The Loss of a Generation

The Loss of a Generation

by Teri Ong

A poignant movie scene that never fails to choke me up to some extent is the scene in Chariots of Fire where the head master of a college in Cambridge is welcoming new students. He references a memorial on the wall behind him listing the names of all of the students from that college who were lost in World War I. He says it represents the “loss of a generation.” I think it affects me more than it might some others because I, too, am a teacher who has now seen numerous classes come and go. I am now at the stage of teaching the children of some of my old students. While I always thought Good-bye, Mr. Chips was a rather bittersweet film, I can’t even watch it now. It is too easy to picture myself as the old dotard napping in my office surrounded by old books and old memories while the outside world has made me irrelevant.
We are just about five weeks now past the loss of two of our graduates, Caitlyn and Faith Kadlub, who were killed instantly and shockingly in terrible car wreck. They were the only two children of their parents, who now excruciatingly feel the loss of a generation. Caitlyn and Faith were faithful followers of Christ, and we have every assurance of their present life and happiness in heaven. The loss of their generation is only to those of us who are left. We already see evidence that the fruitfulness of their lives will continue to follow after them for many years to come.
Not infrequently is it God’s way to dig and dung and prune a vine for greater fruitfulness. We see His work in the Horatio Spafford family. After the great Chicago fire, Spafford sent his wife and daughters to England until conditions would improve at home. But their ship was wrecked and Mrs. Spafford cabled home, “Saved alone.” Later, their son also died unexpectedly. The fruit of that lost generation was the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul”, as well as a missionary outreach in Jerusalem.
Fanny Crosby, the blind hymn writer, married late in life and only bore one child who died in infancy. The loss deeply affected her and her relationship with her husband. People who knew her said she never spoke of her child. But many grieving souls have been helped by the truth expressed in her hymn, “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”
Elizabeth Prentiss, author of the devotional classic Stepping Heavenward, lived a life full of physical illness and weakness. Through her physical trials, she experienced a close relationship with the Lord. Eventually she did marry and have two daughters, both of whom died in childhood. Through the gravest trial of her life she was able to write,
Let sorrow do its work,
Send grief and pain;
Sweet are Thy messengers,
Sweet their refrain,
When they can sing with me:
More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee.

The death of Caitlyn and Faith has been described at various times by many, including me and members of my family, as a great tragedy. By the strictest definition of the word, that is not true. A tragedy, as defined by the Greeks, is the story of the downfall of a great person. In the strictest sense, David’s fall into sin and the subsequent ruination of his family was a tragedy. The story of Lot barely escaping from Sodom and the resultant defilement of his daughters is a tragedy. The departure of a believer into the arms of Jesus is not.
Another dictionary definition of tragedy is a “disparity between the actual and the ideal.” Caitlyn and Faith’s early home-going is only a tragedy from an earth-bound perspective. Our ideal would be to keep them here, serving the Lord together with us for many years. But from a heavenly perspective, there is no disparity between the actual and the ideal for them. “Precious in the sight of God is the death of His saints.”
On the other hand there is a real and pervasive tragedy that most Christians hardly acknowledge taking place in millions of families around the world. God says that his ideal is a godly seed that springs up to bear fruit 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold. But He must see now, as He saw 2500 years ago, a very great disparity between His ideal and the actual state of affairs.
The prophet Isaiah wrote about God’s ideal in Isaiah 5:1-2:
Let me now sing for my well-beloved
A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.
And He dug it all around, removed the stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine,
And He built a tower in the midst of it,
And hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
And it produced only worthless ones.

Did you notice the last two phrases? “He expected it to produce good grapes”; that is God’s ideal. “And it produced only worthless ones”; that is the actuality.
In actuality, we have known a number of Christian families that have experienced the “loss of a generation” in an eternally devastating way. Their children have rejected the Lord and have served other gods, including the god of self. They have not produced good grapes in accord with God’s expectation.
Not all of the children who have rejected the Biblical faith of their parents have died outside of Christ; and I acknowledge that where there is life, there is still hope. But some of the ones I could name off the top of my head have wasted many years in fruitlessness.
The real tragedy is dead men walking– spiritual zombies– those who “have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev. 3:1). For those whose works continue to follow after them, truly, there is no loss and no tragedy, only our “temporary light affliction.”

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