my parents’ ages at various stages of my life. For example, thirty years ago, when I was in the last weeks before a return to the University of Iowa for my junior year, my parents were each 50 years old, the same age I will reach next Monday.

Thirty years ago my parents were so old. They looked old. They sounded old. They acted old. There was such a gulf between my modernism and their ancient-ism. I don’t remember being conscious of their numeric ages, but I recall being aware of our generational divide, which I obviously interpreted as their being old.

Today I am the age they were when I was a brand new 20-something. I don’t feel old. Though I clearly look older than before, I don’t think my appearance has fully surrendered its middle age moniker. And one of my ministry’s principal passions is to think and act younger than I am, so as to stay connected to the community our church needs to be desperate to reach........ I’m not old.

Yet, thirty years ago, my 50 year-old parents were.

I talked about this with a member of our afternoon Bible study group today. When I posed to her the historical setting introduced above, she said of my 1970's parental perspective, “They were ancient, weren’t they?” She knew, not that my parents were ancient back then, but that I would have viewed them so.

I suspect that it’s both universal and unavoidable: The more different we perceive people to be from us, the more prone we are to judge them inferior, deficient, or...older than us, whatever the origins of the differences. And then, eventually, if life demands or directs that we become like those from whom we were once so different, we come to understand that our youthful judgments were unfair because they were essentially mechanical, mathematical, and procedural, not personal.

So it is with racial bias. My goodness, it’s mechanical thinking to look at a person of an ethnic heritage different from yours and conclude that he or she is in any consequential ways different from (i.e. inferior to) you. Simple is the equation: Country of Origin + Dialect of speech - Years in mainstream America = Snap judgment.

But thirty years ago, I wasn’t smart or old enough to figure out how unfair I was being to my parents. I think it amusing that age was the problem back then when I assessed my parents... my age, not theirs!

What about you? In your youth, how did you perceive your parents or other elders? Were they in some odd sense older then than at any other time in their lives due to the indiscretions of your youthful judgments? Leave us a comment. Your experience can help us.

Today I have more respect than ever for my parents. Not only because I have a longer-term view of their achievements and contributions, but also because I now realize when they were my current age they had to put up with me at age 20!


Pray with me:
God, help me to think as young as the youngest, to act as wisely as the oldest, to choose as smartly as the wisest, and to love as completely I have been loved, by my parents and by you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.