{"id":90644,"date":"2025-01-24T14:29:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T20:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/?p=90644"},"modified":"2025-01-24T14:35:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T20:35:55","slug":"anxious-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/anxious-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"How An Anxious Generation\u2019s Faith is Ruled by the Minute"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2022, a <\/span>national study<\/span><\/a> with the Kaiser Family Foundation was conducted. It revealed that 90% of Americans believe there is a mental health crisis. I think we can all agree that this level of consensus in today’s divided culture is significant. The results are evident in my conversations with <\/span>young people who express living lives characterized by situational anxiety<\/b>. <\/span>They feel as if the demands of life exceed their resources to handle them<\/b>. Thus they described being overwhelmed, burdened, and burnt out. As I’ve thought about this, I’ve wondered what the causes of our predicament are. Admittedly there are many contributing factors, but one has recently become glaringly obvious.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The impact of the digital age on faith<\/b><\/p>

We live in a consumer and information driven digital age. We\u2019re spending so much time on our phones that there are entire movements such as the <\/span>digital fast<\/span><\/a> starting to reduce screen time and pull away from technology. This illuminates just how influential our phones are in our daily lives. It\u2019s not the phones themselves that are the problem, but the information we consume through them that I think is contributing to the instability and anxiety in our culture today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The digital age and social media\u2019s dominance has made conflict profitable, soundbite the standard, and feeling prioritized over fact. As a result, I like to say our <\/span>faith is ruled by the minute<\/b>. For people of faith, theological teaching isn\u2019t strictly found in a formal institution or structured classes in church. Instead, many people find their theological teaching and edification through one minute social media videos. Now I do believe that there is a place for short form content, it’s why I produce it, but one effect is concerning. Generations are being discipled with surface level knowledge. An attention grabbing hook, retention rates, and fear inducing content works, and thus deep and nuanced theological ideas are simplified down to one or two points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Related: The Biggest Challenge for Christianity in 2025<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>

Faith grounded in this surface level knowledge is unstable. When one knows what they believe, but not why they believe it, what happens when they are challenged? A bitesized foundation for one\u2019s faith builds a foundation on how it makes you feel, rather than the rationale, thought and evidence which supports the conclusion. We need knowledge, not just mere belief. We must know what we believe and why we believe it. I\u2019ve seen faith ruled by the minute myself in a season of doubt where I would scroll and stumble upon an objection online, which produced anxiety, and then scrolled for a simple one minute response to secure my faith. I was simply seeking someone else’s conclusion to produce security rather than discovering that conclusion myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Related:\u00a0Three Approaches to Impacting Culture for Christ<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>

Jesus calls us to something deeper than a faith ruled by the minute. In John 8:32 he states, \u201cYou will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.\u201d To know truth is to know reality, and in this specific context, Jesus himself and God\u2019s good design. It’s deeper than a <\/span>belief that<\/span><\/i>, but implies a <\/span>trust in<\/span><\/i> as well. To trust in, we need to understand <\/span>why<\/span><\/i> it works, not just <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> it will work. This level of knowledge grounds our trust in God, and how he has evidenced and revealed himself. It\u2019s not building trust based upon feeling produced by someone’s conclusion in a one minute soundbite. And the promise is freedom, in this context, specifically from sin. But that freedom is realized in another significant way as well. It’s found in not grounding trust on your emotional state which is like shifting sand, but grounding trust in who God is, what he has done, and how he has revealed himself.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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In 2022, a national study with the Kaiser Family Foundation was conducted. It revealed that 90% of Americans believe there is a mental health crisis. I think we can all agree that this level of consensus in today’s divided culture is significant. The results are evident in my conversations with young people who express living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50255,"featured_media":90647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[380,1247,320],"translator":[],"blog-author":[70],"class_list":["post-90644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","tag-anxiety","tag-cultural-trends","tag-culture","blog-author-austin-fruits"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/607\/2025\/01\/Blog-anxiousgeneration-blurredclock.jpg","meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90644"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90655,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90644\/revisions\/90655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90644"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=90644"},{"taxonomy":"blog-author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-author?post=90644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}