As Good As It Gets–A Message To Baby Boom Christians By Tom Stipe

I can still remember my sixth grade graduation and the theme of the principle’s final speech to my fidgety throng. His words sting a little now as I think back, something having to do with, “You have your whole lives ahead of you.”

Three short years later, my Junior High ceremony featured a similar oration; it was a dissertation aimed at pointing out to me, “my bright future just waiting to be lived.”

And then finally came my High School graduation with over 900 again fidgety fellow students enduring the same declaration, “You have your whole lives ahead of you,” this time with the underlying current of–“You better make something of yourselves.”

These pontifications could all be summed up with a “don’t be a loser” subheading.

Some of us went on to college, where we were launched toward the fate of the Young Upward Mobility Professionals or “yuppies” as we were called.  It seemed to me that “yuppiedom” was an approach to life that was based on a philosophy that demanded nothing less than success in any life pursuit or venture.

Before long, the more highly motivated among us began to take their place in the world, hammering out a living in the “post-hippy” landscape of the 70’s and 80’s. The infants born during the post WWII baby boom were adults now. The inventors of rock n’ roll were all grown up, focused and “large and in charge.” There were 78 million of us.

The so-called, “Rock Generation” was the largest people group to ever move through a society. We wrote our own music, made our own movies and owned the arts.  We had the largest selection of the opposite sex to choose our spouses from—more than any other generation that had come before us.  Someone compared us to a cultural “pig in a python.”

We didn’t blend with culture–we were the culture.

With perfectionism and obsession, we used our youth and sheer numbers to build things. We built empires, industries, companies, businesses and more. With careful adherence to details, we invented our own sports, hobbies and manufactured the original equipment to enjoy them.  In the youthful culture that we were establishing; health and fitness rose to the top of our priority lists. We invented “jogging” and “leg warmers.”

Gratefully somewhere near the beginning of all of this, our all-wise God inserted a spiritual revival that the media dubbed the “Jesus Movement.” It was a “spiritual revolution” where many “pre-yuppie” young people found faith in God through Jesus Christ. I was one of the lucky ones who experienced God during the Jesus “deluge” of the era.  We were true believers on the front end of a generation bent on changing the world.

Faith became mixed with the Rock Generations gathering speed, hurdling us toward our future. For many, faith became inextricably connected to the materialism and the exploding economy of the era. This was a strange and sometimes unfortunate combination for young people of faith. We were facing the complexities of life coming at us at the speed of sound.

Jump ahead four decades.

The “rockers” now face their sixties and a new generation has taken their place.

It’s a techno society that many of us may never fully understand. The majority of  “50 and 60 somethings” only receive and make calls on those little “super” computers called cell phones. My thumbs are just too old to “text.”

We are about to enjoy the financial promises of the “seniors discount” and dealing with relentless mail from the AARP. We are engaging in conversations with others our age about every physical malady we possess and surprisingly enough enjoying it.

The economy that waits for our retirement is frightening and unpredictable like a pet lion waiting in the backyard…”Here kitty, kitty.”

Our children have grown to be adults and are making their own decisions with or without our approval. They may never own houses as nice as the ones they grew up in. We, on the other hand, always expected to exceed our parent’s success, but then that was the “yuppie” mantra–“onward and upward.”

Now that 40 years have gone by, the “boomers” have either succeeded or failed in the relentless pursuit of “upward mobility” and success.

We have lived life for better or for worse and are pausing to grade our progress like approaching the end of a semester. It is more than a little threatening. The finish line is in sight and the race has nearly been run.  Now it seems that the only thing left is the inevitable looming question, “How did we do”?

In the 1997 movie, “As Good As It Gets” starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, there is a memorable scene in which Nicholson’s character reinforces the film’s title. Leaving his psychiatrists office, Melvin Udall (Nicholson) passes through a waiting area filled with sullen, self-absorbed patients; then he pauses and asks, “What if this is as good as it gets?” It is a question that he leaves hanging in the air with no obvious answer as he leaves.

What about us? What if this is it? Jesus hasn’t returned yet, although things are looking pretty good for that these days. Life goes on. The future that was ahead of us has arrived. The married life we dreamed of has come and–in some cases–gone.

The perfect children we wanted to raise perfectly are all grown up and are as imperfect as we are. What we set out to be–after the graduation speeches we endured–we have become–or not. The home schooled graduated in their own living rooms and are now enrolled in the real school of life. What if this is as good as it gets?

And what about that Christian life we picked up along the way…

After 40 years of evangelism declaring what God was going to do–“for us”–with little teaching about endurance and trial by fire–we are spoiled “little evangelical” boomers. We are not able to face trouble.

Woefully, it is true, that our pastors and leaders may not have prepared us boomers for the realities of suffering. Pastors have gotten preoccupied with keeping people instead of equipping them and as a result many older believers are not ready to deal with the decline that comes with aging.

We don’t know how to manage failure at life or love. The Jesus, we simply added to our lifestyles, may never have been the “Lord of the Life”–we’ve lived up until now. It could be that the trek through life that defined our generation has turned us into a bunch of self-seeking consumers attempting to buy happiness and fulfillment.

When we can’t get the good life by our own efforts we try to extract it out of other people. With no more rungs to climb on the ladder of success we find ourselves in many cases lonely, miserable and certainly not at the top of our game.

We have enough “barely used” recreational equipment in the garage to support an Olympic team and enough other “stuff” to supply a small country. We don’t listen to music in the car anymore; instead we listen to talk shows.

Many people are disappointed with their lives these days and sometimes these disappointed people blame God for their woes. They often abandon Him and His church.

Remember that piece about faith? You know that often ignored relationship with Jesus that you brought along for this long ride?

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: ²⁵ and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. Matt 7:24-25 (NKJV)

Where have you built your life? What happens when the floods come?  The “Rock Generation” needs to determine which “Rock” they want to identify with—while paying attention to what the next verse has to say about the ultimate goal in life.

It seems that we all know about heaven but what about NOW?

Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. 1 Tim 6:6-8 (NKJV)

I believe contentment is the next great goal for us graying “yuppies” because the “Y” in that euphemism is gone and the “U” and the “P” aren’t doing all that well either.

Great gain is being content to love God with all your heart, mind and soul.  It is being content to serve Him with the time, energy and money that you have left on this earth.  It means living peacefully exhibiting a grateful heart for what you have and trusting in Him with what you don’t have. Former “rockers” that we are, we must rise up–proving the Rolling Stones wrong–and “get some satisfaction”.

The “Rock Generation” has had a good run on life and while we may not be ready to drop dead yet–we are facing transitions. We baby boomers have adult children, fading parents, retirement issues, declining health and huge financial challenges. We are redefining marriage in the empty nest and the list of life changes that we will need to survive this transition grows.

In the wake of all this–the bottom line is–we need JESUS more than ever!

And we need fellow believers more than ever. Church membership is proving to be more important to us now, than ever before, because–to be blunt–the need to belong expands at this stage of life.

My point is–albeit slightly different than the point of the movie–if this is truly as good as it gets, we as aging “boomers” still have Jesus, the family of God and each other. And I, for one, can live with that!

It Could Have Been Worse by Tom Stipe

We were packing our final articles of clothing that evening for a morning flight that would take our group on a tour to Israel. We had planned it for a year. Maryellen and I are seasoned tour teachers and we were ready to go. I was already snoozing and Maryellen was about to zip her bag closed when the phone rang with a call that every parent dreads…“Is this Tom Stipe, the father of Brett Thomas Stipe…‘Yes’…Your son has been in an accident, he was hit by an SUV while riding his bicycle…” If you have never received that kind of call, as a parent you probably have imagined the horror of it and I hope it never happens to you.

We raced our way to the trauma center where I found my son lying in the Surgical ICU bleeding profusely out of his right ear with fresh abrasions covering most of his face. Over his right eye was an impact wound that the surgeons were preparing to stitch closed. The CT scan showed bleeding on the brain that they deemed “not critical.” My first thought as a typical non-medical civilian was, “How can a brain bleed not be critical?” The scan showed a skull fracture that ran from the base of his skull through his middle ear thus the bleeding and the discovery of hearing loss.

Then I heard it for the first time–from somewhere behind me–in the hustle of medical staff, “It could have been so much worse.” I was stunned by the statement that I had heard applied to so many other people in the past.  But I was game for the journey into the land of Oz…“He cudda and then it shudda and you know it cudda been worse.”

Indeed, I pondered the newly introduced non-realities. Yes, he could have died. He could have had many broken bones but didn’t. He could have injured his spine but was spared. He could have had internal bleeding but no such sign. He could have had serious brain damage instead of a “brain injury.” It could have been a lot of things but instead it was what it was…just really horribly bad.

During the next five days, four of which were in the SICU, we heard “It could’ve been worse,” a hundred times. “Some people never leave this hospital” we were reminded again and again. After a while and with considerable guilt, I made a decision about all the imagined scenarios meant to make us feel better. I determined that trying to live in that mindset for comfort was really an act of blind gratitude and not faith.  It was a false Neverland of what might have been. A mysterious LaLa Land of “there-there” that distracted me from the obvious truth…what is, is really, really BAD in and of itself and that is what I have to take to God.

It was not someone else’s bad or worse but my own set of reactions to real time suffering. The Bible calls these feelings “lament” and there’s even a book in the Good Book that bears that name, Lamentations. This is the real time, current, actual, in front of your eyes panic and fear at the sight of a loved one suffering and facing life altering consequences. “It could have been worse” does nothing for me at that point because it is NOT what is. What is, is what we take to God in a panic of prayer, nothing more, nothing less. The rest is religious decoration.

David bares his soul to God in Psalm 55,

My heart is severely pained within me, And the terrors of death have fallen upon me. ⁵ Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me, And horror has overwhelmed me. ⁶ So I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. Psalms 55:4-6 (NKJV)

“Praise the Lord, it could have been worse” is a fine place to visit for thanksgiving, prayer, praise, thought’s of angelic protection, the imaginings of spiritual warfare and all of the rest. Where you live in the moment I’m describing, however–is, “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God have mercy”–and that is where honesty and authenticity with God meet.

The tendency for people, especially Christians, is to try too hard to say the right spiritual thing. “You lost an arm but at least you have another one”….”Look, your son is eating his Jello this morning in the ICU, Praise God.” Or in another personal example “Your granddaughter has Down Syndrome but at least she has the very best kind.” While well meaning, many believers don’t understand the many different levels of lament and sorrow. We are so accustomed to surface communication in the church today that “I just don’t know what to say” turns into saying something dumb albeit spiritual.” We need to go deeper than the shallow “Christianese” language that dominates the landscape of believers and their fellowship of suffering (more to come on that).

A lesson can be learned from Jeremiah,

“For these things I weep; My eye, my eye overflows with water; Because the comforter, who should restore my life, Is far from me. My children are desolate because the enemy prevailed.” Lam. 1:16 (NKJV)

This may not be theologically true but it is how Jeremiah felt at that moment of pain and abandonment. If my faith in the sovereignty of God is supposed to be a fast acting opiate, meant to mood alter me through the hurt and outrage of the moment, then that drug will have to wait. I will eventually become the “Romans 8:28 boy”, I’m supposed to be.  But for now the fear, worry, anger and the host of other parental emotions must flow freely, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”… reminds me, “LIFE… is not a fly over“!