Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. We have a very interesting episode today as we examine the generations we have. We've talked on this before. We talked about the generational divide and how you see things, the different generations see things differently.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: You say we talked about it before. I think it was like episode two.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Was it all the way back. So it's been a long time. We're going to review some of those things.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: And we didn't, I don't think we really went over the specific generation. It was basically old versus young, essentially.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: We covered.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we want to get into, I think there are five or maybe six generations right now that we can get into. Let me think about this. Silent generation, baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z and Alpha and how basically what their job is in the church, what we think that they could work on, some of the struggles, some of the differences between the generations. And then toward the end, for our Think Fast, we're going to talk about the Pope who was just chosen about two hours ago. So this is from when we're recording and just a, a take that we had on it. Just a thought as I was reading through, had had some thoughts that we'll share later. But fellas, any other things introductory wise before we lead into this? Well, I'm going to let you lead this, but any other thoughts on the table?
[00:01:14] Speaker C: We've got a, A firmly in the middle. Millennial. Joe's a late millennial. Will is a, a zoomer. Gen Z. We have Gen A kids. Our parents, Joe, our parents are boomers. I think Minor X. Those are X, Gen X. Yeah. So we've got some familiarity up and down the roster a little bit there.
I guess we put out the disclaimer right up front when we say boomer. Like it always sounds pejorative when young people say boomer, when older people say millennials or whatever. Like millennials. Like, can we not do that?
Like not kind of have the animosity toward each other there? I mean, there's critiques of every generation, which is what we're gonna get into.
Number one, don't take it personal. If we say, hey, your generation does this, that doesn't mean you do it.
And yeah, number two, the, the name is not a pejorative, it is a descriptive. So I just want to make those disclaimers up front at the end.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: We're all going to rank the generation.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: That's right. And that's right.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:02:08] Speaker C: Ready for that one?
[00:02:08] Speaker B: It'll be fun.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Exactly. No, yeah, this is one of those things. For some reason, it's always fascinated me the different, the differences between the generations, kind of their characteristics, the qualities that they bring.
Obviously you could Google it and they're going to, they're going to give you the pros, they're going to give you the cons. But I do think it's interesting how, at least for me, I can't speak for you guys, of course, but as I've gotten older, you start to notice the generational differences more obviously when you're, when you're young, teenager, whatever. You just, you know, somebody's older, somebody's younger is pretty much the only distinction that you have. At least for me, as I've gotten older, I've been able to see a little bit more like, oh, that, that very much is a, again, non pejorative, but as a very much a baby boomer characteristic from the, from somebody of that age that's very much a millennial type thing, a Gen X thing or whatever. And so, yeah, I just think this will be a pretty fascinating thing to get into, specifically how this relates to the church. And one thing I wanted to say before we start, guys, I don't know if we just want to kind of work our way down the generations and kind of talk about the, what they bring and kind of their flaws, which would mean we're, I guess we'll be starting with a silent generation. But I do think it is kind of interesting and funny how each generation almost without fail, is incredibly defensive about, almost like insecure about their generation. Like, you will see, you'll see boomers do it, you'll see Gen X do it, you'll see Gen Z and millennials do it. They are very quick to basically down other generations and lift themselves up. Like, everybody thinks that their generation is the best and that all the other generations are stupid, essentially. And listen, I think there's an argument to be made that they're, that you can rank them personally like that there are just some that are worse than others.
But I think I just, I don't know, I found that interesting as we were kind of preparing for this, that there is very much a tendency for.
It's kind of like everybody who grew up in the 80s that thinks that, you know, what was the best, best music? Oh, just conveniently, all the music came out in the 80s. Who were the best athletes of all time? Huh? Everybody that played in the 80s, you know, like that's just kind of how human nature works. And so, yeah, I thought that was just kind of regardless of where you fall, that's what most people's take is, is that their generation and their timeline is the best.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: I think one of the other things is the. Everyone agrees that, like, society is not in a good place and we're trying to parse out blame. It's not just who had the best generation, but, like, who is most for the.
And that's also where you see kind of the boomers and millennials at each other's throat. You know, the millennials looking at the boomers going, this is your fault. And the boomers looking at the millennials going, this is your fault. And which is funny because those are two generations apart.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: There's a generation in between those two.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: Right. I think it's kind of parents and their kids not getting along. And I think to bring the biblical angle to this, I think so much about Malachi, the end of. End of our Old Testament, is in the English Bibles, that when Elijah the prophet, so he's talking about John the Baptist, he's going to come and the things that are going to follow as part of that, but he's going to restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Tells you something of, like, when a society is in disarray, there is generational warfare. And we're at a place where that really is the case of, like, we're at each other's throats. And, you know, the. The boomers did that to their predecessors. They changed things drastically. And now the millennials are looking at them wanting to train, change things drastically. And you've kind of got this every other thing we're going to talk a little bit about. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's. Blame shifting isn't helping. And I think that's one of the reasons why we want to get into the critiques of how everybody's kind of contributing to the downfall, but what everybody can bring to the table to help.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: I was watching a video recently of a guy working out, and he worked on one side, one trap up here.
I was talking to Jack about this, and for like an entire month or two months, all he did was work one side. And he was just absolutely stacked up here. And this was like super weak on the other side. It was the goofiest looking thing. I can't imagine how the guy sleeps at night and how much pain there would be. But the point is, I think this is what the generations do, is they analyze the previous generation who maybe didn't work in a certain area. Every generation has their own strengths and weaknesses.
So maybe the boomers look at it and they're looking more for financial stability, coming off of the backs of the Great Depression and things like that. So their parents dealt with that, and their parents may be really tight with money or something along those lines. And so the boomers would want to be workaholics and they'd want to go out and they'd make their money, things like that. They'd send their kids into daycare and such. While you have a lot of two parent or two income households that makes sense on the backs of what came from the previous generation. They're trying to strengthen a weaker part of the previous generation, quote, unquote, weaker part. I don't think it is. That's one of the issues we want to get into. But like they're looking at something that maybe the previous generation only worked their left bicep and they're saying, we're going to go to the other side and work the right bicep. Well, then you have Gen Xers who go, okay, you guys did this well, but you were really bad in this area. And so they try to help in another area. So when we're analyzing the generation, everybody has a weak part, a weak spot in their generational breakdown here. And everybody has their own strengths in what works and what doesn't work. And so I think that's, we wanted to put that disclaimer out once again to slow down the animosity toward one another as you guys are talking about and to recognize that when we're calling out certain generations, I'll call out the millennials or the Gen Z's just as much as anybody else on the areas where we really could use it. So wanted to throw that out. But the other point. Well, yeah, go for it. Will go for it.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: No, you finish your point if you've got something on there.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: No, you're good.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: I wanted to take us to the boom. I want to start with the boomers. Unless you guys have just some scorching takes on the silen generation. That's, that's not, you know, they're the ones before the boomers. And I don't, I don't have a ton about them, but because the boomers are kind of the, I guess, oldest generation, I mean, there's still some that are alive for the silent generation. Any thoughts? Jack? Looks like you might have a thought.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: I think this is really interesting. And it cascades into some of the other things. The silent generation did not have a U.S. president until Joe Biden. And he's in by like six months. I mean, like, he's almost a boomer. And so essentially that whole generation didn't have a president.
And it's shaping up to where, let's say J.D. vance gets elected in a few years. Who knows whether he does or not? We might not have a Gen X president. We've had a bunch of boomer presidents in a row. And then Biden again, who's very much on the cusp of that. And then we might just go straight to millennials. And so it's as I said earlier, there's almost this every other influential versus kind of writing shotgun generation, kind of like the little brothers of the movers and shakers, because it was the greatest generation. Right. They were the ones kind of changed the world. Silent Generation was writing shotgun. Then the boomers come along and kind of just ran over the silent generation for better. And I'm not, again, not pejoratively, but it's just like they took the wheel. And I think the millennials are starting to do that to Gen X. So when we talk about the silent Generation, I think that introduces kind of that every other pattern that might be.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: That is very interesting. That is very interesting.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: It also introduces where the boomers come in as we're about to get to. Because once again, coming off of. You have to look at culture and where we are as a culture. And when the silent generation is dealing with, especially as kids or teenagers dealing with the Great Depression and then they're getting into the war, right. Their outlook is going to be a lot different and they're going to have kids that have a much different outlook. They're going to be very conservative. They're going to be very scared. They're going to be, you know, they're going to, yeah. Clutch pearls a little bit closer and make sure that they're saving money in a different way. And like, honor matters and things like that. It's on this next generation, which we're going to get into, where you start seeing critical theory, that shout out to our episode last year that I think is so important, how to know your church is cast captured. Critical theory starts breaking down any of the hierarchical structures, including parents. This is where we come into the boomer generation, where we start to see the fracturing of hierarchy. The fracturing.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: So, yeah, because that's what one of the things that I'm sure you guys had on your list talk about as well. But like, so as we talk about the baby boomers, they really were the first generation to kind of traditionally or to challenge traditional gender roles within the home.
You know, they were the ones where the wives started to go into the workforce really as far as kind of the breaking down the barriers, you know, gender equality in the workplace and, you know, pursuing a career as a woman. That really was started by the boomers, essentially, but by that generation. That was really where that whole push came from. And you start to see that's where kind of the family unit and the traditional family, what a lot of us are now coming back around to. Again, the tradwife thing that we've discussed, people looking at that going, man, that sure was that. Man, that would be a really nice life. Where it really started to deteriorate and fall apart is with the baby boomers. And what's interesting about that not to kind of overlap with Gen X here, but I think it's interesting that Gen X, one of the things, if you just Google, like, what are the things that are the typical characteristics of Gen X, Gen X also tends to have an aversion to authority. They tend to have an aversion to hierarchy and that kind of thing.
And so that's where I think this critical theory comes in. But those are subsequent generations. And so, guys, what thoughts do you have on that? That's obviously one of the biggest aspects to me of the baby boomers. And, you know, not to start with a negative, but one of the biggest negative impacts they had on society is that they were the first generation to say, all right, honey, being a housewife's no longer enough. Go, go work. And, you know, not that the men were forcing the women to do that was something the one women wanted to do, but it became accepted. It not only became accepted, but it became normalized. And then it became kind of celebrated that, you know, the wives were out working. And that's where I really think, you know, no fault divorce came in there shortly after. And yeah, I think that's a lot of where a lot of this started. But what thoughts do you guys have on that phrase?
[00:11:15] Speaker C: You'll hear a lot. Atomize or atomization. That's you're breaking everything down, up into its atoms, into its individual parts. And the millennials were like the first really atomized generation. And that's where they're not getting married, they're not having families. They're just, you know, transient. Move from one town to the next. And I mean, it's just. It's crazy how rootless you are.
But the word that's like a generation or Two above that is deracinate, which doesn't have anything to do with race, but it's spelled that way. But it just means to pull up by the roots. But it also means to isolate or alienate a person from a native or customary culture or environment.
Well, the thing with the boomers is that was done to them. I mean it was, it was kind of psyops. It was social programming. They were the first trust the experts generation. They were the first television generation. They were the first, you know, big time college generation, the first teenage generation. All of this stuff was pushed at them to deracinate them, to separate them from their parents, as you say, to separate the mom from the home, to separate all of those things that happened. And to a degree, I feel great pity for them. It wasn't their fault. They didn't see it coming. They didn't know what was being done to them to convince them this is a new normal.
And so to that end they have my pity to the end that they defend that as that's normal. And hey, that's how it's supposed to be. And you need to do that. And that's where you see that I'm not giving my kids an inheritance thing, which is a sin according to the Bible. You know, like that those ideas that come, come through from that, that's where they deserve some blame is to realize or to not realize, hey, this was not normal. We got duped into this and we need to help restore this. Rather than doubling down and saying, don't criticize me, I'd got mine like that. You can't have that attitude.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, my, I, I wrote an article on the family side of it about women in the workforce and why that's such a massive shift and a horrible thing that took place with them. And really it was their parents coming back from with World War II and the women staying in the workplace. And then they're the first ones that really adopted it and made it a big thing. But the other piece of this that you have to go into is with the industrialization that's taking place and everything else that's getting better, like women didn't have as much of a place in the workforce or as much of a place in the home is what it felt like. They had all these things making their job faster. And so we started looking at being outside what you produce in the workforce is your sense of value. And Jack, I think there's a great point you're making of all the things that were really foisted upon them. Even. Even the 60s with the sexual revolution as you get into the 70s and things like that, and just the even.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: Simple stuff of a family has three kids. One of them gets a job in Seattle, the other one gets a job in Boston, the other one gets a job in Kansas City. That is so ahistorical. And it's not. It's not wrong. But you see what it does to a people. That's where you end up with the atomization a couple generations later, where people are like, I'm not going back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, like, I don't want to have anything to do with my family. It starts there, like, where there's no sense of community or anything like that.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because if you grow up in daycare and you grow up outside the home, being taken care of by somebody else after school programs, things like that, instead of coming home to mom and dad or coming home to a mom who's got a snack ready, whatever.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: It is, the word attachment. Here it comes.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Exactly. It does break attachment. And it causes you to not feel as close to your family as much as to your school group, as much as to your college, as much as to your workplace. And then we value those in the workplace so much. And so, yeah, if you can get the best job in Seattle, move to Seattle, that. Why would you not? Right? Because your value is going to be found in getting that highfalutin job, the lawyer job, whatever it is. And you don't have that super strong attachment connection to your family. And through things like sexual revolution and through the sex, drugs and rock and roll and things like that, that also breaks the generational bond because the parents are going, absolutely not, and the kids are going, absolutely. And so there's already this tension between the parents that starts at a young age with attachment being broken and the mom being in the workforce. And it goes into these. These teenage ideas, like you said, kind of the first generation of teenagers and being pitted against one another with the parents. And then it goes into college, where you are brainwashed at that point. Colleges and people are like that are starting to accept critical theory. They're starting to accept evolution all the way back to the 60s.
So that further separates you from your religious roots, from your familial roots. Then you end up moving across the nation because you got a great job opportunity in New York or whatever it is. And you just see how this cascades, this problem cascades. So part of this was foisted on them. But Jack, you're exactly right.
It's your acceptance of it. And not just the acceptance, it's the pushing of it. As though this is the normal thing, when in reality this has not been normal forever. Basically this has never happened until their generation. And now they push this as though this is normalcy.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: I would say the individualism that you guys are talking about there, the individualism of, you know, I'm going to go live by myself in Seattle, it's about kind of my career, that kind of thing, kind of family becomes secondary, tertiary, like not really quite that. Not all that important.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the individualism that is kind of shown with that are the roots of what we are seeing in today's times with like, transgenderism and, you know, the. Basically, you can't tell somebody that they can't express their individualism, essentially, that it is now out of bounds for you to tell a man that he can't swim, that he can't identify as a woman and compete in female swimming. It is out of bounds to tell somebody who is, you know, walking around as a furry, so to speak, you know, pretending to be an animal that you, you know, that that's embarrassing and humiliating. That's obviously individualism at its best, or at its worst, I should say that says just, that's just them. That's who they are. And essentially that there is no family community that is pulling them back, saying, what on earth are you doing? It's all individualism to me. Those are just the plants that the roots of individualism are leading to. And those roots started all the way back with this generation and in this, this kind of time frame. And so we're seeing the plants, so to speak, the manifestations of that, again, with all the craziness right now. But again, you look around and it is out of bounds for a lot of people to say, well, you shouldn't be doing that, or that's wrong.
That's individualism. Where did this individualism start? It really started when we went to devaluing family, when we went to public schools. Obviously, public schools have been around forever, but really pushing kids to college and even the extracurricular activities of things that were after school. There was a time not that long ago, when you came home from school, what did you do? You spend time with your family, maybe you did your homework, but you, you ate dinner as a family around a table. You did family activities together. When did all of that start to transition into other things? You know, sports after school and theater, turning on the tv. Separate. Yeah. Not eating together on the table. Again, we see a lot of that now. My position would be that the roots for that started back with this generation and the next.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: And the trustee experts.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Well, that's part of it. But to Will's point here, the word that we use even to this day is identity. You know, find your identity. And that's not a biblical word, that's not even a biblical concept. And Carl Truman is a guy that's written on that and talked about it a lot and has some really good stuff on this is one of those. Like if he had asked his grandfather, well, do you find your identity in your work? Do you find like, you know, do you enjoy kind of those things?
[00:18:37] Speaker A: What are the pieces of your.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Yeah, all those things. He's like, puts food on the table and a roof over my head. So, yeah, like that. That was just that. And this kind of the introduction of the teenager cascaded down to. You've got to like, be something. You got to brand yourself. The introduction of the television in itself, I think is in the same sense as the gen Z.
The TikTok grew up with an iPad in their hand generation. The millennials that grew up, especially us older millennials, grew up on Internet forums, Gen X, obviously, the technology that they were coming into, kind of the early Internet and email addresses and stuff like that, all of these things are influential and all of these things are ways that get us to think about ourselves. And I mean, the selfie we talk about, that's all downstream from this. And so you see how each generation has adopted that more and more to where identity is the centerpiece. And Will's talking about identity so much that in the same sense you can change your look.
The stylish haircuts and the poodle skirts and stuff in the 50s and 60s, now it's, I'm gonna dye my hair purple and say I'm a dude, you know, like that. It's just the ridiculous lengths that it goes to. But it all cascades down from that starting point of telling people, you've got to find an identity, choose an identity, fit in with a crowd. And mass media got us to, you know, swallow some really harmful stuff, I think.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Well, I think identity is difficult to define when you are away from a family, when you're in your family, who are you? That's really the basis of identity. There's the question of who are you? What makes you say, like you said, a fulfillment, things like that. But who are you? Who am I? That is your identity.
When you are a part of a link in a generational chain, and we talk about multi generational faithfulness a lot, it takes a lot of pressure off of you to always have to be the guy at all times. Takes a lot of pressure off of you, but it also adds some pressure to say, yeah, but I do have a duty to uphold the previous generation that came before me and their wisdom and passing that down. And I also have a duty to. To my kids.
Boomers are. They stand. The baby boomers stand in that little gap where they have rejected. This goes to the point of trust. The experts is they've rejected generational wisdom, the things that have come before. And they're also not giving wealth to their kids. And they kind of look down on their kids and the millennials in that generation. And so they stand in the gap here of not recognizing their own link in the chain. And that, to your point, Jack, is where identity is based, is they decided to find who am I in the context of society, who am I in the context of the great ethos, rather than who am I in the context of my family? We took. And the other thing that you have to go along with is with air traffic or with air travel now, excuse me, especially with Zoom and FaceTime and things like that around the globe and with the Internet, we now are global. Whereas you used to think, what could I do for my small little community? You have to realize, in their world, especially after World War II, things exploded where the idea of traveling to different nations and having people from different parts of the country or being able to move to different parts of the country and afford that became more of a possibility rather than, you know, in Dixon, Tennessee, where I live, like, what can I do in little Dixon, Tennessee? That's how most of society has lived forever until this generation. And now they're finding who's my identity in the midst or what is my identity in the midst of the world. I think that's a massive shift. And once again, getting away from the family structure is what causes this crisis in identity. I would know who I am if I was really attached to the Wilkies, but if I'm attached to my alma mater, if I'm attached to my job, if I'm attached to the globe that changes.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Social justice, community that they attach themselves to changes things.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah. And that's again, with all these. You see where they start, and then you see how they've just been amplified with each generation to Millennial and Gen Z.
There's a lot of different directions we go, I think some really interesting ones. But we also pulled up a bunch of surveys. We kind of been researching a little bit, and we don't have time to go over all those. But I wanted to ask you guys, what was the most interesting stuff you found in your research as far as tendencies, beliefs, views from the different generations?
Because I think that also helps us see kind of some of the strengths, some of the weaknesses, some of the changes that have come about over the years. And so I'm kind of putting you on the spot there. I guess I'll start the one for me, as we look at Gen Z kind of at the end of all this, and the identity piece is, they are either running from that full bore. I mean, they are. They're going to go rightward conservative directions, far past anything of their grandparents and great grandparents, or at least equal to their great grandparents. Right. Or they're going to be way over here. I mean, their LGBT stats, especially among the young women.
This one said that only 50% of Gen Z identify as exclusively heterosexual.
That. That's incredible. I mean, and so. And again, Gen Z, we're talking about like 25, 26 to down to like, what, 15?
And so again, those that are ending high school, going into college, going into the workforce right now, that high, I mean, their LGBT numbers, their. Their sexuality is down. Like their sexual activity has declined, but it's because their porn numbers are through the roof. And so it's this weird thing where they're identifying as all these crazy sexual things, but not actually engaging with real people. And so that one really jumped out to me is either they are super hyper conservative on morality and politics and religion and things like that, or they're the other thing. And so it's kind of. You're seeing a parting of the ways there, but it's been getting progressively more liberal in their beliefs and all those things generation by generation. So that jumped out at me. What did you guys find?
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's a lot here. Yeah, there's a lot here. There's one from Pew Research center that kind of caught my eye as far as it kind of ties into what you're saying, Jack, but essentially the religiously unaffiliated category that people will find Themselves in that number has gone up with every single generation.
And that there is, let's see what from this is from 2014. So there's not a lot of Gen Z data here.
But it starts with silent, then the boomers, then Gen X, then older millennial. It splits older millennials and younger millennials. As of 2014, 11% of the Silent Generation would consider themselves religiously unaffiliated. 36% for millennials, 36% for you. And it just kind of works itself up as the generations continue. And that is something that I would be interested to see if there will be. And Joe Jack, I know you spoke to kind of the, the conservative trend that Gen Z is like Gen Z is drifting far more conservative. They're kind of bucking the trend as far as typically that we think of the younger generation to be more liberal. But as far as the religiously unaffiliated, that atheist agnostic kind of, I don't really believe in anything higher power wise. That number continues to grow as the generations have continued to. Again like you won't find a lot of, of silent generation or baby boomers that are religiously unaffiliated. That number keeps getting higher as the generations go on. And I thought I found that pretty, pretty interesting to see that there's not really a generation that's bucked that trend so far.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Although there's research out like a month ago that said that has capped like for the first time that that has stopped increasing. So hopefully that that's the end of.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: It would be nice.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: It'll be interesting to see where that goes over the next year with Gen.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Z because the one that I did not have Gen Z on there.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And that it just recently like all of a sudden the we hit peak nuns N O N E's. And so you know, and again that might be the turning of the tide of younger people going back traditionalists realizing hey we've got to, we've got to go recreate the roots. And we've talked a bunch of times before about the Catholic, the orthodox thing. If people going for something that they feel has roots because they don't have any and they're like trying to, to get quick roots.
And so it's, it's leading to that. But yeah, I mean like you just see and so going back to that idea of like the blame to go around, this is one of those like you just see it. Each generation bears so much blame in this and if Gen Z is the one to turn it around, good for them. You know. That, that's fantastic. We, we love them for it and we're thankful they do.
They've got a lot to overcome because of how strong the degenerate side of their generation is. And so maybe it's Alpha, maybe it's, who knows? Lord willing, there's a generation that rises up and goes, man, We've been sold 80 years of garbage and we got to do something about it.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I could see that happening at some point soon, hopefully the one that I found. So I had a couple different pulled up. Purdue Global had one and then John Hopkins had one. And as they're breaking down the generation, something I found very interesting. We talked about the boomers being very individualistic.
On the other hand, both of them had this idea that they actually were more. They were trying to figure out once again who they were in the grand collective. Whereas they talked about, both of them talked about Gen X being hyper individualistic, like, leave me alone, I'm going to go do my own thing. And they're also talking about the Gen Z being that way, very individualized, very diverse. You know, we're all going to do our own thing. We're going to choose to be our own person. And it was the two major generations. You actually talked about how it skips these generations.
Baby boomers and millennials are almost trying to figure out how do I be an individual in the midst of society where they, they do have societal constructs, they do have this idea of like, we want to be part of this grand society. And Gen X and Gen Z are basically like, no, I don't care. I'm going to be who I want to be within this. And I thought that was interesting to see the breakdown. And I was curious, if you follow this through, that would make Gen Alpha.
It would mean that the silent generation is going to be more on the individualistic, like, hey, just I'm going to get mine and stay put versus Gen Alpha is going to basically be the millennial and baby boomer, which is way more society based and driven. And what they're looking for, I think, is family. So every generation from baby boomers is really missing family. Baby boomers and millennials have tried to find it in the workplace. They're workaholics, they're trying to find it with their friend groups, going out to, you know, the, the microbreweries and things like that, where they really want to recreate a sense of family.
Baby boomers and Gen Z don't seem to care at all about that. And I find that concerning but also interesting in the fact that as you guys are talking about this Gen Z maybe turning the tide a little bit, maybe being more on the. They're willing to question some of the social norms that may be the thing that leads to them having kids that are more community based because they are individualistic enough to not feel the pressures well, of society.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: I was going to bring up about Gen X. This kind of ties into what you're talking about.
One of the reasons why and as you said kind of there's. There's these elements of individualism or not individualism of independence I should say with Millennials as well. But for Gen X a lot of the stuff I was reading talked about why. Why do they have such a strong sense of independence because they were basically raising themselves like oh like largely speaking obviously stereo stereotyping there. But because Gen X were kind of the. They were the first latchkey kids. Moms had pretty well fully entered into the workforce when Gen X kids were when they were at home. And so you had a bunch of kids with Gen X who were pretty well left to take care of themselves after school again letting themselves inside the house, finding ways to entertain themselves for hours on end. And so a lot of stuff I was reading talked about how that pret. Well is why that generation is so independent minded and kind of why they want to do their own thing. And man, that is just. I don't know, I guess I wanted to bring that up but I guess comment on kind of the sad nature of that of how you have these kids who parents leave them in public school for eight hours, get home, don't see them for another three or four, go do homework and entertain themselves.
So again, two hours a day maybe at max with their parents and you start to see where that whole idea comes from versus some of the other generations that are a little bit more collaborative I guess is the word. The difference with Millennials too is they want to be independent on things, but they also want to have flexibility with the way that they work is kind of the way it is kind of the difference between them and Gen X is Gen X is comfortable with the 9 to 5. They're still going to work really hard but whereas millennials and Jack you can speak. I guess more to this they're. They're not as tied down traditional nine to five type of thing. But what I wanted to ask briefly on the Gen Z thing before we move away from them turning the tide, do you guys think that. I definitely think that that Gen Z plays plays a role in this. But what do you guys think is the reason why essentially? Is it the administration, is it the Elon buying Twitter or now X? Is it like, what is it that has allowed us to say the things that we couldn't say 10 years ago? We had our Wokeism is dying episode or Wokeism is dead episode where we brought up the fact that 10 years ago you could not come out and say certain things. You had to believe all women.
You could not say anything that was. Could even remotely be construed as racist. You couldn't, you know, and now we are having a. Seems to be a social discourse on X, on social media. People are coming out and saying things that 10 years ago they couldn't say. Do you think that is largely because Gen X now has a stronger, louder voice in the marketplace? Or do you think that's more. More so due again to kind of the power that's at play in the United States, whether it be the Trump administration, Elon buying X or just a combination of all of it? I think my answer would be I think all of that is working together to produce this. But I think Gen Z really was the first generation to say in a while, to say, as Jack spoke to, to recognize like, this is ridiculous. Like we're not going to put up with this anymore. We're going to, you know, the. And the transgenderism being overplayed. We're not going to say that a man is a woman. We're not going to allow these things, whereas the previous generations did. So I don't know if that question makes sense, but what are yalls thoughts on that?
[00:31:43] Speaker C: I think 2020 broke a lot of stuff in that you tell a generation, hey, you don't get a high school graduation, you don't get a college graduation, you don't these things what you've worked hard for your whole life when you come out, oh, by the way, housing just tripled. You're not. You're never going to own one. You are a degenerate racist, you know, no matter what you do. Because you were just born that way and systemically that's. Yeah. And so. And so you're hated.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: You're.
[00:32:09] Speaker C: You're the worst person on earth. And just because of who you are and you're never gonna have anything. And when you just take all incentive away from everyone because that's. That's what's been building is with the boomers, it's kind of like, go to college, get a good job, put your head down and work hard. It'll Pay off. And it did. When the Gen X go and do it, it'll pay off. It did. Millennials, it stopped paying off. We did all those things. We got the student loan debt and it's kind of like, all right, now it's our turn. And you look, you know, people go, we're just not working hard enough. You're just not, you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And you just look at like, what percent of a nation's wealth each generation owned at 30 years old, it's fallen off of a cliff. And so by the time millennials got to 30s, we don't have anything. And Gen Z is looking like, huh, I can get in line and do everything right, be politically correct, say all the right things, join all the right causes or whatever else. I'm still going to have nothing. And I'm one step away from being permanently canceled. Why should I care about this system? And so this one guy breaks it down as we've lived the entire last three generations have lived in the era of what he calls the devouring mother. Just kind of the smothering helicopter mom, the feminism, the thing of just kind of. Yeah, the politically correct, all of that stuff is very feminine energy. You know, we talked about feminized church leadership like that. That's been the whole time. And he says, what you get is the overcorrection is the age of the devour, the vengeful son.
Like, no, you smothered me growing up and I'm breaking out of this. And essentially I'm going to be transversive, I'm going to be transgressive. I'm going to break all of your politically corre. Norms. And that's where they're saying, like in schools, the teachers are like, these kids are saying things they shouldn't say and things I'm not endorsing. But it's like the overcorrection to their, their sense of humor. Nothing's off limit. The, the words they'll use. Stuff like that is just kind of like, forget your whole system. I'm done with it. And again, for better and for worse, that that's coming about. And that goes to the point I made earlier of the older generations have to realize things have gotten really bad and it needs to be corrected. Gatekeeping it to say, no, no, no, it needs to stay the way that it is, that. That we can't do that anymore. It' change.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: That's it. Within the church too. Like, I do think that we have to have different, not different methods in terms of like we're. What you're actually seeing is the younger generations are going toward high church, they're going toward Catholicism, going toward orthodoxy, toward Anglicanism, because they're looking for something more. But you have the gatekeepers, the older gatekeepers who are looking, going, this is perfectly fine. Clearly it's not the, the not requiring anything of anybody and hey, just show up on Sundays or when it's convenient for you is perfectly fine. Like that may have been what has helped them, they think, but they continue to push something that maybe was great in their day, but it's no longer working. And we're losing people in droves within the church and in society. Yeah, we have this going off a cliff. This is how the Andrew Tates of the world get big is guys that are just moral degenerates, Kanye west and horrible people. How do they have such followers among this generation? It's because they're willing to say what that nobody else is willing to say. That's really appealing to a generation that is very subversive.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: And this is where Jack, you spoke to this earlier in the episode of the self awareness that it's going to take and specifically we're going to talk about and maybe here in just a few minutes about how this affects the church and ways in which we can work together better. But the self awareness that we need to have to say this worked and this did not. For instance, I'm a part of Gen Z, I need to have the self awareness to say, yeah, the, the kind of bleep you mentality of overcorrecting into just saying the, you know, the again being pro Nazi and all this stuff. I need to have the self awareness to say, yeah, no, that's, that's ridiculous. And I do not endorse that.
Just like the boomers and the Gen Xers need to have the self awareness to say, yeah, I know we were really pro moms working and we were really pro public school and really pro all this stuff.
Yeah, might have missed the mark on that one. The older people inspired rants that I have gone on before and that we know Joe has gone on before is due to the fact of what we've already spoke to. The fact that there is a refusal to acknowledge it. There is a refusal to say essentially to identify the areas of opportunity to say, yeah, we, we missed that, we missed the mark on that one. Or we had that wrong. It's like the guy that comes to the business meeting and he's got his metrics chart that he's responsible for. And you know, there's, there's the categories and metrics and he only wants to focus on the areas that are in the green. He only wants to focus on the things that are going really well. And when somebody points out and says, what about this one? This one's in the red or this pretty clearly looks like an area of opportunity, the guy's like, whoa, whoa, how dare you point that out. Essentially we're not going to talk about that. Let's talk about all these areas that are green.
We need for all generations, Gen Z, Gen X, millennials, boomers, we need all of them to acknowledge the red. We need all of them to acknowledge the areas that they performed very poorly. And we need boomers to say, you know what, you know, we probably should, it was probably a bad call to send our wives, you know, often to go work and allow that to become very normalized. We need Gen Xers to say we should not have allowed public school teachers and high school athletic coaches to raise our kids. That was a mistake. We need them to say those things just like again, as I said at the beginning, we need Gen Z people to say, hey, we shouldn't be saying all this crazy stuff.
We don't get that from the boomers, we don't get that from Gen X most of the time. Some of them will again stereotypical here, but most of them refuse to acknowledge the problem that they brought to our society. And again, as I said a second ago, that's where these older people inspired rants that Joe and I will go on. That's what this leads to and, or that's what this stems from, I should say. And so yeah, that, that's, that's, that was just my overall point that I wanted to make here is that the self awareness that we've spoken to already is so needed. And it is especially needed when us as Gen Z, we really want to go to people in Gen X. We really want to go to people who are boomers and say, and coach us essentially like teach us, mentor us. Nobody wants to do that though. If you're that person that only wants to talk about the good things that you did. And when you say, well what about this was. And you know, again, never pointing out the red, only pointing out the green. And so what that's doing for somebody my age, somebody I'm sure yalls age as well, is turning us off from older generations in the sense of like, well they're not gonna ever, all they're gonna do is talk about the Good things. They're not gonna talk about anything bad. So we're basically not going to go to them for counsel.
And that's, that's a problem. That's kind of my point is we still need that. We need the self awareness. Joe.
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[00:38:59] Speaker B: What you're talking about is ownership. Like take ownership. Ownership where you just, just own it and say, our bad. This was not great. And specifically, we're talking to church members. We realize the, the majority of baby boomers are not going to accept that.
We're talking, even as church members, the ability to say, I wish I had not sent my wife into the workplace. You know, the extra money was nice. It was not worth it. My kids have fallen away. Three out of four of my kids aren't faithful anymore. That's probably on me.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Send them to college or whatever it is.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And I'm going to say the same for my generation. Like the issues that we're having, we have to own those things. Yes. We're young. So when we're in, you know, 30, 40 years, I'd like to think that we're able to say we really messed up in this way.
My question is like, why can't they just accept?
Why can't they own what their problem is? Why can't they accept that maybe they were in the wrong on something? It kind of seems almost like they're afraid of that acceptance. Like they're afraid of what it means to be wrong. They're afraid of the failure. They're afraid. Why are you afraid of the failure? It doesn't mean anything other than, man, we made a mistake and we're going to help the next generation not make the same mistakes. That should be a blessing of old age and gray hair to say, not just all the good things we did, but here's some of the bad things we did. And I wish we would have changed this man. We'd be a much better place if they could own it and help us grow from their own mistakes rather than just act like they never made mistakes. We're all looking at it here. We all see those mistakes. And like you said, will I call on this for every generation right now?
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Well, just real fast, Jack, I know you got thoughts. I love that word ownership is something that I'm. I'm reading a book right now actually, called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. I'm sure you've heard that name before.
Really good book so far. Obviously talking about leadership kind of in a, you know, organization, kind of culturally speaking here. But the point of the book, and I'm not all the way through it yet, but basically is when, when something goes wrong, when there's a time for blame to be placed, essentially you're not supposed to be the guy as the leader that's basically pointing fingers, saying, well, if this guy would have done his job and if that person would have done. And so for this context, it's, well, if that generation would tighten those things up and if they had to done this, own it, own, own. And obviously it's not a perfect parallel because we're talking about organizational leadership here, but I love that word, Joe. The idea of owning the mistakes and owning what it is that you did well and what you didn't really. What you really did not do well, I think that's great.
[00:41:14] Speaker C: Well, I think with any relationship, it's helped a lot to look at my marriage this way. We have a disagreement over something like, well, what do we really want here? Well, we don't want to be mad at each other. We want the same thing ultimately, even if we want to get there in different ways.
And that's one of the issues with this, is like, well, what do we want? What we want should be multi generational success.
That's not what we want. What we want is generational vindication. The millennials want to have somebody to blame. The boomers want to have somebody to blame. The Gen X, you know, I don't know. Gen X seems to just want to fade into the background. That's kind of a tagline. Gen X doesn't care. Like, well, you need to start caring if you don't. But, you know, and Gen Z, again, they're the young ones coming along and we need to be thinking about them and getting them in positions to succeed and all that. And thinking about the church long term. This thing of, well, you know, it doesn't really matter if the church falls apart here in America, because it'll fall, you know, it's doing well elsewhere. No, we need to take, as will saying, ownership. For we all want this to succeed. We all want to keep this going. What does it take to do that? Because when you ask what it takes to do that, you have to be honest with yourself and be like, okay, how do I need to get out of the way? Because if what I want is to be vindicated and validated and patted on the back all the time, we can get that, or we can have success. And all of us, you know, we've been hard on the older folks. I, as a millennial, I just don't like millennials. Ironic humor, the never taking anything seriously, the kind of not trying kind of, you know, I don't believe that millennials don't have a work ethic. I don't think it's that. But it's just kind of like the really trying to project this sense of cool. And of course, the younger people, Gen Z, they want to be famous. They want to be Tick Tockers. They want to be whatever else.
You know, Gen X just kind of had that flippant. And it was kind of the Friends and Office Space and that. That comedy stuff of the 90s of just like, I'm above it all kind of thing. And it's like, can we get over all of this? You know, like, I wonder again, if we took away the Internet, if we took away tv, and just like, hey, this is your family. These are your people, and you need to survive together. We would do things, every generation would act differently. And it's a little ridiculous that we're all trying to kind of slot into these identities. And that's. We talked earlier about individualism of, like, a generational critique is not a critique of everybody. But on the other hand, we act like our generation. Like, there we do. A lot of us bear some of those hallmarks of the age. These are. These were our peers. These were our friends growing up. This is the TV that was on when we were kids. This is how we think of the world. And you just think about, like, how much has changed.
You think about, okay, a boomer born 1960, 1963 or whatever.
They're born and Leave it to Beaver is on tv. They graduate high school, graduate college, and Madonna's on mtv. Like, that much changed in that short of a time.
And generationally, we should all be banding together to go. That's horrifying. What can we do to turn this back around?
Not, as you guys are saying, defending what your generation has, and, well, it wasn't wrong. Like, how about we just have the big picture view here? And I think that's what we've been robbed of by breaking ourselves down in this way.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: This is what you get, though, going back to it. We're beating a dead horse on this one. This is what you get when you pull people away from family and religion.
Church keeps the bounds. You know that that's a boundary for these people, that they have broken the shackles of religion. They're all kind of. They went into really, like, atheism and things like that. You see it a lot among Gen X of the, like, bitter atheist type of thing is a Gen X stereotype. When you cast off the shackles, quote unquote, of religion, what you're doing is you're. You're really, like, boundaryless. You have no home. Where do you belong? Why do you matter? Things like that.
Same thing with the family. When you break apart the family.
[00:44:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Every generation is going to struggle because every generation is trying to replicate what God already gave us through the family. That really is what it's going to come down to. Like the. I don't care. Why in the world would we benefit in the millennial culture? Me and you are millennials, Jack. Like you said, I'm on the back end here. 94, and I think 96 is last year. So how do we benefit by the oh, I don't care ironic humor type of thing? It is a defense mechanism. So if we actually did care and we found that we are lacking, well, then it's going to feel like we're not enough. It's going to feel like we're inadequate. Nobody cares about us. Nobody loves this type of thing. Well, where does that come from? Maybe workaholic parents. Workaholic parents that made achievement and made glory the glory days of college. And you got to go live your best life and you got to go make the $150,000 a year, and that's where your value is. No wonder why we would take on the hey, I don't really care about it. Like, no, we do. We're just afraid of saying we don't care, or we're afraid of saying we do care, rather. And coming up short, we're afraid of not reaching the societal standards that were set for us. And the problem is, Jack, as you already pointed out, we have no ability to meet the societal standards based off of where society is based on where it was for the boomers. They could go in and the handshake would get you the job and you'd work your way up in a company and make your $150,000 a year and put all four kids through college.
Handshake is nothing. These days. That means nothing. You're going to be in line with 2,000 other applicants in a job and they promised when you got the degree it was going to work. And now we don't have it. So yes, that is a defense mechanism away from feeling like we're all a bunch of failures to go, I don't really care. I'm too cool to care. The ironic humor, like it's okay to say we care. And it's that caring that in Jack to your point, Gen X really did that. Like we're above it all. Like everybody's trying to project this cool, the sense of cool. The same thing with Gen Z trying to all become famous. Why would they need to become famous? Because they don't have families that care about them.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Them.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: They want somebody to care about them. They want somebody to notice them. God designed the perfect way for people to be in a family, in a religion, in a church, a church family, and to get all of these needs met. And we are trying to replicate all of this because we don't feel loved by our families because the parents are outside the home, Divorce rate is sky high. Churches don't matter anymore. Religion is weak and it provides no structure for anybody's life. It doesn't call them to any standard of living. And so now they're finally finding it in the orthodox faith of all things. It's ridiculous.
So, yeah, we're desperately trying to cling to something that God's already given us the remedy for. We're just too stupid to see it.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: We've got to get to think fast. But I guess my closing thoughts would be for the church specifically, like, what should the application be? And I think it truly just goes back to acknowledge your shortcomings. If you're a Gen Z, even if you're a millennial, acknowledge the fact that you are going to have a tendency to maybe want to push the envelope a little bit, try new things and, and that's not always the right way to go about it. If you're a Gen Xer, you're going to have a tendency to think that your way of, you know, you're gonna. The subverting authority or the aversion, I should say to authority, the critical theory, that kind of thing is very much, again, kind of started with Gen X. And so understand that's your tendency is to kind of, you know, mo, maybe we should, you know, mutual submission between husband and wife. Like, like. No, that is definitely something that is, you know, you need to recognize your shortcoming on that. And if you're a boomer man, acknowledge the fact that you know you are going to probably naturally be a little bit more defensive about things that you did as a church. Working together, you have to come together to find what is the. Obviously the Bible transcends generations. The Bible very much transcends the generation. You know, it doesn't come down on what generation is correct or anything like that. But the truth is found in God's word. And to me, our inability generationally to see our weaknesses can prevent us from seeing the correct answer. Biblically. Again, just because it's fresh on my mind is the mutual submission thing, husband and wife. For somebody who's Gen X, that your weakness there blinds you from saying from seeing like, that's not biblical truth. That's wrong. And, and again you. There's a dozen examples you could use for that. But to me, I guess that's the application for the church is don't allow your generational shortcomings to blind you to the truth of the Bible because you can work together and you're supposed to work together. We're just really bad at it in our society right now.
[00:48:54] Speaker C: Yeah, man.
I think we probably slanted more towards the older folks. I'm just going to end it off with we are three or four generations into wilderness wandering and I don't like all of us have to acknowledge that and just acknowledge significant change needs to come and we need to get over ourselves. I mean that's the bottom line of the whole thing for me. So let's get to our. Think fast for this week it is Thursday, May 8th as we record Pope. What did they say? Pope Leo XIV just got elected. The white smoke went up. Habemas papam or whatever the Latin. They've got a Pope. Very short election only took a couple days this time, I believe replacing the deceased Pope Francis. We are not Catholics in the least. On the other hand, it's significant news for the religious world and so should it matter to us? Do we want. Apparently he's a little bit more progressive Pope, not, not super off the deep end. Not gay marriage progressive. But you know, there's. There's some indications that maybe he might go similarly to Pope Francis. Who knows? I guess that remains to be seen. I guess that'll be the question I put out. Is it better for non Catholics to have a Conservative Catholic Pope or a lax progressive Catholic Pope?
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Oh, very strongly a conservative Catholic Pope. This guy leads billion people.
I think the. No, they're not Christians and no, we certainly aren't fellowshipping Catholics and we're not Catholic. On the other hand, yeah, we can absolutely see that when you have strong leadership, even in a religion like that, that is against gay marriage. That is against which I think he is as talked about. What I read is he's conservative on church doctrine, so no women in priest roles and things like that, and no gay marriage. But he's more socially liberal with the immigrants and things like that as he leans toward Pope Francis in that way. I do think that conservative is better because it's going to like, there's a lot of followers out there. There's a lot of people that are just looking for what do our leaders say. And if you can get a lot of them to disavow abortion, to disavow homosexuality, to disavow women. Just getting to, you know, to. To run the church type of thing. Yeah, that's. Those are good things. Even though we're not Catholic, that is a good ideology to bring into the world. And once again, there's a billion plus Catholics in the world. Yeah, that's important to have a guy who's going to lead them in the right direction because that might lead them back toward Christ in some way.
On the other hand, I will say that I will let you get your say in here. But you could also make the case that a more liberal Pope causes people to fall away from Catholicism, going, this whole thing's a joke. So maybe that would be for the better. I suppose you can make that case that if he's more on the liberal end, there's a lot of people that are going to go, no, I reject this whole system, which would be good. Obviously we want them to reject the papacy and Catholicism.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: So.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Well, I'm curious. I'm laying out both sides. I could see either one of those being true.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: Yeah. The negative side of it being like, essentially if they're off the deep end enough that it's going to drive people away from Catholicism. My fear is, though, that would not necessarily drive them to the truth of the Bible. It would just drive them away from any kind of. Not that Catholicism is Christian, but you know what I mean, like, you know, acknowledgement of God or the Bible at all. And so, yeah, I don't have a ton to add. I think overall I would agree that, you know, I'm not Catholic and it doesn't really affect me. But if I was getting to choose between one of two options and one, one was, you know, progressive, liberally, or a little bit more on the conservative end, I'm going to go with the conservative route. I find, I just find it pretty fascinating that this one guy has so much religious power for this huge group of people. As you spoke to Joe, a billion people. And, you know, this is not an episode where we're going to dive into Catholicism, but where they get the evidence for that to me is just like, where does that come from? I know they think Peter was the first pope and all those things, but, like, that was my initial reaction, is like, do people actually think this is the right way to go about it, that this is. That this is biblically mandated? And I know, you know, the, the stereotypes about Catholics is that they're the easiest converts because they've never opened their Bible before. But I don't know, that's just what. What stuck with me or what struck me, I should say, is the kind of absurdity of the whole system. But, yeah, to answer the question, I'm conservative, I suppose, Jack, it's hard to.
[00:52:57] Speaker C: Say go against conservative because of Pope John Paul II really played a big part in bringing down the communist, the Iron Curtain or whatever in Eastern Europe, really taking a stand and lifted a lot of people out of horrible situations. As much as I am anti Catholic, you cannot take the credit away for that. And so that's a good thing. And again, the Catholics do more to stop abortion than anybody else. And so there's positivity in that. There are some things on which, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That doesn't mean we endorse. That doesn't mean we're allies, them so much as co. Belligerence. And so I think there is positivity as to the delegitimizing. I mean, if Pope Francis didn't send them running for other options, I don't know that another one will. And so I guess from a practical standpoint, I'm going to go with the conservative one. Again. This is not an endorsement of Catholicism. That's going to be how somebody spins it, I'm sure. But it's the question of would you rather have someone really holding a line and pushing people in the right direction on these things or just making a social difference? Yeah, I think that's better than not. Even though there's so many underlying issues to keep you from, you know, like, I can say, hey, good job, Pope John Paul II doing That, oh, by the way, also you really did a lot of bad in a lot of other ways. So you know, yeah, we can still say that and give credit where credit's due.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: So here's the other question that's overarching even from this.
Should it matter to Christians at all? Not just a conservative, like should these care?
Should you care at all?
Well, and I looked up 1.4 billion, so that's a lot. I mean you're talking almost one and a half billion people around the world are Catholics. Should we as Christians care then we'll, we'll sign off here. But I'm curious your guys thoughts on it. Like if, let's say somebody's listening to this going, wow, they chose a new Pope, like are they any worse off than us who were very aware like the moment that it happened?
Should it matter to us? Does it matter to us?
[00:54:42] Speaker C: I'm going to say yes, it does. I mean it trickles down, correct.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: I'm going to say yes. This is one of the most powerful men in the world. I think it is important to know who the, who's leading one of the biggest or if not the biggest religion in the world, maybe is Islam bigger? I, I'm not really sure on that, but one of the biggest religions in the world. I do think, yeah, any time where you have that level of power. And the fact that I think it's interesting, this is the first American Pope, that's going to be very, very interesting to see what shifts are made based off of that. And you know, his, and I understand he was in Peru I think for like 20 years or something. So maybe technically American. But anyway, I still think it matters. I think there's a, an element to this that is, yeah, we need to be aware of these type of things, especially since there are so many Catholics, they may not even know fully who the Pope is. But I think it's good for Christians to be up on some of these things and to see which way it's going to go. And as you said, Jack, this does have political ties too. This is not just strictly a religious thing. So what are your guys thoughts?
[00:55:40] Speaker A: My, my thought would be similar for the political tie reason, I would, I would say, I mean at the end of the day, like should it affect a ton as far as like Christian's perspective, Christian's mindset? Probably not. I don't think at the end of the day who the head of, of Buddhism is like, doesn't really matter to us. Obviously there's a lot of difference. There though, because Catholicism has so much more sway over American culture and people's morality in American culture than Buddhism does, for instance. So that that would be I would, I would agree with Yalls. Take there.
[00:56:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's unfortunate, but that is the reality.
All right. Well, that's going to wrap up our discussion on the generations. There's there's a lot more to get into there. It's just very hard to touch on all of it. Again, more survey statistics and all that. So we might have to push some of that to the deep end. If you're not there, join us on focuspress.org/ to get access to the deep end. And send in your comments, YouTube, Facebook, wherever else as well. But that's all we got for this week. And we'll look forward to talking to you guys on the next one.
