Y2Kids pt. 1 (mulligan)- What defines our generation

NOTE: You don't have to read the other part 1 in order to read this post. Sometimes in writing you accidentally click "publish" on something that just really isn't what you were going for. I figured I'd leave up the other part 1 for those who got something out of it but would basically give it the "Hulk" treatment and do a remake even though it's only been like a week. So here it is:

Y2Kids: What Defines our Generation

I brought up Columbine with my students on Sunday. None of them knew what I was talking about.

A handful of kids weren’t even born yet.

That means they were 2 years old when 9/11 happened.

This was one of the first times that I realized that my generation was self-contained, no-longer offering admittance. My generation had a clear beginning and end and now we could look at it in its entirety.

What’s my generation like? What do we do? What kind of Gospel are we looking for? And what kind of Gospel have we grown up with?

What does it mean to be a Y2Kid?

Columbine happened when I was in 6^th grade. I remember the media blaming violent video games and my first thought was that my dad wouldn’t allow me to play Duke Nukem anymore, even though he had the parental control on. (less blood, no naked ladies). I was so detached from the reality of what Columbine was and how it changed my world.

I talked a lot about this in my last post. Columbine caused many of us to live in a state of fear and that was only fed by the craziness of Y2K. We were fully convinced that the world was going to end, if not on Y2K then at least shortly after, and if not by some sort of epic Armageddon then by some freak accident. We could walk to school and not come out alive.

When I woke up on the morning of 9/11 I remember my mom saying “these are the sorts of things that people will remember forever and they will ask you ‘where were you on 9/11?’” I was sitting at the little breakfast nook in the first house that I had lived in in California. I looked back at the TV, it was an old school tube TV of course. I saw the second plane hit and was filled with confusion. Terrorism wasn’t a possibility yet, at least not for me, terrorism in my head didn’t even exist until the reporter chimed in with “they are suspecting this to be a terrorist attack” and even then I just thought to myself  “no, the planes just don’t work for some reason. No one would do this on purpose.”

But they did do it on purpose.

I lived in a world that was filled with people who would do awful things to hurt you and they would do that for no reason. They would do that on purpose.

I went to school that day in a 7-story building and remember thinking ‘someone might hit this building with a plane. Or drop an atom bomb. Or come in here and shoot us’ but still, each one of those thoughts was impossible. I still couldn’t imagine that actually happening.

That’s why I would say the first thing that defines my generation is fear. Not necessarily that we are fearful, in fact in many cases we are arrogantly fearless. Take Jackass for instance, or Survivor, we were entertained by people risking their lives. But fear was still a foundation for that. The fear of school because of Columbine, the fear of the apocalypse because of Y2K, the fear of terrorist because of 9/11, not to mention the media barrage us with story after story of online predators and the danger of electronics.

Which really is the second thing that defines our generation.

Remember that old tube TV that I saw 9/11 unfold on? How many people do you know that still have one of those? You can count em on one hand can’t you?

My mom came back from some trip and told us about how she was getting a cell phone so she could have it in her car in case of emergency. There was something that happened where someone creepy was following her and so from now on she was going to get the newfangled device. This was a big step because I still remembered having the phones with really long cords and how life changing it was to finally have cordless phones, but this cordless phone could go anywhere!

I remember my dad coming back from some computer conference and busting out his laptop to show us Wolfenstein 3D. That’s the first I had ever heard about Nazis… but that’s a whole other post.

I remember my sister begging my mom to get AOL so she could have Instant Messenger. She was in late elementary school. My parents shot down the idea immediately because they knew, even back then, that “AOL is a piece of junk, and we’re not going to pay money for a web browser.”

And now my late elementary Schoolers text all the time. They go online on their phones.  Every game is in 3D and every TV is flat screen.

That wasn’t what defined our generation, not the technology at least, but the change.

We were the onset of the modern era. We saw seedlings of ideas grow into things that we couldn’t possible dream of, things that were only for Sci-fi movies, and all of this happened in less than 10 years. The transition from no cell phones to smart phones in every pocket. The transition from no idea about HDTV to a flat panel TV in every home. All in 10 years.

We lived in a world that was not just scary but constantly dynamic.

It reminds me of this movie that I saw when I was in elementary school called “The Cube”. It was a horror movie where people were trapped inside a cube and they had to crawl into different rooms that were all booby trapped in different ways. If they did it right and master the algorithm of the constantly shifting cubes they could eventually make their way out.

Every day was like opening a new door into a new room in that cube. Even if you tried to go back the same way you came you’d find yourself in a completely different place and facing completely different obstacles.

When I was in High School I wasn’t just trying to figure out how to talk to girls, I was figuring out with what device I should talk to them and what proper text etiquette was. If I don’t text back with out saying TTYL is that insulting? When she doesn’t text back is she busy? Playing hard to get? Just not interested?

Now think about this. If it was that hard to navigate relationships with girls how much harder must it have been to navigate a relationship with God?

Was God on Myspace? Does he want me to have a Myspace? Can I evangelize through text message? Do I have to worship in person or can I just listen to the music on my iPod? What about church? Did I have to go to church or is there an app for that?

Part 2 will be up after the break and I’ll talk about how Y2Kids wrestled with God amidst the confusion and fear of everyday life.