From Guilt to Entitlement: How We Can Lose Our Way

My daughter's college graduation sent me into deep reflection. She's a very dedicated hard worker and maintains a strong faith. I'm proud of these attributes and grateful that she's handled her education in a more mature way than I handled mine. Over the years of working with the children of baby boomers, I've been impressed with their hard work and strong faith.

I've also spent years reflecting on the significance of my own generation, this crazy collection of characters called baby boomers. I've noticed two dominate traits. One trait is guilt, and the other is want. Generally, boomers feel guilt for the sins of posterity. But we also want things—from ideologies to material goods—to make us feel better about ourselves and our world.

The guilt of the boomers has produced a generation of entitlement in our children. Boomers wanted it all. Our offspring believe they deserve it all. Interest-only home loans with zero down payments were warning signs, but we saw them as golden opportunities. Buy the biggest house you can and then sell it when housing prices rise. Then do the same with an even more expensive house.

Growing up, boomers carried the baggage of parents coming of age during the Great Depression. Our parents experienced the hardships of WWII, and then came post-war prosperity. We boomers alternated between rejecting and embracing the prosperity of our parents' generation. Our childhood was shaped by television. World events were, for the first time, seen in the home with the family gathered around the TV. Civil rights marches, the Vietnam War, race riots—all there for nightly viewing. These events weren't happening in some far-off place. We could see it all right in our homes. The world was shrinking fast.

People forget that children are keen observers but poor interpreters. We saw plenty as kids, right there in our own living rooms. We were left to sort through those images on our own. Over the decades, our keen observations from the nightly news of our childhoods have led to a collective guilt among boomers. Boomers are sorry for poor race relations. We're burdened with guilt over the loss of life in Vietnam.

On the happy side, television also brought joy. There were shows like Captain Kangaroo and I Love Lucy, but the real joy generator was marketing. Television introduced all kinds of products that boomers had to have. From Roy Rogers lunch boxes to Barbie dolls, marketers raised a generation of consumers. We did not consume based on need. We consumed whatever we wanted. I did not need a Roy Rogers lunch box instead of a brown paper sack, but I wanted it badly.

What can we do about the age of entitlement? Maybe it is enough to acknowledge the problem and talk about it. Collective guilt hasn't solved anything. Consuming whatever we wanted hasn't made us happier than previous generations. A feeling of entitlement won't help the current generation.

Maybe the strong faith of a generation can carry it forward. Faith can shape an individual's character. People of character can reveal the kingdom of God wherever they are—in a classroom, in the living room, in the mail room, in the corner office.

There is hope. Jesus concludes his prayer, found in John 17, "O righteous Father, the world doesn't know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them" (v. 25-26).

The secular world doesn't know Jesus. But we do. He continues to reveal God to us, so we can reveal God to the world.

Questions for personal reflection, online discussion, or small groups:

• What do sociologists call your generation? Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y, Millenials? What defines your generation?
• What struggles are common in your generation—guilt? entitlement? something else?
• Think about your workplace. How many generations are represented? How many office conflicts are really generational conflicts?