Wake Up, Look Up

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hello everyone thanks for listening to

wake up lookup a podcast where we

connect events happening in real time to

the Gospel of Jesus Christ I'm Zach

wrock and in today's episode we're

asking the question should the doctor BN

this is prompted by an article I read in

the Wall Street Journal recently about a

growing divide among doctors those in

the medical profession over what work

life balance should look like on one

side older doctors who were trained to

see medicine as a calling as a service

to those that are hurting saying you

should be on call all the time as a

doctor the average doctor in America

Works 59 hours a week and that's not

counting hours that they're on call and

older doctors say that's just the way it

goes because after all we pledged our

lives to helping hurting people and when

hurting people need help that's when you

work but a younger generation of doctors

is saying wait a second uh medicine is

becoming increasingly corporate we're

just employees of a corporation and so

it's nice to call medicine a calling

unless what you mean by that is the

corporations who we work for can abuse

us on work life balance younger doctors

are saying we want to be good doctors

but we also want to be good fathers and

mothers productive citizens we want to

have social lives what about our our own

balance and all of that to say that it

got me thinking about generational

divides and intergenerational Community

because the article was about the

medical profession but the reality is

this kind of intergenerational divide

exists probably in every industry and

certainly in my field of work in the

local church where perpetually it seems

like one generation is viewing cynically

the generation after it or the

generation before it so how should we

think about this biblically I think

there are probably three answers the

first is to say that this

intergenerational divide is inevitable I

mean the reality is that no generation

is perfect so whether you're coming

after a generation or you came before it

you are going to see rightfully so with

a critical eye that the generation that

is not yours is n right about everything

you're going to see that maybe they work

too much and weren't home enough you're

going to see that maybe they're

overvaluing their own lives against

those that they're serving that's

because nobody's perfect and if you're

looking to be critical you're going to

find reasons to do it there's always

going to be a tendency to think the

generation before you are after you is

wrong about more things than they're

right but the second thing is that this

disagreement actually can lead to some

really great places if in the church for

example what we're saying is that the

generation before us got some things

wrong about what it means to make

disciples and to reach lost people

wouldn't we want to know that if the

generation behind us is getting some

things wrong about taking a stand

against culture and representing the

Bible no matter the cost shouldn't they

want to hear that see the richness of

intergenerational community is that you

exist outside the echo chamber of your

own generation the absolute worst thing

you can do is get in a room full of

people who are just like you and think

you're going to ever uncover the blind

spots that you and we have together in

the church intergenerational

perspectives actually ensure that we're

better at making disciples and reaching

people than we would have been if we

just did it one generation's way and

that leads to the third thing is that

what should really matter to us in the

church is that we're hearing the voice

of Jesus every generation gets Jesus

right in some ways and wrong in the

others but if we're doing community well

we should increasingly generation after

generation be getting a little closer to

the heart and character of Jesus this is

what the Bible means in Titus 2 or in 1

Timothy where it talks about in

generational Community older men and

younger men learning from each other uh

older women and younger women pushing

and challenging and encouraging one

another we can all learn from each other

in the different ways we understand what

following Jesus looks like so that

increasingly our churches become better

at the work that Jesus has called us to

do by the way this is also a way we can

stand out to the larger culture because

I didn't find in the Wall Street Journal

article was an older doctor and younger

Doctor Who actually saw the value of

each other but in the church we should

be a place where one generation sees and

celebrates the value of another to the

glory of Jesus and to the watching eye

of the greater World hey thanks so much

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