Here are a few of the things we gain by making friends across generations:
1. Wisdom.
The most obvious gain is the wisdom that comes from perspectives other than our own. I’m sure every generation is different from others, but our current ones have grown up almost in unique worlds. The Great Depression and World War II. Vietnam and the Sexual Revolution. The end of the Cold War and the Digital Revolution. Each of these eras has reconstructed Western culture on a somewhat different set of beliefs and goals and presuppositions.
Spending time with people from other generations will expose different preferences and beliefs. This could lead us further into generational narcissism (“Boy, do these whippersnappers/geezers have a lot to learn!”). But it also can—and should—lead us back to God’s Word, because the conflict might expose blind spots in our generation.
I’ve benefitted from my older friends’ experience in marriage and parenting. Talking with the elders of my church, who range from young 40s through 60s, has helped me see what growing into responsibility and faithfulness to the church looks like. I have become wiser.
The burden of learning is definitely on the younger crowd, but each generation can gain wisdom from the perspective of others.
2. Wonder.
God is at work in every generation, just as in every human being. He brought my grandparents’ families through the Depression and World War II, redeemed my parents out of the bacchanalian early '70s, and saved me from the bog of postmodern pluralism. God reached into the turbulence of each era to speak to us individually. He’s begun growing us all into the one image of Christ.
Learning the stories of God’s work in wildly different situations leads to wonder at his power and character.
Our church employs a widow in her 80s. Last year she recorded a testimony of how God has brought her through serious suffering with joy and hope. Her years lend her story gravity; her long experience with God suffused her words with glory.
Representatives of each age group can also reflect God’s nature in different ways. The young show strength and vigor and optimism. The middle-aged, familial care and seasoned experience. The elderly, wisdom and sobriety in the shadow of death. Just as we need every tribe and nation to display the manifold glory of God, so too we need every age if we are to see and celebrate his full nature.
3. Godliness.
Intergenerational friendships can lead us to grow in godliness. They do this first by forcing us to love more maturely. The more I have in common with someone, the easier it is to love him.
Loving someone different from me requires me to love more deliberately. I’m going to have to ask more questions and listen better. To hear things I don’t understand and maybe things I don’t agree with. I might have to sacrifice things on my schedule or my style. But developing that intergenerational friendship will make me into a more maturely loving person.
My little group and I don’t have many natural cultural connection points. But committing to one another, making the relationship work, has taught me (and them, I hope) how to find common ground with others.
Intergenerational friendship will also help me develop humility. No matter my age, I must set aside my generation’s narcissistic tendency to think that we figured it out and everyone else had better listen up. My generation-saturated views—on politics, on entertainment, on church music—may not [gasp!] be the only ones a godly/rational/socially aware person can hold. I may find issues that, on biblical reflection, godly people can freely disagree on. Or mine may be flat-out wrong. Making friends with people of other generations teaches me godly humility.
And though there are more reasons we could list, intergenerational friendships will also help me grow in personal holiness. Opening my life to the view of someone not saturated in my generation’s assumptions can expose lifestyle patterns that, on biblical reflection, don’t line up with God’s will.
God can use these friendships to tune my heart more definitely to his will.
Joseph Rhea is director of ministries for the downtown congregation of Soma Church in Indianapolis, where he lives with his wife and two children. He has a master in divinity from Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Joseph blogs at Borrowed Rays; you can also follow him on Twitter.