Laments about the folly of “today’s young people” are almost as old as civilization itself. Adam and Eve must have felt the world was ending when their firstborn son murdered their second son. In 63 BC, the Roman statesman, Cicero, fretted, “O the times! O the customs!” In 1925, the Hull Daily Mail, an English newspaper, wrote, “We see the decay of the home, the loss of parental control, the disappearance of the old-fashioned modest girl, and the rise of a generation that cares for nothing but pleasure.” Today, we call the young people growing up then, “the greatest generation.”
It’s easy to laugh at some of the concerns about the next generation expressed across the centuries. But the sinful nature of humans is real, Satan is real, and people are all too easily drawn astray. Until arrested by the Gospel or by a cataclysm, sin grows ever worse — ever more destructive. This justifies concern. Sometimes God grants spiritual awakenings. But at other times, nations collapse.
I did a Google search for quotes like the ones above where people expressed concern for the fate of the generation to follow. Artificial Intelligence now usually inserts an answer to such questions before giving a list of websites. In this case, the AI gave several examples, starting with the Book of Lamentations in the Bible. That’s an odd choice because in Lamentations Jeremiah was not just bemoaning what might happen to the next generation. He was agonizing over what he had already seen — the destruction of the nation with its finest young people being marched to Babylon as captives of a conquering power. He wasn’t lamenting what might occur. He was mourning what had already taken place.
Through Jeremiah, God had repeatedly warned the people of Judah of the terrible consequences should they not repent. By the time of Lamentations, the unthinkable had happened. It was not a warning anymore, but a nightmare made real. He no longer said, “The nation will be crushed if we don’t repent.” Instead, he said, “We didn’t repent and the nation has been crushed.”
Lamentations 1:1 says, “How lonely sits the city that was full of people!” Jeremiah did not smirk and say, “I told you so.” He wept over the destruction that follows sin. Western movies traditionally depict ghost towns with wind blowing through their streets. It emphasizes their emptiness. People once filled these lanes. There may have been wind before, but no one noticed because the noise of a bustling city had drowned out the sound. Jeremiah saw Jerusalem’s barren streets. He heard the wind. He saw the charred remains of houses and walls. He saw Jerusalem sitting dark, empty, and broken. It left him devastated.
In America and most of the world today, we see society embracing the things of Satan and rejecting the things of God. It is jarring and ugly. It can be frightening and disheartening. It pains the soul to see men openly celebrate the things God calls abominable. Jeremiah 9:1 says, “Oh, that my head were waters, And my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”
Jerusalem’s destruction fulfills the warnings God gave to Israel 900 years earlier in Deuteronomy 28. But He did not leave them hopeless. In Deuteronomy 30, God promised restoration to His people. In Lamentations 3:21-24, Jeremiah wrote, “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’”
And so must we! Atheism, collectivism, debauchery, and chaos are on the rise. But God is at work. He has not left us alone. May we be faithful to let the light of the Gospel shine forth through all that we say and do, so that people everywhere will be delivered from the power of darkness into His marvelous light.
