The Cheated Generation

“Our children too shall serve Him, for they shall hear from us about the wonders of the LORD.” (Psalm 22:30, “Living Psalms”).

We are inclined to be dismayed as we see the activites and hear the vulgar and obscene language of many of the young activists of today. And well we may, for within the ranks of some of the radical organizations on college and university campuses (and now infiltrating into our high schools) there are those who are determined to destroy the social order that has nurtured them.

Dissent can be wholesome and constructive, but in the student world today there is a hard-core group, well organized and well financed, that has as its goal anarchy, which, if unchecked, will destroy the nation from within.

These young people are a part of the cheated generation, a generation that knows not the Lord or the wonders of his redeeming love. Adrift on the sea of life with nothing to guide them, they are a menace to themselves and to the social order of which they are a part. Many of them see the imperfections of the twentieth-century way of life and, with idealistic zeal, are determined to bring about change, but are unwittingly the tools of godless and dangerous men.

How has this generation been cheated, and by whom? Sad to say, much of the responsibility belongs to parents—in homes where God and his Christ are not honored or obeyed, where there has been no example of righteous faith or action, where permissiveness has replaced discipline, where the Christian Sabbath has been turned into a holiday geared to the body rather than the spirit.

Parents who have neglected to give God and his Word their place as the foundation for faith and practice, who have instilled in their children a desire for the things of the world at the expense of those things that last for eternity—these parents have cheated their children.

Guilty? Yes, many of the parents who read this will know they are guilty of cheating their children out of the most precious things this life has to offer.

The Church must share the blame for depriving young people of their birthright.

Any church that leads young people into paths of social action without laying the foundation in their hearts of a clear-cut surrender to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord has cheated them.

Any church where the emphasis is on the secular, at the expense of the spiritual, has cheated its young people.

Church teachers who have led young people to look on the Word of God as “outdated,” “full of errors,” “irrelevant,” or in any way a human or dispensable book, have cheated them.

The church in which Christ is not central and where no effort is made to bring young people to a clear decision to accept him as Saviour and make him the Lord of their daily lives has miserably failed to give them the very thing for which the Church exists.

Young people from such churches have received, at best, a form of “bootstrap religion.” Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it, they may be “holding the form of religion but denying the power of it” (2 Tim. 3:5).

In today’s apparent conspiracy against the younger generation, the schools have lent the full force of their influence. Insisting that they have no obligation to teach religion, many schools countenance the teaching of irreligion. In rejecting any objective witness for Christianity they may even go so far as to ridicule belief in God and his Word.

Furthermore, most schools find themselves under the tyrany of a minority. In view of our Judeo-Christian heritage, why should not young people hear the Ten Commandments read each day? This statement of God’s moral law is common to Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants, and it is desperately needed in our day. Why should a tiny minority cheat the majority by objecting to this positive approach to religious truth? Any objection could easily be met by simply excusing those children whose parents did not wish them to hear. As it is, a tiny minority is being permitted to rob the others of something that could make a solid contribution to their personal lives and the society of which they are a part.

Young people are being robbed by a generation of adults that countenances lasciviousness, adultery, deviation, and every form of sexual sin in the name of “freedom” and “art.” The products of perverted and evil men are available for adolescents to peruse and purchase. The panderers of filth are unhindered in their unholy designs on the minds and hearts of the young. The open sewer of pornographic filth has flooded our land, with great harm to our youth.

It is a tragic fact that parents, churches, schools, and even the government itself all seem paralyzed with the numbness that comes from compromise with evil.

How can this be changed? What will restore to young people the opportunities now being denied them?

In our dismay over the attitudes and actions common among young people today, we need to search our own hearts and homes. Can anything less than a return to God on the part of parents bring about a change in the situation? Young people need convictions to live by, and the foundation of these convictions is laid early in life.

Schools need to be changed. Where they are now a battleground, often ready to destroy the faith of those who come under their influence, they should become training grounds where young people come face to face with the fact that this is God’s world, not man’s, and that there is a higher Authority before whom all men will be judged.

The permissiveness of home and school must give place to the discipline that is an integral part of effective training. What good is genius without control of self? What good is knowledge without the wisdom to use that knowledge rightly? What good is government if everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judg. 17:6)?

One of the glories of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the revelation of God’s grace. None of us has received what he deserved. The love and mercy of God is not reserved for the saint but is freely available to the sinner.

The cheating of youth must be stopped, and it can be stopped—by persons who have come into a right relationship with God through his Son and who then “tell it like it is” to their children.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.