Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday January 19, 2009

An educator friend of many years and I were talking the other day and I asked him what in his opinion is the cause of so much irresponsible attitude and actions of the generation coming along 30 years behind us geezers. His answer surprised me as he quoted Abraham Lincoln:

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

Please!! Do not get the idea that I am launching a tirade against our younger friends immediately following. They are simply following the pattern we have set before them.

You cannot and must not blame the 30-40 something for the enormous problems we are facing personally and as a nation.

Statistics will most likely show that the last generation to operate on a daily basis with a responsible style and plan for living is the group Tom Brokaw called the greatest. We who immediately followed bought into the idea that we could borrow our way to prosperity, when in reality we are merely passing the cost of our false riches along to our children and to their children. As I understand the national debt our great grand children are each born with a share of debt amounting to more than they will earn in their entire lifetime. Factor in that at least one third of the children born this year will never produce one nickel, and you have a financial disaster in the making without parallel in world history.

My generation and following ignored reality, attempting to evade our responsibility by passing it on, and before long we will wake to a generation that simply cannot inherit the debt for the lifestyle we demanded and used devious and disgraceful methods to pass it on. By a national consensus we petulantly refused to shoulder our responsibility to live within our means, turned our heads and hearts away from the well being of future generations and raucously sung the songs of the pagans to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. In our time the most austere among us have lived what would be called by any earlier generation, hedonistic.

Tragically our generation bought into the concept that material blessing was the living end in life. We grasped tightly the idea that having more meant that we were somehow better, that because we have, we are more significant and if we can somehow fake it till we make it, everything will be alright. We wanted to believe with all of our heart that if we fervently named the lifestyle of the rich and famous and by some sort of twisted faith claimed the same, poof, we would possess it and deep happiness. Commenting on this Dave Anderson wrote:

"Contrary to what Hollywood promotes, it is not what you get or accumulate that makes you significant but what you give away; what you contribute, the value you add to others and what you become in the process."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2009 Use with credit

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