THE SECOND-GENERATION SYNDROME

TEXT: Judges 2:6-12; 3:1-6

Once upon a time there was a foolish old man who lived in northern
China. His house faced toward the south with two great mountains, Taihang
and Wangwu, in his backyard. Those two mountains frustrated him; so, armed
with his hoe and great determination, he decided to remove them.
One day, as he and his sons were hoeing away at the mountains, a man
of the region, known for his great wisdom, drew near to watch. Finally,
the wise old man said, "How silly! It is impossible for you to dig up
those two huge mountains with your hoes."
The foolish old man looked at him and said, "When I die, my sons will
carry on. When they die, there will be my grandsons. And when their sons
and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, those mountains
can not grow any higher; and with every bit we dig, they will be that much
lower. Why can't we clear them away?"
So the foolish old man went on digging, undeterred by the skepticism
of the wise old man. When God saw how determined the foolish old man was,
He sent two angels to carry away the mountains on their backs.
This children's tale embodies the most revolutionary political
philosophy of the twentieth century. In 1945, Mao Tse-tung used the story
to illustrate how China was going to rid itself of the two mountains of
feudalism and imperialism. When he seized power in China, in 1949, Mao
attacked those mountains with all the determination of the foolish old man,
plus his own violent ruthlessness. He did not ignore "wise old men," he
butchered them by the score. His hands also were stained with the blood of
countless Christians.
In time, however, Mao-Tse-tung became concerned. The story would come
true only if the sons kept digging away at the mountains. What is the next
generation, who had never experienced the revolution, lost its zeal for the
job? In 1966, when he saw China becoming bourgeois and lazy, he developed
the Maoist theory of revolution. To eliminate any possibility of
antirevolutionary, reactionary, revisionist cliques, China must be kept in
constant ferment - then every generation will have firsthand experience of
a revolution.
I am no admirer of Mao. His satanic philosophy has kept hundreds of
millions of people from the opportunity of hearing the good news of
salvation. At the same time, I recognize Mao's keen insight into human
nature, regarding what I call the second-generation syndrome.
The second generation has a natural tendency to accept the status quo
and to lose the vision of the first generation. Too often the
second-generation experience is a second-hand experience.
That syndrome operates in the spiritual realm as well as in the
political. Church history is filled with examples of it, and, sadly, so
are many churches. The parents' fervor for the Lord Jesus Christ becomes
the children's formalism and the grandchildren's apathy. We meet this
syndrome most vividly in the book of Judges. Perhaps as we examine
Scripture and see this syndrome in action, we will be better able to guard
against it in our own lives and in the lives of our second generation.
Just as in the day of the book of Judges, we have this drastic problem
of the second-generation. People need to learn a "fresh" commitment to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ. In our time, the winds of the "me generation"
are blowing a strong and deadly virus. "Doing your own thing" has been
enshrined as the national life-style, and the virus of relativism has
infected every area of life, especially our concepts of spiritual truth and
moral absolutes.
We Christians cannot hermetically seal ourselves from the spirit of
the age, so we live in splendid isolation from it. The Lord Jesus calls us
to live in the world for His glory, and monasticism is not a Biblical
alternative. Our mandate from the risen Christ prohibits isolation. We
must turn our eyes "up-ward" and then LOOK at people with the eyes of Jesus
and see that they are dying and headed to a devils hell with accepting
Jesus as Lord and Savior. We must not let the second-generation of
second-hand experience become the third generation of apathy. The Church
is a sleeping giant waiting to be awaken. Let the Spirit of the Holy one
come and wake us up!