For youth growing up today, especially those outside the church, where is their “moral compass” if you will, to come from? When I was growing up, it seemed like often grandparents were that guiding force for kids. Grandparents tended to be pretty black and white about right and wrong, and they always represented the “right”. No matter where you strayed or what paths you took, you could bet that grandma was always praying for you, urging you back to the better path.

Certainly there are families today where that is still the case but, with families often being quite geographically spread out, and with blended families meaning a complexity of relationships, those ties are often lost. Additionally, grandparents are, it occurs to me, increasingly “unchurched” these days. That didn’t seem to be the case when I was growing up. They are, less and less, a positive force on their descendants.

We live in a society where negative pressures are everywhere. When we first started hearing a few years ago that half of all marriages ended in divorce, that seemed like a ridiculously high statistic. But, now, when I look at my friends and associates, there are certain circles where that seems like a ridiculously low statistic.

Not being absolute in telling the truth is now referred to as “spinning” – and it’s something that people seek to do well. There are even consultants to help you lie if you wish. Gambling seems to be at an all time high, whether it is in the form of lottery tickets to supposedly help your local schools or in the form of major gambling complexes now promoted as family vacation spots. Cheating, or getting around rules, is increasingly looked at as an artform which those who are involved in it will defend to the end. And pornography is absolutely rampant. The US, a country supposedly with its trust in God, is the number one purveyor of raunch, whether it is in our mainstream movies and TV shows or in even more base forms, making pornography available to folks of all ages on the internet at any time.

Whereas, I think, we used to reach upward, whether it was direct to God or God through our grandparents, we indeed had that vertical reach, providing that moral compass. In today’s society, though, our reach tends to be outward to the damaging and perverse things of this world – the comfort things we can revel in for the moment without seeking a greater authority.

I have been reading CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” recently – working my way through it with a group of men from church. We’re not very far along yet but, in the first few chapters, Lewis introduces this idea of “The Law of Human Nature” – that we all have this internal sense of right or wrong. He asserts that we have freewill over whether we choose to follow it but this concept is still built into our DNA and our psyches as humans.

I like to believe that he is right on that though I also wonder if, with the absence of a catalyst (such as grandparents seemed to be for my generation) to bring that internal moral compass to the forefront where we can actually make a decision whether to follow it, that any innate sense of right and wrong doesn’t sometimes get stuffed so deeply inside of us, covered up by all kinds of trash, that it isn’t sometimes completely buried and forgotten.

I am anxious to complete the book and see what more Lewis, obviously a brilliant man, has to say about that.

If that moral compass is there, if people internally know right from wrong, and they choose wrong, and if no one is there anymore calling them to “do right,” is that moral compass in them lost forever?

My generation is doing a lousy job of setting an example for future generations. To a large degree, my contemporaries and perhaps those a generation older than me, are the ones who have, in our current society, really pushed all of those negative factors I mentioned earlier. We took the legacy left for us by my grandparents – the “greatest generation” and chucked it all away I am afraid. Now, I am not speaking for my entire generation. Certainly there is lots of good being done by my age group as well but, for some reason, in contemporary culture, bad always seems to shadow over the good. And that is the situation we have today I believe.

It is no wonder that those younger than us are rebelling and seeking something different. Sometimes they are finding something better and sometimes they are driving even deeper into the abyss of darkness. But it’s no surprise that they are looking at my generation and saying “You are so very messed up -- why would I want what you have?”

God can shine true in the darkness, though. But there must be that example to follow – those “grandparents” if you will, whether literal or otherwise. We have reached a point where we are often open to listening to others but we’re not going to follow, we’re not going to believe or shall I say we’re not going to change our belief systems, unless the example is there to prove that what they’re calling us to is better. You can talk about what you believe in but you’re crossing a line to tell me that it would be good for me, too. Instead, show me and then maybe I will believe. That seems to be the perspective of the culture in which we live.