The Lost Generation

Just finished reading Ernest Hemingway's, "The Sun Also Rises." I was utterly amazed at how much I could relate to this book, although it was written over 80 years ago. I guess that's one mark of great literature.

This first novel of Hemingway concerns the "Lost Generation," a term coined by Getrude Stein to describe the disillusionment and general sense of belonging and hopelessness that characterized the generation that lived through World War I. It was this disillusionment that led so many Americans to become expatriates living in communal settings in Paris and other European countries. They had lost their way as everything they had thought they believed in was shown to be a facade, and so they left, seeking something that would provide value and meaning to a meaningless life.

In Hemingway's novel, the characters live out their lives flitting from party to party, from experience to experience, always seeking but never finding what they long for in their heart of hearts. Men have lost their masculinity and have forgotten what it means to be a man. Women have lost their roles and seek to acquire position and prestige through their beauty and their bodies. These people have no foundation, and instead find themselves standing on sinking sand.

In contrast to this lost generation stands two men, an older aristocrat who belongs to the former generation with a firm moral foundation, and Pedro Romero, a young star bullfighter who demonstrates with his actions the picture of masculinity missing in the others, who knows where he stands and what he stands against.

Reading this book is reading the story of our lives. I work a lot with young people, high school and college aged, and I see the struggles in their lives, the distrust of established religion that has failed them more than once, the disillusionment with a government that promised change but is costing them their future. I watch them flit from party to party, giving themselves over to others sexually and mentally and emotionally with no thought of the consequences just as the characters in Hemingway's novel. They are the "new" lost generation, seeking a foundation, seeking stability, seeking absolutes in a world of relativity.

With every party, with every sexual encounter, with every wasted moment, they are asking the question, "Where is the hope?" Hemingway searched, but couldn't find the answer. Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Porter searched in vain, as well. Their generation plunged into hopelessness and despair exemplified in the Great Depression that followed just three years after the publishing of "The Sun Also Rises."

Where is the hope? Where is the foundation of life? Where can the answers be found? The same place as they always have -- in the person of Christ Jesus. The answer to the disillusionment, to the loss of hope, to the despair suffered by the first lost generation and being experienced in our new lost generation is the good news of Christ's death and resurrection, in His ability to make the old new, to create beauty from ashes. Christ is the only answer, the only foundation, that can stand in this climate and environment that we face.

Hemingway and his compatriates were lost, not only emotionally and physically, but spiritually. And, this new lost generation is the same way. It is our responsibility, as people who take the name of Christ, who proclaim to be His body in this world today, to point this lost generation to the Source of life they have been searching for. Christianity was originally known as "The Way" for a reason. We know the path to life. Now, let's show it to those who are so desperately seeking it.