sin in general: be saved from this perverse generation

This weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. We were discussing, in a geriatric style, the issues that face kids today versus other generations.

My friend said it’s all the same because it’s all “sin in general.” I told him that I think the issues facing our youth are much more difficult than in the past. To his surprise, I was not talking about drugs, sex, or alcohol. In fact, when I tried to explain that the tough issues facing our youth are much more though than the traditional problems he called “sin in general,” he seemed to completely ignore my response. It didn’t begin to marinate in his mind that other issues are more detrimental to an entire generation. Compassionately and passionately, I reminded him of global poverty and the AIDS pandemic. He clearly had no understanding of that meant. I threw out a stunning number: 18 million – the number of AIDS orphans expected by 2010. I further explained that, by 2010, it is expected that AIDS orphans could hold hands and circle the globe five times.

His response?

“What is that? I always hear stuff like that, you know, “these people could hold hands and go to the moon and back…[caloused and cynical laugh] it doesn’t mean anything.”

Sure, sure, maybe it is a little less meaningful than we might desire – at first. Then, imagine the faces – imagine them one by one until you’ve imagined 18 million sorrowful faces. Imagine their eyes – 36 million eyes - heavy with loss and fear, their hands, tired from caring for younger siblings, their ears, ringing from waling, their foreheads, un-kissed and naked to the trial of living amidst the greatest plague in human history. Then, suddenly, they all disappear as an American Evangelical announces, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Sin in general. Sin in general….what does that mean? I don’t want to say it means sex, drugs, alcohol etc. I don’t want to say it means high crimes or even commercialism. I also don’t want to say, “it doesn’t mean anything.”

Maybe the toughest issue facing adolescents today is a “sin in general.” Maybe it is apathy and the removal of the image of God from the faces of the global suffering – especially children. Is this not the worst of all murders? Is murder not far worse that alcohol, sex, or drugs? Is apathy not a even greater and more destructive pandemic than AIDS?

Daily, we encounter verbal fornicators, ravaged by the disease of apathy and spreading it. I want to put a protective condom over my heart and require an apathy test of all that share intimate moments with me…and yet, that’s not right.

In Africa, there is a horrid rumor: if you have sex with a virgin, you can get rid of the disease.

Maybe, here, that is true. Maybe the cure for the apathy pandemic is deep and unique intimacy with those few resistant souls who press through cynicism to hold hope. Can hope and compassion be the cures to cynicism – which is, of course, the virus that turns to deadly apathy?

So, to this, I say, save me from “sin in general.” And to my beloved readers, in the words of Peter, I pray and urge, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” (Acts 2:40)