May 01, 2006
Fuddy-Duddy
Have you ever thought of your grandparents as fuddy-duddies (old fashioned)? You may have thought it, but you probably didn’t call them a fuddy-duddy to their face! In the church we don’t come right out and call our seniors fuddy-duddies, but it’s implied in subtle ways. Seniors are labeled as the group that doesn’t want ‘change’ to take place in the church. Actually, I believe those in leadership are responsible for giving the seniors the reputation for not wanting change because they (leaders) don’t want to be held accountable or answerable for their decisions. Telling a group they are stubborn and unwilling to make changes is a great way to suppress their voice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
Actually, our senior population is old fashioned. They have grown through their formative years during a time of a different style. So in as much as they remain shaped by the years of those experiences, they remain different from the styles of today.
But it is not their fault that old fashioned is undesireable. The social values of today are defined by the pop voices with mass appeal: the entertainment industry, the advertisement and promotion industry, the news and information industry, the school system, the politicians, the clergy, and the commonly respected folk of the local community. All of these, as shapers of contemporary thought, have thrown their weight upon the "old fashioned is a desease, only change will cure us" dog-pile. They have defined our loved ones out of our lifestyles.
If the Holy Spirit and the Holy Bible were among the list of those who affect contemporary values, maybe old fashioned would be viewed with more respect and honor. The Biblical personification of God Himself is that of the Ancient of Days, the White Haired One upon the Throne. It is His unchanging continuity that His Word celebrates. It is the same continuity learned from the Word of God and passed down from our God fearing great grand-parents to our grand-parents to our moms and dads to us.
The Bible teaches respect and honor for the elderly. This esteem looks to the experience of their wisdom, calls young men to obey them, and gives their word - elder - to the overseers of the church affairs. Why is it then that the older generation, who wish to continue to live and worship as God shaped them through their younger years, are so scorned and mariginalized by their children and grandchildren today?
Let's recognize 2 Tim 3:2, "...disobedient to their parents..." The disobedience is to our old fashioned parent's outdated principle of honoring your neighbor. In today's upside-down world, respect is alive and well, it is what gives your neighbor the right to do his own thing, as long as it does not affect my thing. But honor has been defeated. Honor looked up too much. Honor actually called me to do your thing - to please you (as long as it was not evil). Honor can not breathe in the atmosphere of the contemporary church, because there, it is not about you. And honor is about you. Grandma and Grandpa can not be allowed to do well in the contemporary church because they still are about the way of honoring thy neighbor.
The voice of mass appeal calls to the thrill, not to honor. That is why this disobedience exists in our church leaders. They have chosen to direct the whole church into the voice of mass appeal. They must not recognize the principle of honoring their fellow man until everyone whose needs are not met by their chosen programs have died or broken fellowship. Then there will no longer be any pressure upon them to interrupt the styles of their desires in order to please some one else.
Finally, as an aside, a word about the depths of the wisdom of these contemporary leaders who honor God in such a way. As Gail points out, these leaders label many of our seniors as unwilling to change in order to participate in their church. But have they not already changed? Were not many of them changed before these leaders were even born? Have they not come from the darkness to the light? Their lives are as changed by Jesus as yours and mine. Like the Pharasees, these leaders are stacking human precepts (the necessity for the seniors to change style) upon the Word, precepts which they themselves are not willing to lift with their little finger (they make no welcoming changes themselves for our seniors).
Post a Comment