Nothing is more painful than watching young parents explain their intention to raise their children differently than their parents or observing young mothers hovering over grandmothers, micro-managing their every move, scolding, correcting, worrying, overprotecting, and gossiping, all based on advice from their therapist or some silly blog post about the "right" way to parent according to the latest study.

It’s not that the grandparents are any better than their idiotic children or that their example should be followed. God forbid. I mean, look at what the grandparents produced. According to Scripture, the unfixable root of the problem is that the grandparents, their children, and the grandchildren are all human beings. Let me repeat; according to the Bible, human beings are the problem. (I know, I know. This will never air on PBS.)

The hubris of the human being and the naive optimism of young couples that somehow things will be different on their watch is the last laugh of the Scriptural God. Well, not the last laugh, because God gets to keep laughing, again and again, as the Byzantine hymn says, at “every generation…” that dares to bring its dirge before the gospel of his Christ. 

What we learn from this teaching, in Luke’s account of the genealogy, is that over and over again, in each generation, no matter how hopeful God’s intervention through his instruction, we prove ourselves to be the children, not of God, but of oppression. Worse, we become the progenitors of oppression. 

Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Luke 3:24 (Episode 479)