Thankyou both for your thoughts. Tony brings up some very interesting points. The generation gap in particular made me think. Will generation gaps still be as wide between future generations, or will they close the gap a little since they will share the same first language and culture? Is technology the new ‘divide’ between the generations? Will it continue to be so or will today’s children be just as technology-capable as THEIR children?

My thoughts: Abouna, from my experience, the Internet has made us increasingly secluded from our family; rather than just a “generation gap”. I, unfortunately, have befriended people across the globe, and exposed horrors that I am to ashamed to say. Suffice to say, children are becoming more exposed to what ungodly people make easily available. I think this will prevail, even if the culture around us does not really “progress” (whatever that means, nowadays). I am quite young, but I can notice a huge difference between my years in high-school and my siblings undergoing secondary school. There is no guarantee of course that this will continue, but my suspicions are that the attractiveness of “individualism” and being “secular”, even within religious schools, will probably continue to undermine the values our pastors and parents try to encourage (I know that I have been quite selfish and hard-hearted, preferring elegance over substance). There are recent counter-attacks, such as net filters by the Government (with ‘counter-filterers’), parents being aware and making sure children only use the net in front of them etc.

Or is the generation gap perhsps unavoidable since the parents will always have a more life experience while children will always want to be rebellious and innovative?

My thoughts: I guess. I think it is worse because we are exposed to more ways to feed our evil hearts?

In the midst of all this, what effect should our Christian faith have on the generation gap? Our Lord Christ taught us to be compassionate to each other, leading the way with His own deep concern for His mother, St Mary. She in turn did not interfere with all the ‘dangerous’ things He was doing. To what extent does our faith minimise the damage done by the generation gap. When our faith fails to minimise the damage, why does it fail?

My thoughts: Just a question, St. Mary knew Christ was God, so I think her reasons for not interfering would be a bit different to a parent’s. I don’t have much faith to comment- it cannot minimize the wickedness of my own heart!

Or is the generation gap perhsps unavoidable since the parents will always have a more life experience while children will always want to be rebellious and innovative?

In the midst of all this, what effect should our Christian faith have on the generation gap? Our Lord Christ taught us to be compassionate to each other, leading the way with His own deep concern for His mother, St Mary. She in turn did not interfere with all the ‘dangerous’ things He was doing. To what extent does our faith minimise the damage done by the generation gap. When our faith fails to minimise the damage, why does it fail?

Fr Ant

This is not an exhaustive list, but I think there is much more to it than laziness.