Girls, Gold, and Glory
A Generational Tension
Billy Graham famously warned young ministers to beware of the three great temptations: girls, gold, and glory. Each represents a common snare—lust, greed, and pride—that Satan uses to undermine a man’s calling. And I think they can be helpful as a paradigm to understand the tension between boomers and the younger generations.
But these aren’t just ministry temptations. They’re inversions of good desires that track with the normal stages of a man’s life:
Girls – In youth, the desire for a wife and family is good and godly. But lust twists it.
Gold – In midlife, the pressure to provide for a growing household is honorable. But greed twists it.
Glory – In later life, the desire to leave a legacy and pass on wisdom is noble. But pride twists it.
When these desires are inverted—when men grasp at what they should steward or receive as gifts—their lives become disordered. And when an entire generation holds tightly to its version of these temptations, intergenerational conflict is the result.
Many boomer men were blessed to come of age in a time when:
Society supported marriage and stable family formation.
The economy made upward mobility and homeownership attainable.
Civic institutions offered a sense of participation in something larger than oneself.
They got the girl. They got the gold. And now, they hold the glory.
But many of them refuse to let go of it.
Younger generations, by contrast, are often:
Struggling to find a spouse in a fractured sexual economy.
Straining to make ends meet in an inflated housing and job market.
Searching for meaning and purpose in an era of institutional collapse.
From the younger generation’s point of view, the very men they once admired are now seen as gatekeepers of glory—not givers of legacy. That’s the heart of the tension.
When an older man clutches glory instead of bestowing it, he inverts the biblical pattern of blessing. Instead of preparing the next generation to carry the torch, he sits on it. And so a bottleneck forms.
Simple words of wisdom, thank you and may the Lord bless you and yours
Wow, that’s a powerful reflection—and honestly, it hits deep. You’ve laid out something that so many of us feel but don’t always know how to say. Billy Graham’s warning is timeless, and applying it to generational tensions is really insightful. The breakdown of girls, gold, and glory as stages of life and how each can be twisted is spot on. It reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3:1 To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven But when one generation doesn’t recognize when it’s time to release and bless things get stuck. You also made me think of 2 Timothy 2:2 And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also That’s the biblical model passing the baton, not holding on for dear life And maybe most relevant of all is Psalm 145:4 One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts But if glory becomes something we hoard rather than something we use to build up the next generation, then we lose the whole point of legacy Younger men don’t need idols they need fathers And fathers who bless, not compete. If we could all just humble ourselves and live more like Jesus who, though He had all glory, chose to serve and give the Church and the world would look a whole lot different. Thank you for sharing this. Seriously. It's prophetic, and we need to talk about this more.