Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Preventing Grace

Home
Evangelical
Is It Time To Give Up?

Is It Time To Give Up?

Last updated on: February 19, 2024 at 1:50 pm by Anne Kennedy

0 Comments

Is It Time To Give Up? 2024-02-19T13:50:28-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve been meaning to get a copy of that book, How To Lie With Statistics, but am so backed up, it would take me ages to read it even if I had it to hand. Every time I wander past anything with numbers anywhere online, though, I wonder how I can even know if anything is even true. Are the numbers for real? This was the question upwards in my mind last week when I came across the headline over at Newsweek that “Nearly 40 Percent of U.S. Gen Zs, 30 Percent of Young Christians Identify as LGBTQ, Poll Shows.” The article is dated October 2021, updated in February 2022, and here I am in the year of our Lord, 2024. How did I not see this before? Or maybe I did, and it just didn’t alarm and appall me.

From the piece:

The portion of the population that describes itself as gay has varied over the years, from 10 percent, based on research by Alfred Kinsey and widely promoted by the National Gay Task Force in 1977, to less than 6 percent in a recent Gallup poll. The pollster who worked on the new study, George Barna, attributes the unusually high number he found to social and news media coverage that makes it “safe and cool” for young Americans to identify as LGBTQ—whether or not it represents their actual sexual orientation. “It’s a subset of a larger issue, that this is a generation where three out of four are searching for meaning. This is a group that doesn’t have a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” Barna says. “Therefore, the LGBTQ identity gives them comfort. A lot of this generation claim to be moving in that direction, but there’s a big difference between claiming the identity and living the lifestyle.” The poll looked at so-called Millennials, defined as someone born from 1984-2002, which is about 78 million individuals representing a quarter of the U.S. population. Among Millennials, 30 percent identify as LGBTQ, more than three times that of the rest of the adult population, and when the researchers broke out the youngest of the group, ages 18-24 (which some call Gen Z), they found 39 percent called themselves LGBTQ.

I find this so utterly tragic. It is not only that a generation of people would lack an identity to inhabit that made them feel safe, but even more that a whole group of people doesn’t have a reason to get up in the morning. I feel like the word I’m groping for is “despair.” And it can’t just be accidental. It can’t be that suddenly civilization pitched over the edge of mental health into psychological ruin. Though, I’m sure no one, except for Satan, really thought “This is the best thing I can do today.” The road to despair, of course, is paved with fast food and good intentions. Generations before the Millenials and Zoomers came along, all the people imagined that there would always be a reason to get up in the morning. That was the one thing that could always be counted upon as being there. Indeed, finding a reason to get up in the morning is so basic it is something that you can do on your own, by dint of the sweat of your brow. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps–which you didn’t have, because no one never gave you any, and you don’t even know what they are, who even wears boots with straps?–and climb out of bed and figure out who you are.

The gaping, howling nightmare of having to find your own identity is so wretched, I feel sick that anyone has to do it, let alone “a group” as in, an entire generation of people.

But what about the Christians? Surely they had good parents who purposefully conferred the knowledge of who they were so that they didn’t have to figure it out for themselves? Surely knowing “your identity in Christ,” as so many Christians like to say, was something so deeply experienced that no one needed to question it? Didn’t they go to youth retreats? Didn’t they get told lots and lots about how they were made in the image of God? Surely those Christian children didn’t have to suffer the same existential dread that all their post-Christian peers did? Well, in fact, no, Christian parents didn’t give Christian identity to their children as the first and most important gift they could offer:

Also, a high percentage of Millennial Christians (27 percent) and born-again Millennial Christians (28 percent) describe themselves as LGBTQ, even though many faith groups endorse only heterosexual marriage and are sometimes dismissed as homophobic by gay rights advocates. While the large number of Millennials who identify as LGBTQ is attention-grabbing, Barna says what he found “really interesting is that 40 percent of them fall into the category of what we call the ‘don’ts;’ they don’t believe that God exists, they don’t care if God exists. That’s the highest we have seen for any generation, ever.” “Why is it when previous generations were able to figure out why life was worth living, this one isn’t figuring it out?” he asks. “It has to do with the spiritual changes in America. They don’t buy into the Bible, they don’t trust God, they don’t believe in Jesus, and politics have codified that into law, and the media is a major part of it.”

One way to think about culture–I’m sure there are many others that are better, but this is where I’ve been stuck for a few months–is that it is a set of unquestioned assumptions that you hold, that when you are asked to question them, you struggle to find the language and categories to do so. It’s the sort of experience of being in your own backwater village and then a stranger happens by and asks you why you’re cooking with those sticks like that, why don’t you use a fork? But you have never seen a fork, and so the question is nonsensical. Also, you and the stranger aren’t even having a conversation, because you can’t understand his language and he can’t understand yours. The stranger might ask you who you are, if he could speak to you, and you would give your name and a series of relationships, and maybe some kind of job you are known for doing. If he asked you what kind of religion you practiced, you wouldn’t be able to answer because your religion and your family and your way of life are so intertwined together that you can’t even begin to separate them into various categories.

We haven’t lived in that kind of world for a long time, of course, but there have been some vestiges of real culture that made life bearable, that gave one “a reason to get up in the morning.” You might know that you were a girl, for example, with some siblings and some parents and grandparents. Your parents did certain kinds of work. You expected to go to college one day for some reason. But nobody made you defend your biological realities, or the name given to you by your parents, nor even the God you might have occassionaled worshiped at least two Sundays a month when there was no soccer practice. You could just get on with life, however devoid of spiritual meaning, however driven by the latest fad.

Why wouldn’t you try out all the various “identities” of the age? Everyone needs a reason to live, however small. And, Sunday after Sunday, in church after church, Bibles are kicked around the stage like footballs, Fani Williams quotes Bible verses out of context, and Senior Global Pastor‘s Lawyer tries to do more damage control. Somewhere in the anti-culture chaos, God has been forgotten by the very people who should have known, who should been able to utter his name. But those people assumed, wrongly, that all the precious gifts given to them by the past would magically pass through time to the next generation, without their hard, meek labor of treasuring, protecting, and finally giving it away.

So anyway, have a nice day! And find me on Substack!

Demotivations with Anne

Culture Watch

Previous Post

February 12, 2024

He Does Get You

Next Post

February 26, 2024 Be A Trad Wife, Teach Sunday School

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Do you take dish soap with you? Or just rely on the boiling water to ..."

LucyL

Some Reasons To Go Camping

"This is brilliant. The fam has been watching the re-make, but I have avoided it ..."

LucyL

Of Pies and Men

"The depraved don't know that they are depraved."

Charlie Sutton

Don’t Lose Heart

"I'm sorry to hear that (ie 2.) I do hope if you get to enjoy ..."

LucyL

7 Takes In All Directions

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Do to others as you would have them do to ____.

Select your answer to see how you score.

Everyone Themselves You Others

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »