Normally I stick to writing about the saints. Every once in a while, though, something comes along that gets me thinking, and so I write. And this weekend something came along in my Facebook feed:

I grew up Yorba Linda, California during a time when everyone treated each other like Family. We went outside to play, we got dirty and we didn’t eat fast food....we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or bologna ones. We played Simon Says, spin the bottle, truth or dare, Red Light, Green Light, Hide and Go Seek, Jacks, over the line, Tag, Touch football, kickball, 500, and raced against each other in the street.

There was no bottled water, we drank from the water hose or kool aid. We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, walked to the corner store and rode our bikes for hours without a cellphone took the bus to the beach, or hitch hiked...went roller skating at the rink, and bought ice cream cones from Thrifty’s for 5 cents a scoop, everybody’s parents watched out for all us kids...

We weren’t AFRAID OF ANYTHING. If someone had a fight, that’s what it was...a fist fight. Kids didn’t have guns when I grew up. The street lights were out curfew....School was mandatory. We watched our mouths around our elders because we knew If you DISRESPECTED any grown up you’re gonna get HIT with whatever’s close...we played outside not in front of a computer screen...

I remember it all. I grew up in Yorba Linda, Ca.....the good ole days where life was a way more simple place

Re-post if you’re proud that you came from a close knit community and will never forget where you came from!

Copy & Paste This is how it was....

This reflection comes from a page dedicated to the memories of my hometown. But while it’s particular in its dedication, anyone who grew up before 1990 or so will find it incredibly general in its description.

And it compels the question: What difference will we see when our current screen-fixated generation comes of age?

After all, for all of their childhood’s supposed glories, the pre-Millennial generations did not particularly benefit from their idyllic upbringing.

Sure they may be more emotionally and socially balanced, and this is not negligible.

But did this iconic way of growing up produce any benefits for our society? Did it make us less consumeristic or materialistic? Did it make us more peaceful? Did it make us more dedicated to our families than it did to our jobs? Did it make us more desirous of the true good in life rather than passing sensual pleasures? 

And if we want to see what has caused the loss of this idyllic way of life, look in the mirror.

After all, those kids who spend hours plastered to an iPad or Xbox or Snapchat – etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam – it’s not like they mowed 70 lawns at ten dollars a pop to earn that $700 iPad (not to mention their cellphones, etc.). We gave them these things. Our schools forced them to have them. (My son’s high school requires him to have a certain type of computer, or he can’t register for school.)

It’s not hard to see why these devices took off. They’re entertaining. They’re fun. They’re a great way to pass the idle hours of childhood even though their use may not lead to a childhood that is truly idyllic. 

Also, I’m wondering something.

Yorba Linda is in Southern California. Southern California is an irrigated desert. And while it can get blisteringly hot there, cooling ocean breezes make the climate fairly temperate much of the time. 

So playing outside was something you did, that you wanted to do, and that you had no problem with doing, by and large.

Today I live on the East Coast. There is no offshore breeze. There is nothing to kill the clawing, omnivorous humidity and bring down the temperature other than the coming of fall or the odd cold front. And then there is winter, followed by spring with its precipitation. 

The point is that the weather here provides just as many reasons for staying inside in front of those bemoaned screens as it does for getting out and enjoying God’s creation and time spent with friends building memories.

But don’t kids realize what they’re missing? No. The young in any generation can never see what they’re potentially missing. All they can see is what is in front of them. It may be transitory and saccharine and ultimately unfulfilling. If you know no different, however, and you have something that fulfills the need for entertainment and amusement and distraction in the moment, you will glom onto it as if it is the highest good in the world. Even more so when you have something that is as addicting as video games and the Internet.

There is a spiritual component to all of this.

Reread the copied passage above. It describes an Edenic state of existence, a paradise lost, a heaven on earth. We all want that. There is a latent memory of the Garden in all of us, one that is palpable even if we can’t define what it is. And it makes us yearn in a burning way for that lost state of grace. 

Yet to look to the things of this world for our happiness – whether to note their loss or recall their memory, however idyllic and formerly pleasing – is to ultimately invite at least a certain degree of misery, for things can never produce a lasting happiness, as trite or clichéd as that may seem. Only the lasting will produce lasting happiness, and the only thing that is lasting is – no, Ben Franklin, not death and taxes – the triune God and the eternal things He has made.

As for those who have been brought up to largely live their lives through their screens or cell phones, they will experience detachment, a separation, maybe as wide as that which existed between heaven and mankind before the advent of Our Savior. Read that copied-and-pasted passage closely. What it ultimately bemoans is the current generation’s lack of human interaction. Relationship: One of the few thing in this life that truly hints at the glories and joys to be found for the just in the next. 

Even the pagan Greek Aristotle held that man is a social being and only in his proper sphere when in the company of his fellow man.

The Christian worldview agrees but goes much deeper. When God said, “Let us make man in Our image,” not even God the Son had a body. And so He wasn’t talking about a bodily reflection. Instead God at that point existed as a purely relational triune reality: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Between the three persons of the Trinity, there exists a total outflowing and inflowing of love, of reception and self-donation. The love between these the Father and Son is so real that we have the Holy Spirit. The love between a husband and wife – which is an icon of the aforementioned love – is so strong, nine months later we have to give it a name. 

So when Our Lord says marriage will not exist in heaven, it’s because marriage simply points to the relationship found in the Trinity. In heaven we will be incorporated into that reality and find eternal joy, peace, love, and contentment in it. 

And so those who spend their lives isolated and encaged in their screen-beholden worlds are in a sort of prison. Instead of experiencing a foretaste of heaven through relationship, they experience a premonition of hell through their separation. 

Thus what has been lost in the by-and-large disappearance of the aforementioned idyllic childhood is that we are transitioning from a world that is other centered into one that is even more self-absorbed and entitled than the Baby Boomers. We have largely moved from a world where heaven is sought outside of ourselves into one where heaven is a self-contained reality. 

So, OK, maybe the halcyon days weren’t as great as we remember them. Maybe we who grew up in that milieu didn’t properly use the gifts that we didn’t even know we were being given. 

But at least we had the gifts, however improperly we employed them.

What do today’s young people have? It is hard to see anything but a debit, a deficiency, a loss. 

That is not only a shame. It is not only a tragedy. It is deeply concerning. 

The solution seems obvious, but then it has always been obvious. What is not obvious is whether we will at long last reach out for it as one. There is hope, true, and we must always hope, but then there is history. As the eminent historian Dr. Ron Rietveld taught, “The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.”

Maybe the current generation will surprise us and be the ones that truly do learn and make authentic progress. 

Until then, let’s keep focused on our smart devices and game consoles.