urgent exhortation to myself and you

This post is foremost an urgent exhortation to myself, and secondly to my peers and friends in the faith. It's a prayer that pleads God for swift movement and change in our generation.

Scrolling and skimming has become one of my worst enemies. My mind has been debilitated by the ease with which my thumb can flick through content on the web. Every time I let my eyes gloss over unstimulating content, I handicap my basic capacity to digest ideas and think critically. Every time I mindlessly 'like' certain posts, I dilute the meaning of appreciation, and instead fuel this gross addiction to artificial affirmation in people that I love. Horrible, right? Yes.

But what alarms me isn't primarily that we're all becoming intellectual zombies. No, infinitely more dire is the effect that the movement of our generation is about to have on eternity. Follow with me.

Scrolling and skimming has demonstrated to me the scary reality that my heart has grown seriously cold to the ineffable sufferings in our world, in our time. Our extreme relative privilege has already divided and barred us from experiential empathy toward the horrible things happening to people all around the world. On top of that, our emotional apathy is exacerbated by the rising and falling of topical trends. This rise and fall is clearly depicted by how frequently and how long a certain story will stay popular on my Facebook news feed.

The life cycle of a trending topic about a horrendous news story might flow as such:

          > News is found about violence breaking out, many suffering. Online news articles are linked. 

          > I feel alarmed and momentarily concerned. My roommates and I update each other about it after work.

          > More details are learned and shared in a second wave of news links.

          > I'm reminded that this is happening. I feel the magnitude of it sink in, and I feel sad for the situation.

          > People start sharing blog links of analyses and strong opinions on the issue. I tab them and skim them.

Then honestly, I'm prompted to think about what's happening just long enough to figure out what I personally think about it. This way, I can be prepared to have semi-meaningful conversations about my opinions with other people. And this is the alarming truth - that the indescribable suffering of others has become my vehicle for self-promotion.

          > Then the story slowly loses traction and ceases to exist in most people's minds.

But the torment continues, every moment 24/7 for the people suffering, long after the stories have faded.

This out of sight-out of mind effect is almost inevitable. It's in our fallen nature to defend ourselves from these sense triggers - sights, sounds, ideas - the reminders that we, as a world and humanity, are irreparably broken and the responsibility that follows.

And yet, even if we chose to grieve over every piece of bad news, our lament would birth no tangible situations. Because Islamic jihadists are still terrorizing target groups, Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner are still dead, domestic violence still tacitly ravages homes, modern day slavery still thrives, poverty still chokes millions, thousands in the Tenderloin are still addicted, isolated, and without friendship or hope... And that's exactly it; this world cries out for a Savior.

So reader, brother, sister, friend I need to ask - what effect does your personal faith in our coming Savior have in your life right now? Are we really gripped with that we need saving? Or is the idea of a savior just a really nice blanket idea to throw over yourself and this humanity to which we have been completely desensitized by our privilege and knack for self-preservation?

And if you claim to follow Christ today, where has he taken you?

Because following someone is not stacking our minds with moral or spiritual maxims so that we can be prepared to have conversations about our opinions with other people. It's not huddling around finger food once a week and going around in a circle taking about ourselves, or how the idea of Jesus makes us feel.

I believe that we - a very niche group of educated upward-bound young professionals who may or may not have been churched growing up - are of the most disadvantaged people of all. Jesus lamented that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." More and more, I see that this is not some hyperbolic metaphor that Jesus uses, but rather a limited and understated reality about the state of our hearts. This is not a matter of wealth, but of absolute sufficiency.

I also believe we are the most deceived. We have so much intellectual bandwidth, built up by university educations, years worth of weekly youth group discussions and Bible studies, and access to websites and blogs and books and videos of well-known preachers. We've constructed an isolated bubble of hyper-theological, rhetorical and moral standards of adjudicating what to profess, how to pray, how to date, and how to talk about living. Our orientation around discussing our faith is choking our capacity to dare step out to walk in it.

The greatest deception would be that we lived our lives thinking that we were aligned with God, only to find at the end of our lives that we had given ourselves to something less than who he really is.

When Jesus walked our world, he moved, touched, and met with people. He engaged the world, and wept for it. If our claim to follow him isn't showing up in our lives today, shouldn't we challenge the authenticity of our claims? If our hearts are unafflicted by the plight of other people, let alone our own persecuted brothers and sisters, would we lift our cold hearts to the Lord and ask for mercy?

"And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and the end will come."
--Matthew 24:12-14

We really can't do this alone. In fact, he had always been the one to start and finish it. But if you find yourself somewhere in the middle of the things of God, know that he is moving big. It's my deep deep prayer that we as a generation find ourselves being made new as he chooses to let us take part.