replaced by protest rallies and hallucinatory rap sessions. Revolution was in the air. Revolution was the buzz word that shot passionate flames through our veins and sent caution to the wind. Draft cards were burned. Social propriety was abandoned. Drugs, sex and rock and roll held the only meaning of life. Party became a verb.
Many simply grew out of it. Some emulated Peter Pan, refusing to ever grow up. Still others, like Jerry Rubin, betrayed the hippie aversion to wealth and abandoned yippiedom for yuppiedom.
I happened to get saved. Yes saved, as in delivered, set free, born again -- a new creation in Christ Jesus. No theology, no doctrine, no sectarian brand; just a simple and sovereign encounter with Jesus Christ that caused me to bow my knee and confess that He alone is Lord. I found Him in His Word and was quickened by His Spirit. (I still lack the theological skill of dissecting truth into objective and subjective realities. I asked Him to redeem all of me, body, soul and spirit.) In an instant my world was turned upside down by "another King, one Jesus."¹ Into my life of darkness and chaos came light and order. Things made sense. Life had an eternal meaning that far outweighed the intoxicating diversions of a season of empty pleasures.
The passage of thirty-something years has provided meaningful hindsight, and in my case, a clarifying Biblical worldview. I entered the college scene like major Molineux's kinsman carrying a duffel bag of prolonged, rural naiveté. A stable home life, parents who taught right from wrong, and regular, obligatory church attendance had instilled in me a standardized American-Christian value system -- hollow to the core!
I was blind-sided. I didn't know what hit me. In a single year the freshman 10:30 PM curfew was abandoned, off-limit girls' dormitories were replaced by coed rooms and shared bathrooms, and students decided to run the universities. A few tokes on a joint to the beat of the Steve Miller Band and the entire fabric of my antiquated, home-spun value system was rent asunder. The times they were a changin'.
My parents' generation could only shake its head in scorn. Psychologists fabricated an unprecedented generation gap to explain the dilemma. My dad could never understand why we had to "find" ourselves. Those of his generation never had to find themselves. Drugs were around, but they didn't desire them. Sex had been a natural thing for 6,000 years, but they didn't need special education to understand some uncontrollable urge that made them "do it anyway." They saw no need to "clarify" their values and alter their ethics for each new situation.
What happened in the 60's to cause a whole generation to throw away a blessed heritage and despise all that was called "establishment?" How could a predominant value system collapse so quickly before the crooning philosophers from Liverpool? Why couldn't established Christianity sustain a vibrant, guiding
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