We live in the Information Age. The Industrial Age is over, and we have moved into a new age of humanity which will be defined by a very different set of terms than what the Baby Boomer generation and some of those 60's children have ever experienced. This clash of cultural dynamics between the two ages causes conflicts within America, and it's wearing me out.

The clash between cultural norms is so drastic that it is affecting how we operate within the nuclear family unit (father, mother, brothers, and sisters), how we interact with one another in a larger family unit, and even how people of the same faith - notably Christians - view the day to day reality of living in an America that is fundamentally, not just marginally, different than the America that existed 30 years ago. I was born in 1976, and I remember a time where to own a "computer" or a "video game system", let alone have instant access to more encyclopedic knowledge than could ever be contained in one physical location, was nothing less than a pipe dream for most Americans. Now we have more computers in our homes than TVs. We have the Internet. For goodness sake, we have computers landing our airliners because they are more reliable than human pilots! The world today is very different than the one I was born into.

And these differences have somehow created a significant difference between my generation and our elders. The differences that exist are so massive that I am getting worn out by our elders claiming that the post-modern, Information Age generations don't work hard, aren not fit for leadership, and are not concerned about those generations who are ahead of us in age, particularly in the church or in the family unit. But we ARE concerned, and we DO care. However, we simply cannot make you all understand why we see reality the way we do.

Despite your best efforts to protect us from the world's nastiness, the Information Age overtook all of your efforts and subjected us to the nearly limitless flow and access to all manner of ugliness, pain, and opportunities to wreck our lives in both big and small ways. This wasn't your fault directly, and in fact this has been a super-sharp, double-edged sword for us. On the one hand we have become so much more productive and knowledgeable thanks to the Information Age's changes, but we have also suffered mightily from our own hubris in thinking that "expressing" to excess whatever we wanted to do would not harm us. Particularly in America this has meant that all kinds of sexual laciviousness have become widespread, "normal", and to be expected among my generation. What the older generations do not understand is that because of these drastic changes that we have been forced to adapt to in life we have to be mindful that our life will most likely look nothing like many of the older generation's lives.

Last week I heard a Bible teaching radio show being re-broadcast on AM radio (how much longer will that even last?!) that was from sometime in the late 70's. The announcer, who is currently running this program, prefaced the re-broadcast by mentioning that the preacher was going to read a letter, that at that time was considered scandalous, from a woman that wrote to this preacher. The woman's letter was about how she was a divorced, sinle mother who still struggled with "sleeping around" and that while she knew it was wrong she hoped God would help her conquer her sin and forgive her when she slipped up again since it was so hard for her not to do it. I thought to myself: if that was scandalous then, it's a somewhat humble letter to write to a pastor in today's society! Do you see how different my view of reality is from those who were my age just 30 years ago? I have this different view of reality today because I have experienced this kind of behavior all around me for most of my life. Not that I have been around people like that on a daily basis, but these are the kinds of commonplace occurrences that I am so numb to that such a thing isn't even abnormal in the world I live in today. I see and hear this kind of behavior in movies, music, the newspaper, the arts, in the church, at work, and right across the street almost constantly. This isn't "scandalous", unexpected behavior, it's the new usual behavior. Sad, but true.

So I'm tired. I'm tired dealing with those who don't understand, who can't understand, and who may not be capable of understanding my generation and the generation coming up behind me. I don't think it's your fault that you don't understand if you are that older generation, but when my generation (Gen X), and especially the younger generation (Gen Y) speaks cogently and ardently about the problems, annoyances, and difficulties we are facing, PLEASE listen! We view reality differently than you do because our reality is different than yours. Our world will not fit into your world, and we're desperately trying to tell you why so that you can show us how to be leaders in our world. There will always be pains in this life for us all to deal with, but in this new Information Age that we live in most of us don't know what we're doing because we don't have any great leaders to shephard us through the pain and suffering. There are some that are beginning to emerge from within our own ranks, but we need so many more.