The conflict between generations is peculiar to the West.
Fundamental to God’s moral character, as man can know it, is social stability. Fallen human nature fights it tooth and nail, but when we cling to God’s moral laws, we find ourselves struggling far less. Beginning with the Covenant of Noah, God required that someone in the extended family household take responsibility for knowing and enforcing social stability according to the moral requirements of God. That business of being ready to execute a murderer is symbolic; the whole thing is cast a particular context — the extended family tribal social structure. You cannot even begin to obey God’s Laws until you first establish that sort of social order. So much I’ve written here repeatedly.
Standing on that firm foundation, we build the social order God requires or we suffer and miss out on His blessings. Living in a Western society, you face a mountain of resistance. Not just in some externals, but the entire fabric of what makes Western Civilization “Western” is hostile to God’s revelation. You as an individual, coming under conviction that you need to build as much of God’s Justice as you can in your life, will have to understand the nature of the conflict.
I wrote previously that the single most powerful element in creating conflict between generations is our public school system. Supporting that is our popular media and entertainment. It’s a one-two punch of poison that seeks to destroy any hope of God’s social stability. In almost every society in human history outside the West, children would be raised and educated in their own family household. No single mother would have to raise her kids alone and she would not rebel at any suggestion that might be the least bit different than the first thought to pop into her empty head. A girl would marry into another household and understand from the start that she was grafted into a living tree. If she didn’t prosper in that new setting, she was doomed. There was something inside telling her she had better adapt as best she can and not make trouble.
It’s bad enough every wife has an impulse to compete with her mother-in-law. It’s a very human instinct for her to think she has to vanquish the ghost of her husband’s mother. All the more so in a society that promotes her worst instinct from the Fall — to dominate her husband. It’s godly for her to cooperate and learn what she can from her mother-in-law. In the West, every woman competes with every other woman, and more so with those closest to her. Not only is this sinful impulse permitted to grow, it is fertilized and enhanced in every way possible. It requires a monumental conscious struggle to break that bad habit of the mind. All the energy a woman should invest in making her family a rock of stability is wasted on silly drama.
Women are encouraged to be empty souls, always looking for the next installment of her favorite dramatic entertainment. At the same time, she is encouraged to avoid anything God offered to make life worth living in this world. She can chase any dream except righteousness; the more improbable and problematic it is, the better. Actually surrendering to a man is an unspeakable evil. She is to toy with him and control him. Kids? She’s an expert already by instinct alone, don’t you know? If they are lucky, she’ll smother them as a helicopter mom. Otherwise, she’ll be an emotional abuser who provokes her husband to be seemingly worse.
If you are godly as a grandparent watching this crap, your heart will break. You can do almost nothing because there is no framework for applying any helpful pressure. If they happen to live in or near your home, it’s only worse for you. Here are a few godly guidelines to keep you sane. These apply to anyone who acts in the role of non-parental family influence.
Be a godly and sane influence where possible with the children. Focus on them and don’t argue with their parents in front of them. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to real physical safety issues; in your own home, you make the rules. Spanking is not evil in itself, though it might be inappropriate in some contexts. Still, avoid getting involved in such things unless the actions are a genuine threat to what God says you must do with what He has given you. (God help you if I have to explain one more time that you can’t read things legalistically.) In general, it’s better to absorb some risk of harm than to create a fight scene in front of the kids. If you do fight, be ready to go through to the bitter end as you would with any invader and face whatever passes for civil law enforcement in your area. The point is, you be sane when the kids are with you because they already have enough crazy shit to deal with from their parents. Be firm, calm and in control of your own emotional reactions. Be ready to explain anything those kids ask on their level. Learn how to talk to them and what they can handle.
Sometime around age 5, the kids will instinctively model someone not their parents. It’s likely to be any number of influences, so you be one of them. Be a hero so they can take after you. Take a look at my free book, A Christian Guide to the Sexual Marketplace for the underlying frame of reference to building such character in your own domain. What makes for sanity in the sexual marketplace makes for sanity in general human character.
Consider making time to take them out of their crazy household and let them live in your peaceful world. Take them on one of your regular shopping trips. Yes, there are some kids too wild for this because of how bad their home life is. That might require you learn a lot about child psychology and helping kids find a sense of what’s normal. If that’s not part of your mission and you are certain of it, stay out of their lives as much as possible. Don’t get involved if you can’t bring peace and order by your own character. Pray and perhaps get someone else involved who does know and can guide you.
To the degree possible, engage them in entertainment that is godly. Not just overtly “Christian” stuff which is often little more than a Jesus face plastered on the same crap the rest of the world absorbs, but stuff that actually reflects the ancient ways of the Bible. Become a culture warrior who subverts the filthy influence of our damned Western society by implanting holy influences from a different culture drawn from Scripture. As soon as they start to make noises about logic, teach the kids how to think morally and introduce quantum reasoning. One of the most important times for shaping their future is to be there when the kids naturally rebel.
In human moral development, we note kids individuate most around age five, then begin concrete reasoning around eight or nine. Sometime around twelve they start to discover abstraction and thinking beyond the concrete. They discover logic and most kids rebel against their parents, who often sink back into concrete rule-based moral expectations. Some never actually enter the abstract phase for any number of reasons, but most people simply never pass completely through the process of structuring their own thinking about morality. They just surrender to the social environment out of personal comfort. Your job is to help them embrace that rebellion by pushing through it to the end. It is a totally natural and necessary phase of moral development. Help them navigate through it by helping them shape the questions they must answer. Help them see how normal and right it is to question what they’ve been fed up to that point. Give them a better answer by offering an even stronger challenge to the system. The system is wrong, you know.
Meanwhile, the hardest thing to live with is the sorrow of recognizing the limits of your authority from God. The interventionist Nanny State is about as far from God’s standards as can be, so don’t think in that mode. Trust God for the things you really cannot change (like the old Serenity Prayer) and recognize that He is in charge. No, you cannot force things to come out according to some ideal in your head. Get ready for a bunch of sorrow because that’s real life after the Fall. Some things simply are not in your hands.
Don’t press the Laws of God, be the Justice of God.
