A few weeks ago I actually read most of a Time Magazine article (yes, I wasn’t just covering up a People magazine with a Time magazine so people wouldn’t see me reading trash) that was discussing the newest generation - people who were born after 1994 I think. What follows in italics are excerpts from that article:
This article entitled, “The New Greatest Generation - Why Millennials Will Save Us All”, went on to say, “...in the 1970s, people wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem. It turns out that self-esteem is great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great for keeping a job or a relationship. ‘It was an honest mistake,’ says Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University and the editor of Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard. ‘The early findings showed that, indeed, kids with high self-esteem did better in school and were less likely to be in various kinds of trouble. It’s just that we’ve learned later that self-esteem is a result, not a cause.’ The problem is that when people try to boost self-esteem, they accidentally boost narcissism instead. ‘Just tell your kids you love them. It’s a better message,’ says Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at the University of San Diego, who wrote Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic. ‘When they’re little it seems cute to tell them they’re special or a princess or a rock star or whatever their T-shirt says. When they’re 14 it’s no longer cute.’ All that self-esteem leads them to be disappointed when the world refuses to affirm how great they know they are...”
“What millennials are most famous for besides narcissism is its effect: entitlement. If you want to sell seminars to middle managers, make them about how to deal with young employees who e-mail the CEO directly and beg off projects they find boring. English teacher David McCullough Jr.’s address last year to Wellesley High School’s graduating class, a 12-minute reality check entitled ‘You Are Not Special,’ has nearly two million hits on YouTube. ‘Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so that the world can see you,” McCullough told the graduates. He says nearly all the response to the video has been positive, especially from Millennials themselves...”
“...Millennials are also stunted, having prolonged a life stage between teenager and adult...The idea of the teenager started in the 1920’s; in 1910, only a tiny percentage of kids went to high school, so most people’s social interactions were with adults in their family or in the workplace. Now that cell phones allow kids to socialize at every hour - they send and receive an average of 88 texts a day, according to Pew - they’re living under the constant influence of their friends. ‘Peer pressure is anti-intellectual. It is anti-historical. It is anti-eloquence,”says Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory who wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). ‘Never before in history have people been able to grow up and reach age 23 so dominated by peers. To develop intellectually, you’ve got to relate to older people, older things: 17 year olds never grow up if they’re just hanging around with other 17 year olds.’ Of all the objections to Obamacare, not a lot of people argued against parents’ need to cover their kids’ health insurance until they’re 26.”
The article went on to say that, as a result of the things mentioned above, the newest generation is the most self-centered, egomaniacal generation yet with the lowest levels of social intelligence and intellectual development (because of being over-socialized with their peers and under-socialized with their elders). They lack empathy and compassion for others on never-before-seen scale. It can be summed up to say that we, as a society, have done a disservice to our children by babying them well beyond the ages they would have, in days gone by, been expected to have been matured to the point of adulthood. We have socialized them with peers to the point of social retardation.
I disagree with one thing about the above article (aside from this one thing, I think the article was right on the money). I don’t think the narcissist generation started with those born after 1994. It started well before that. It gets worst with each passing generation of late, but I think that my generation has the fewest clues on how to raise well-rounded, caring, selfless individuals that will make for a better society because so few of us were raised that way.
Even secular magazine articles declare that “self-esteem is a result, not a cause”, that self-esteem is a deterrent to long-term success. Would it follow then that low self-regard and humility would be the optimal self-image for one to assume in order to become a contented, caring, successful individual? I would argue an emphatic, “yes”. Humility, according to my computer’s dictionary, is: “a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness”
Even more interesting to me were the synonyms in the thesaurus for humility: modesty, humbleness, meekness, unassertiveness, lack of pride, lack of vanity; servility, submissiveness (emphasis added)
Proverbs 15:33 - “The fear of the Lord is the instruction for wisdom, And before honor comes humility.”
Proverbs 18:12 - “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty (proud), But humility goes before honor.”
Proverbs 22:4 - “The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life.”
(emphases added)
Where does kindness begin? Humility.
Where does honor begin? Humility.
Where does exaltation begin? Humility.
Where does success begin? Humility.
There's a difference between feeling unworthy of Christ because of my sin (a usually false and ironically self-focused pseudo-humility) and feeling unworthy to approach the throne of Deity because of His utter holiness - his awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping betterness. He is infinitely better than I can comprehend. That is all I need know or say to Him. That is all He wants me to admit and, more importantly, of which he wants me to keep constant sight.
People complain about the factions of Christian belief - the liberals, the conservatives, the denominations, etc. These things are so humanity-focused. The moment we start to think that we know who the true God is based on our personal experience, based on our inner knowledge, or based on some human-derived revelation, we have utterly lost the enormity of God. A true Christian can know only one thing - that God is so enormous that He won’t be contained by anything - much less the tiny human mind and existence... which can’t possibly contain a fraction of Who He is. Our strivings are dust. Our righteousness... filth. Our best efforts... worthless - every, last one of us. Yet we still find a way to point a judgmental finger at the one next to us. In a land where every person is equally irrelevant... equally unable to save self, we still strive to feel superior. It would be as ludicrous as a banana peel in a garbage heap comparing itself to the sorry, worthless orange peel next to it.
The prophets understood this. In a post Old Testament world... one in which Christians think the Tora is irrelevant and oppressive, we have lost the bigness of Deity. Isaiah 64 says (in part),
“Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,
That the mountains might quake at Your presence -
As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil -
To make Your name known to Your adversaries,
That the nations may tremble at Your presence!
When You did awesome things which we did not expect,
You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence.
For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear,
Nor has the eye seen a God besides You,
Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him...
“For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
My righteousness is filthy rags in comparison to His innate inherent nature. My greatest strivings and finest acts are childish scribbles on a scrap of tattered notebook paper in comparison to a Being altogether perfect by just existing. I can't even come close with all of my doings (believings, sayings) to what He attains merely. by. being.
The enormity of the plague, plight, and agony of humanity's error and condition is much too vast to be solved by a trite persona - a "friend", a "prophet", a "teacher", a "gentle character". "Sweet Jesus", "Precious Moments Jesus" might be enough to save a soft person... a "good" person... a nun perhaps or a docker-wearing accountant or a planet-conscious vegetarian. He is not, however, enough to deliver the likes of me, one prone to darkness and consuming passions... let alone the desperate whole of humanity which I represent so thoroughly - the humanity that screams and groans for something strong and fervid - wildly consuming... ardently pursuing humanity in a way so profound that wildest human imaginings are incapable of capturing it. And not only to deliver me but to liberate those same passions and fervor in me for one purpose - to give them back to the One Who granted them to me in the first place.
I can't be satisfied by "hipster Jesus", despite his popularity. He does not consume my waking moments. As I watched some of the History channel's adaptation of The Bible, I found their winsome portrayal of Jesus attractive at points, but as he gently overturned a table or two in the temple during passover and wept so quietly about the state of "His Father's House", I was turned off. Gentleness didn't lead Him to the slaughter; passionate purpose did. His silence wasn't because of weakness but because of strength. Every Christian song I hear makes Him sound grieved yet helpless in light of the sins of men... like a pleading weakling who begs me to do the right thing to others. My greatest offense, however, I can't help but believe, is that I have no passion for Him. I have no strength in my pursuit of His character. I have no desperate desire to hold on for the ride of where He takes me and trust that 100% of what happens to me is His plan and that I should not only trust it but embrace it. How can people have a passion for a dispassionate or weepy or mournful or whiny Jesus? If I was owned by passion for Him and His Word, the natural result would be goodness, love, mercy, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, etc. As it is, many cannot find a passion for a God who isn't dangerous, strong, full, gripping, and desperate to be glorified. "If He isn't all about me and my worth and my self-esteem and my happiness, then I don't think He really loves me" is our silent attitude.
To be perfectly honest, I have written this blog with much trouble. The first part flowed, but there was more. I woke up in the middle of the night, one-finger typing on my tiny iphone keyboard, the details of the other parts that consumed me at 3:00 AM. I sit here adding the final touches tonight after watching a documentary on Francesca Woodman - a miserable American photographer who killed herself after not receiving the recognition she so desperately had searched for throughout her short, tortured life. I am rent in two as I consider my own neediness and the neediness of humanity in general... the need to have something greater than self in which to invest our very lives. The end of self-love, as Francesca Woodman found, is misery and wonder at why others do not see our obvious value. The One Who assigned us our value, and the only One Who will ever truly appreciate and recognize it, is the one who bids us cast our worth at His feet so that He might finally be given His due.
