Oh, the good old days when everything was perfect; how I long for the days of my youth when life was simpler and cheaper. Well, to be honest, one of the reasons life was simpler was because I didn’t know how much things cost because I didn’t have to buy them, which is part of the reason that life was simpler. Sunday was church day, Tuesday was laundry day for clothes and Thursday was laundry day for towels and sheets. Dinner was at 6 PM, lunch always at noon. All I had to do was put my dirty laundry in its place and it would show up clean, and respond to my parent’s call for food and it would show up on my plate. Oh, The good old days!

Sound’s great but…

…I am not naïve, life beyond the stability of food and clean clothes was much more complicated. I think when we say how we long for the good old days, we are really saying, without realizing it, is that we long for the shelter of innocence and a time that our selective memory has created when life was safe. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but life was never truly safe. Evil was always there no matter how isolated and insulated you and I were.

Each generation has lived in a fallen world.

We might forget it but we were all raised by people who were raised by people who all experienced the threat of evil breaking into their lives and destroying their safety and innocence. The Silent Generation, those who went through the great depression and World War II were raised by those who went through the war to end all wars, World War I, and raised the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers, who feared total nuclear devastation during the Cold War raised Gen X. Gen X raised Millennials out of their own fears and Millennials are raising their children out of their fears.

I could go on but…

… what has been lost is not because all of us were raised by a previous generation that had baggage but rather, we live and always have lived in a fallen world. What each generation has feared is unique to the development and advancement of mankind (peoplekind I think is the non-offensive word that my generation would never have thought of but now fear that we are using the wrong term and might be cancelled) who by nature are fallen, driving us to destroy each other physically, economically, emotionally and spiritually.

If our fallen nature produces people and movements to fear…

…then there will always be something to fear in this world. If there is always something to fear in this world then we will always raise our children with fear. There is healthy fear, a fear that keeps us safe and guides us away from the fallen action driving people to destroy each other physically, economically, emotionally and spiritually. This is a God-given fear that we must embrace and yet not allow it to control us. Fear is useful but not always helpful. If we teach our children to fear but not to live in fear, we raise resilient and smart children.

There is one exception.

There is one fear that informs all other fear. There is one fear that guides us so that we can navigate a fallen world. There is one fear that we must pass onto our children and teach to the world. There is one fear that leads us to comprehend the dangers of a fallen world.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise. Psalm 111:10 (NIV)

The Good Old Days are what they are because we did not know what we now know about our fallen world but the fear of the LORD goes beyond what we now know and shines a light on what God in His perfect unfallen nature knows about all of us who are fallen by nature.