What Old Truths Does Our Generation Need to Recover?

By John Piper, Christian Post Guest Columnist Thursday, February 10, 2011

The following is an edited transcription of the audio.

What are some old truths that our generation desperately needs to recover?

You'll notice, if you read 300-year-old books, that they deal with death quite differently than we do. They assume that it's going to happen and that it will be painful. There won't be any medicines. For them, the way to talk about it and plan for it, and the people to have around and the roles that they should perform was a given.

Suffering and death were so much a part of life back then. If you read older books--rather than newer ones--you get a much more realistic picture of what it is like to die and to approach death. This is very valuable, because in our culture the reality that we're going to die is a blindspot. People don't want to think about it, and we manage amazingly to not think about it.

I'm 61 years old and I still have to work at the thought of dying. I mentioned to some of my students recently that I will be meeting Jesus face-to-face in shorter time than I have lived in my house, which now feels so short.

So older books are much more realistic in dealing with pain, and suffering, and death. Our generation, on the other hand, is pretty oblivious to them.