"Honor your father and your mother (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land” (Ephesians 6:2-3, ESV).
So much of what we're being told right now is to hate the people who went before us; that they destroyed everything, and we now have it so uniquely bad. And you think, "Well, when the older boomers came of age, they got drafted and were sent to Vietnam. It wasn't a volunteer army. They were pulled out of their lives against their will, shipped overseas to Southeast Asia, and 58,000 of them died--that's the equivalent of ten Iraqs and Afghanistans. People now can say, "Oh well, the boomers make a lot of mistakes like no-fault divorce (among several others) with some terrible consequences." And yet the idea that we sit in judgment of them, as though our hands are clean, as if we can't see our own flaws, is tragic. The funny thing about eyes is that they only look outward, never inwardly. We never see our mistakes. Dennis Prager astutely made the following point, that I will paraphrase, 'Consider if you will, that the commandment to honor thy father and mother is the only one of the commandments that comes with a reason: "that thy days will be long in the land.'" You cannot have a country if you hate the people that gave it to you, and if you tear down all the wisdom that's been bequeathed to you.
Yes, let's learn from and hopefully correct past mistakes, but we can still be thankful, first to God, and then our forefathers for all the blessings handed down that we presently now have.
