Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. -John Muir
St. Augustine defined sin as "turned in toward ourselves." That may not describe sin fully, but it is certainly one true aspect of sin. We live in a narcissistic culture, and our children are being raised to believe that this is not only normal, but commendable. Many fall over themselves to garner the latest bit of information concerning their television and movie heroes, and get quick sound bites through Twitter and Facebook from empty-headed celebrities who have absolutely nothing of substance to say, but have hundreds of thousands of followers. We are slowly turning away from conversations and listening to stories from those who are wise and instead burying ourselves in computers, iPhones and wireless headphones.
Is that offensive to you? It is to me, because I am a part of this culture, and in many ways I participate in this fever-pitched lifestyle that our world is throwing at us in the twenty-first century. I know what the biblical answer to the problem is, but for the life of me I find it hard to put it into practice. Busyness eats away at the soul, allowing no time to truly engage with people and no time to pursue and participate in our faith. We find ourselves "on the world, not in it." The end result is that many people in our culture think that the world revolves around them, and that they (every one of them) possess untapped potential, even though they rarely read and even more rarely engage in meaningful conversations. Nobody seems eager to tell them differently—certainly not advertisers and colleges frantically trying to get them to come to their school and pay their tuition rates or purchase their latest products.
It started, I believe, with my generation. Many of our parents were busy chasing the American dream, which left them little time to share their stories with us or engage us in any truly meaningful ways (my parents, being much older than most of my friends’ parents, were thankfully different). Instead, many were set down in front of television sets which, at least at first, opened up the world to them. However, the quality of that education dwindled rapidly. Then, in the 1980's, the home computer made its debut followed soon by the ever-present cell phone. We all know that there is some value in all of these products (I own each of them), yet their popularity and use has grown disproportionately so as to dwarf almost everything else in the eyes of this generation, and it only took thirty years for the takeover to be virtually complete.
This is not a call to throw away our phones, computers, gaming systems, and network servers. They are a permanent part of our world now. It is a call, however, to engage. Engage people, engage books, engage the word of God, engage with your children if you have them and they are still willing to listen, engage in creation and life. We need to stop looking inward and start looking outward. We are not the answer to the world's problems—God is—and our children (as do we) need to acquire a healthy self-assessment of their lives and relative value to our culture. This will allow them to pursue joy as God hardwired them to pursue joy—by coming to the reality-based truth that they need a Savior, and that the Savior the Scriptures declare has made himself known, and therefore can be known.
I get that this article may sound like the rantings of a now 53-year-old man who is harkening back to “the good old days,” when kids had fun sitting in a circle playing jacks and drinking soda from a refundable glass bottle through a straw (actually, just writing that brings back swell memories). Even that memory portrays the reality that I am almost certainly a white guy who grew up in a small town. The truth is, however, that many from every walk of life and racial and ethnic background have memories of days when people in general (and families in particular) spent time together, getting to know each other’s stories and investing in each other’s lives. This is becoming a rarity in our culture at large, and sadly, even within Christian culture.
There is much good in this world that God gave us. If we seek to keep ourselves from being turned inward, we may just find that a beautiful world opens up to us as we look outward. We may also find that being different from most everyone else is actually a really good thing. As followers of Christ, let’s be sure that we do not find ourselves merely on the world. Let’s engage in it. It is only temporary, but that does not make it any less wonderful, or any less valuable a gift.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jym