Analog Faith in Digital Babylon | Jason Helton | Week 01

[00:00:00] You. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church. [00:00:26] Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you. [00:00:38] All right, so if you're just joining us, please take out your phone. That's right, Bible class. Teachers saying, take out your phone and join our cahoot. Cahoot is a common game that teachers use a lot. Other folks use it in different industries as well. But tonight we're going to use it to do some polling because I don't always trust that people tell the truth in Bible class. Just kidding. They tell the truth, but they don't always want to speak up sometimes. So tonight we want to get a little bit of an accurate demographic of who all is a part of our study. If you're here by accident, thanks for sticking around and not leaving. This is Analog Faith in Digital Babylon, which is kind of a really lengthy title. This class is going to talk about the intersection of faith and technology. It's going to talk about how technology is great and we are now able to go into the farthest edges of the earth in ways that we've never been able to do before. We're able to teach the Bible to people and in ways we've never been able to do before. We're also going to talk about how technology can be tremendously evil in how it's used. It can be very destructive, and how we've already lost a generation or two in some very key ways. We're going to talk about the pornography and social media, the effects on generations there. We're going to talk specifically about how technology is used to communicate today and the good and the bad of that. So this is not a class that's meant to convince you to take your cell phone and throw it away. It's also not a class that I'm going to try to convince you that it's either all evil or all good. But we are going to look at specifically how technology forms and shapes us spiritually. And that is the recurring theme every night, every topic we discuss. That is the heart of what we're going to look at. It's not exclusively a parenting class, although we'll talk about some of that as well. Looks like most folks are in. There's a stack of chairs in the way back there. If you guys wanted to grab some of those, you certainly can. [00:02:32] And again, if you're online with us, I'm sorry you have yet to see a human face, but I saw Michael Jordan and Big Mama are with us along with Clooney. That's exciting. And in that there you go. All right, well, before we go into all of the names, let's get into our first cahoot. [00:02:55] Well, we tried. Let's skip. We're going somewhere else. [00:02:59] Like I said, technology can be used for very nefarious, evil things, misrepresenting people, first and foremost. Let's get started. [00:03:07] All right, so tonight we are talking about our first week of analog faith in Digital Babylon. We want to talk about the generation gap or the perceived generation gap. So what generation are you? And I just remembered I forgot to change the time limit, so you need to be quick on this. [00:03:23] Silence are going to be in red, boomers are in blue, gen X in yellow, millennial green and Gen Z in that turquoise color. Find your birth date and select the one that you are on your phone. [00:03:39] You have 10 seconds, 99 answers, just about everything. That's pretty good. [00:03:45] It's getting stressful. [00:03:48] 107, 108. There we go. All right, so the makeup of our class tonight, majority millennials, my people, welcome nearly half. 43%, 14% boomers, 16%, gen X, 28%, Gen Z and the silence are very silent. 0% on the silence, which is interesting because we're going to talk about them first. I think it's important whenever we talk about Generations to take a very humble posture and I think to take a very curious posture. One of the goals of tonight's discussion, I hope that we achieve, is that first and foremost, we all need to be talking about the things that we're going to talk about tonight. Secondly, we all need christ. Maybe that should be firstly, right? We are all broken people in the sense that we are fallen, that we have sinned. Christ came to save us. Each of us have been raised within the context of our time. If you were a millennial, then you were raised during the greatest of times, 1980 to 1994. These dates are coming from the breakdown of an author by the name of Jean Twingy. Twingy, I believe, is how she pronounced her last name. She wrote a book several years ago called Igen. She's got her newest book called Generations the Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silence and What They Mean for America's Future. She does not take a spiritual posture on this, but she is a research scientist and has taken more data than anyone has ever taken before. The largest data set that we know of and calculated all of her research and put it in one bound volume. It's a lot, but it's extremely interesting and it's very insightful. I would encourage you at some point to read it, maybe listen to it. There's a lot of charts, so that's hard to look at when you're listening. But anyway, take a look at that. And that's where a lot of our data is going to come from tonight. And tonight's class is going to set a course for us. So tonight won't necessarily be an in depth Bible study just yet. We're getting to that. We certainly will have scripture, but tonight we're going to compare some of these generations that are represented. Question number two. This is a word cloud, so what you say will be populated up on the screen. What year did you first get a mobile phone? This is not necessarily a smartphone, but a mobile phone. The one that didn't plug into a cord. You know what, I'll even throw out bag phones in the car if you want to. Basically any phone beyond the yellow phone that hung in the kitchen that had a 75 foot cord that could extend a block and a half, if you remember that one. We're not talking about that phone. When did you get a phone that you could take with you other places? 3 seconds left. Oh, sorry. That one took a lot longer to think. Didn't. [00:06:27] All right, this wasn't quite everybody, but close enough. Junior high, 2000 and 319 93, early 2000s are in there. [00:06:37] Okay, pretty good. So 2008 seems to be a pretty big time. The size of the numbers up here are determined by how many people put that date in there. So that tracks pretty well with our millennials. Early 2001 and then 2008 seemed to be the two biggest. Someone got it in 20, so that's really impressive. And twelve, I assume that's their age, 20 and twelve. Had some 1994 folks in there. Ahead of the curve. [00:07:06] Ten years old, 1990. All right, very good. Junior high, 2003, the year that I graduated high school. Cool. Now I'm in that demographic that feels old. All right, this next one, I'm going to go ahead and give you a heads up. This next one was the first smartphone. Be thinking about your first smartphone. So this is when you could receive email and other data on a phone. Think BlackBerry. All right, here we go. [00:07:31] What year did you get a phone that could receive email or a smartphone? [00:07:41] Did you have the light gray silver BlackBerry? Did you have the Graphite BlackBerry? Did you have the Graphite and black duo tone BlackBerry? That was my first one. [00:07:56] Never felt more like a government employee than when I got my first BlackBerry, but I didn't have a Lanyard, so I still didn't fit in. All right, here we go. [00:08:07] Drum roll, please. [00:08:11] Majority of folks, 2012. [00:08:14] That's very interesting. [00:08:16] Remember that year? [00:08:18] Remember 2012? [00:08:21] Pretty good. So 2001, that's impressive. I didn't realize we had data that could be sent in 2001. That's good. All right, so do it. There's a 93. [00:08:37] I just don't believe you. [00:08:40] I really don't. I'm sorry. I love you. I just don't believe you. [00:08:45] All right, we're going to switch back over here. [00:08:53] So I'm trying to share my screen while we stream, and I want to share this. [00:08:58] So let's go to that. [00:09:01] Is this being shared online? [00:09:07] So one person is saying yes, one person is saying no. Now they're on agreement of no. That's unfortunate. [00:09:14] Man, I ruined the surprise. I was so excited. Figured out how to morph stuff in PowerPoint. [00:09:21] Totally changing my life. That's still on there. That's not what I want them to see. Bummer. All right, while I work on this, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of technology? [00:09:39] Anybody? [00:09:41] Efficiency. What about efficiency? [00:09:45] Okay, I'm sorry. [00:09:49] Change not working. [00:09:51] Case in point. Thank you, Jimmy TMI. Okay. All right, what else? [00:10:02] Everyone has an opinion. That's true. [00:10:06] Information instantly having to go to, like, books. [00:10:14] Okay, well, this is what we're going to do, folks, online. [00:10:20] Get to watch the screen that the rest of us watch. [00:10:24] We'll try that. So being able to have instant access to information, that's very good. I think all of those are accurate. Anybody else? [00:10:34] All that's true. Is technology good or bad? [00:10:39] Yes. Right? Both. Okay. Somebody said both. Yes, ma'am. Why do you say both? It's good and it is bad. Okay, why is that? [00:10:50] Well, most people do good stuff on it, but some people can do bad stuff on it. That's right. Like robbery. And they can rob people. That's true. Very true. Which is very bad. Want to clarify? Yes. Jimmy it allows us to keep in touch with loved ones and friends and family, no matter how far away you are, and allows us also a new avenue to spread the gospel. But if you don't have good intentions at heart, then it's easy to do a number of evil things. It enables your heart to do good or to do bad, right? Yes, sir. Greg okay. All right. Read it on the Internet, in fact. Yes, ma'am. It saves you a lot of time trying to find things. [00:11:46] There you go. That's right. Looking at you. Reels. All right. For those of you that identified or revealed that you're a part of the boomer generation, what's the first piece of technology, that significant piece of technology you remember in your childhood? [00:12:04] Indoor plumbing. [00:12:07] Interesting. [00:12:09] What year were you born? 88. All right, millennials. We like to take everybody's credit. Who else? [00:12:16] Commodore 64, my man. Yes. That was my first game console, too, and we're not the same age. [00:12:27] Everybody likes somebody to one up some Mike Mark color television. There you go. Technicolor. It's a big deal. Danny going to say my first one was Pong Pong. There you go. Atari. [00:12:42] Black and white TV. [00:12:44] Rabbit ears. Yeah. Aluminum foil. Okay. Because that was my childhood. [00:12:51] The outside antenna. Got you. Yeah, gotcha when antennas were satellites. Massive. Greg the non party line phone. [00:13:01] What's that music from? Cassette tapes from tapes. Tape gotcha real to real type tapes. Yep. Anybody? Record players? Like sonograph type? Not sonograph. What are those? Phonographs. Is that what the word? Yeah, the big ear thing that's always associated with Thomas Edison and those guys. Right. Remember those? Yeah. So we all have a connection. For me, one of the first pieces of technology that I go back to is the Atari and then Commodore 64. And then somewhere in there, Oregon Trail changed my life. Poor Susie just never was cut out to travel across the country. [00:13:35] Fun fact, you can actually play Oregon Trail online at the state of Oregon's visitor website. It's pretty fun. And your eight, six, and four year olds will love it. [00:13:45] Technology is always around us. Always has been. Technology will never stop as long as humanity is in existence. [00:13:53] As spiritual minded people, we have to learn wisdom and discernment. Tonight, as we focus on what I would call the perceived generation gap. I hope that at some point you'll see that what we think is a huge gap is not really there in the ways that we think. The generation gap is something that I think Satan actually uses as a tool. He uses technology to make us think that we're more different than we really are. He uses technology to separate those that are wiser in life, that have more life experience from those that are younger in life. [00:14:26] He uses technology to communicate, like was said earlier. But there's an intimidation factor that oftentimes happens that the older you get, the less inclined you are to adapt to new things, the less inclined you are to seek out new ways of doing things because you're comfortable and you're familiar with those things. I'm currently in that stage of life, even though I am a millennial. There are certain things now that I'm like, why did you have to change that? Why do we have to have 14,000 social media platforms? Can we just learn the three and use those? Because that's exhausting. Also stay off my lawn. That's usually the end of most of my messages to the young people in my neighborhood. But now there's new technology that causes technology to kind of reprogram itself exponentially. It used to progress little by little to some degree. There was major innovations that had large spans of time between them. And now with some of the emerging technology we have, I would say the micro innovations, lower level innovations, the consumer level innovations are coming out rapidly. They went from incremental advancement to exponential advancement once we got to the computer age and the internet age. Now there are a lot of tech people here, so I won't get too far into the idea of innovation. Some folks say there's not been a lot of innovation at all over the years. Our first generation tonight is the silent generation. Does anybody know why they're called the silence? [00:15:52] They are between the greatest and the boomers, right? The greatest generation was the greatest generation. Right. Why are they called that? [00:16:01] Because of a book? [00:16:03] The silent generation is called the silent generation because of an article time magazine, on the COVID in I believe it was 1951, basically said, where is this generation? Why are they not in leadership? [00:16:16] Do you think that that's an accurate portrayal of people born from 1925 to 1945? Here we have nine images of folks that were born in that generation. [00:16:28] Did martin Luther King Jr. Remain silent? [00:16:31] Ruth bader ginsburg silent. Nah. Willie Nelson? No. Hi, yes. Silent? No. [00:16:38] Morgan Freeman. These are folks that we know. These are folks that are known globally. Some of them are still alive. Some of them have passed on and their legacy continues to speak volumes. There was an article in Time magazine that basically said that, where are they in government? Where are they in leadership positions? [00:17:00] Perceptive the answer was given there. They were sandwiched between a really loud, boisterous boomer generation and a generation that has been immortalized and in some ways idolized as the greatest generation. That's a big deal. They're sort of the middle child in a lot of ways. But the reality is, and the data actually shows in no way were they actually silent. They're known for bridging gaps. They're known for being personalities that bring people together rather than divisive. [00:17:32] They typically are less cynical and more trusting of other people. [00:17:37] They're civil rights pioneers, both in race and in gender. Some of those sometimes get often looked specifically the gender part. We associate race with the silence, but typically we associate the civil rights movement of the 60s with what generation? [00:17:53] The boomers, right. Well, that's because they were louder. But the silence are the ones that started all of that. Silence were twice as likely as those in the greatest generation to believe that traditional gender roles were not necessarily better. [00:18:09] That's a very modern discussion, but it was very prominent among the silent generation. Within two generations, opinions flipped with those of the greatest generation supporting traditional gender roles, and most boomers disagreeing. The silence started to lean more towards the boomers. [00:18:29] That's very interesting to me. They were early marriages and lots of kids. [00:18:34] They married earlier in the 50s than in the 1930s. They were younger than any generation to get married in the 20th century. They were the youngest of all the 20th century generations. Nearly half think about this nearly half of new brides in the 1950s were teenagers. [00:18:51] The median age of first time brides was 20 years old. [00:18:56] Today, that seems very young. [00:18:59] And as a father who has an eight year old and doing math on that, that seems really irrationally young. The post war baby boom is why we get the name baby boomers. So what happens when a war ends? Everybody comes home. And specifically in World War II, the vast majority of those that were away at war were men when they came home. [00:19:22] Baby boom, right? All right. [00:19:26] In 1957, the birth rate was 3.8 kids per woman. Don't know how you have a .8, but that was the average meme. Parents of two child families were now parents of three to four kids. [00:19:40] We often talk about raising a new generation of teenagers or a new generation of kids, but typically we tend to overlook the new generation of parents as well. And that's one thing that this data reveals is that there were parents now that grew up in homes with one or no siblings that now have three or four children themselves. And that's an interesting dynamic. That's an interesting shift. There are things if you are in either of those categories, you understand those are very, very different dynamics. The divorce rate shot up in the 1960s and 70s. Most divorces were among people between the age of 29 and excuse me, 25 and 49. Silence started. The divorce trend boomers kept it rolling. But the rise in divorce started among the silent generation. Again, sort of a modern application. We think of divorce rates soaring in more modern times in the last 1520 years, but it goes back a lot farther than that. There are contributing factors to the rise in divorce. One is what we're going to see. And there's another book that I recommend to you here called Strange New World by Carl Truman. He's got a very academic version of this called The Rise of the Modern self. It's like 500 pages. If you love that sort of thing, go for it. If you're a sane person, get the short version. He hits the high notes, and he charts the main trends over the last 100 years in our culture, and specifically the rise of self and how different philosophers and different events have led to this rise of modern self that we find ourself in today. And that was very much a part contributing factor of the rise in divorce. [00:21:12] We have rise of individualism. New technology changed the home with the invention of ovens, of irons, of home appliances. What once was a traditional role of the wife staying home and spending all day laboring over those things now had more free time. Now women were out in the marketplace. That trend started during the war because where were the men fighting? And so you had a flood of women into college and universities. The graduation rate spiked for women. [00:21:47] The job rate spiked for women during that time. So when the men come back home, there's a baby boom. But there's also a lot of other moving parts in society as society fluctuates from what was World War II? Was it six years long? I think something like that. So for half a decade, we're in war mode, and now we're shifting out of that. There's a lot that happens in culture during that time. [00:22:09] So the workforce now has more job equality. There's less emphasis on the family. And again, it contributes to this rise of individualism. We're going to see. That's a common theme among all of these generations. Remarriage was very common. 60% of men and 50% of women remarried within five years. [00:22:25] So tell me if you remember these names. Elizabeth Taylor. Married eight times. [00:22:31] Johnny Carson four times. Larry King, another ocho eight times. Right. So these are prominent figures. These are very influential people in media and news. [00:22:45] Remarriage was a very common thing. It became divorce and remarriage became normalized. There were advances in health care, which means people live much longer, and as people live longer, fewer single elderly women exist today than in 1990, which is an interesting stat. A lot of those advances in technology and healthcare started in the they were more educated, the first generation, to have a majority of their generation graduate high school. [00:23:17] Why do you think that is? Why did the greats and the generations before them, why were the Silence more educated? Why were there more high school diplomas handed out? [00:23:29] What's that? Great Depression? Yes. [00:23:34] Dropped out to work. That's right. We were also shifting from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy, which changed the landscape of cities, neighborhoods, and families. [00:23:46] Huge impact on the family there. [00:23:49] They had consistent political power. And by this we mean Mitch McConnell, who's been in office for 100 years, trent Lott, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, these names I heard when I was a child. [00:24:06] They're still on TV, right? Yeah, exactly. [00:24:11] We'll move on very quickly. Supreme Court Justices ruth Bader Ginsburg, Davis Suter. Is that how I always messed up? Is that right, David? Yes. David, not Davis. Sandra Day O'Connor, stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia all of these are among the silent generation. [00:24:32] How many presidents were silent? [00:24:38] How many do you think? We've had six silent presidents. You think had two guesses at six. [00:24:50] I'm going to put also obviously wrong. Yes. [00:24:56] One. [00:24:58] Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, barely. But Bill Clinton, George W, Barack Obama, and technically, Donald Trump are all boomers. We went through four boomer presidents before we got to a silent. This is where the name silent starts to make a little sense. They were all born before 1960. All for them, right? Yes. 60 or whatever the date. 64 is the end. Yes, 46 to 64. [00:25:29] So they were born in the boomer range. [00:25:33] One president that was silent, and he's our president today. Seems kind of counterintuitive, doesn't it? Kind of weird. But what happened in the 90s, we went from the Reagan era, who was a greatest fun there? Here you go. The Republicans got it. All right. [00:25:49] You had Reagan to Bush, both greatest generation. And then when Bush lost to Bill Clinton, the boomers said, we have arrived, and all right, I took it off of this one, but, well, we'll get to the next one. Never mind when we get to the next generation. Major technology developments. With the rise of modern home appliances, color television, also air travel, the world was getting smaller. [00:26:14] There was a noticeably lower suicide rate. The silence have a tendency to be stable and calm in their presence, and they were more conservative compared to other generations, particularly as they get older. And that's a trend that we see among most all generations, is as they age, especially once we get past that 50 to 60 year old mark, we tend to get more conservative in our political and financial views. All right, so up next, we have the boomers. We got oprah, we got one, two, three presidents that are listed there. Princess Diana Dolly samuel L. Jackson caitlin Jenner steve Bezos We got some movers and shakers in society. The boomers, when they came into public view, when they came into public influence, they were here to stay, and they're still here. You people are still here. [00:27:04] 21.1% of the population in 2021. Very comfortable with drug use. [00:27:12] We'll keep moving, rise in self focus. [00:27:17] You see, this rise of individualism is now shifting even more intensely into self focus. Interesting stat here. Choice became the center of the boomer experience. They wanted choice. They questioned the military draft. We got rid of an actual draft for a fully voluntary army because of the boomers, right? They strove for gender and continue to strive for gender equality. They made core values of counterculture the mainstream a mainstream thing. [00:27:47] It was viva la revolution, right? Over and over again, they bucked traditional values or traditional norms that were set in place, if for nothing else than to have choice. But there was also an increase in mental distress and depression during this time. [00:28:04] There were dominant political chameleons is the way that Twingy describes them. And specifically, four out of the last five presidents have been boomers. They were having fewer kids and more divorces. They were breaking traditional rules, specifically sex before marriage. In a nationwide survey, 85% of US. Adults said that premarital sex was wrong in 1967, in 1979. So twelve years later, that number dropped to 37%. There was a rapid and loud change in what was mainstream norms. Sexual revolution was a battle between boomers and the greatest generation, and the boomers won resoundingly over the lifetime of the boomers. Well, never mind. Sorry, I didn't finish that note. I had another stat there, but I didn't actually type it out. [00:28:53] They tried to redefine the word is. [00:28:57] Yep. Boomers. So Bill Clinton, our first boomer president, if you remember it depends on what your definition of the word is is. Mine is. Is that's the definition? It's the word is. But where we are today, where we define a lot of terms and redefine a lot of terms, and we change the meaning of terms again, it's not new. It's not all that novel. And it's not just the young people, all right? They pioneered that. Everything was okay to talk about in the open. That was a big change in society as well. We can talk about sexuality. We can talk about our depression. We can talk about all of these things. The boomer generation really tried to put personal things in a public forum in a way that previous generations had not seen. And that was, again, a huge shock to the system. And that's one reason one thing to look at that is the rise in popularity of Oprah Winfrey. That was one thing that she did, is she leveraged in house emotions, so to speak, and grew a tremendous following and has had a huge impact on society, mainly because the largest generation at the time really connected with how she ran her show and how she tried to move forward with that. The world changed with the rise of the boomers. As the boomers have aged, so has society. When they were children in the country was very child focused. You see a trend as they became rebellious teens. Well, we have the tumultuous 60s into the 70s. When they were young adults, the culture experienced a fascination with mystical things. In the 70s, again, lots of drug use, lots of mysticism. [00:30:32] They were building careers in the that's when the country favored financial stability, financial innovation, and then as they've moved into retirement, now the focus has moved into retirement in a big way in our society. So the boomers have sort of aged the country's culture, and partly due to their sheer size, the social movement protests of the 60s did decline in the there was a quote from that time from someone that said, well, there's more emphasis on changing self now than changing society. [00:31:04] So it was something that was known at the time. I think that quote came from the early 70s. Well, now we're shifting from trying to change everything and just trying to change ourselves. [00:31:12] Major developments. This was really interesting. The words unique in identity surged in use in American books after 1960. As you get through, the word unique started to kind of wane a little bit. But identity continues on an upward trajectory, even to today. And you can look up that information using the Google Books database. That's where you can find that information of different words that are used in literature and their popularity very interesting to note. Major tech development cassette tapes, space travel, videotapes, the birth control pill in 1960, the average age of a woman married in 1970 was under 21. In 1980, it was under 22. That number continues to rise. Birth control was a new technology that has had waves of consequences and impact. Maybe impact is the right word there for the next several generations. All right, let's move on to Gen nope, not Gen X. Excuse me? Let's move on to our millennial people, my people technology again, but I did skip the Gen X. Sorry. [00:32:20] Then Millennials, then Gen Z. All right, so gen X. We've got some. Of our innovators elon, Chris, Rock, others there. [00:32:30] 18 and a half percent of the US population were Gen Xers in the year 2020, which is sort of interesting. All of these fall in a similar percentage here in 2000 and 22,021. We'll see how they buffer as they continue to grow. They're analog and digital communicators, so they kind of have a foot in both camps. They can manage newTell, they can hook up their own stereo system. But they also remember TV Guide, right? So somewhere in between theirs the first generation to actually be on the Internet. And in fact, there are quite a few innovators early on in the Internet that were Gen Xers. [00:33:07] They were last to use rotary phones, but more importantly to me, the last to go through high school without use of the internet. [00:33:14] We are not even close to getting where I want to be. [00:33:18] They were a TV generation. They loved to share pop culture. They're also children of divorce. Nearly three times as many children in 1980 were living with a divorced mom or dad than had been in 1963. Times as many. That's significant. Most Gen Xers actually lived with two parents in their first marriage. But divorced families became the norm. There was a rise and fall of the latchkey kid, if you remember that phrase. Kids that just went home after school, had their key on the neck, went in and they hung out, played in the neighborhood, played at home by themselves. That doesn't happen as much anymore. Organized school programs had not caught up. After school programs were not normalized until the 1990s. So what was now seen as a badge of honor we did whatever we wanted to. We learned. Well, now it's just not even really a possibility. Times have changed. Shorter childhood and longer adolescence. This is where we start to see the shift in the delayed adolescence. Gen X married later than any generation in American history. Boomers married at 21 for women and 23 for men. Gen Xers married at 25 and 27 respectively. Lower age for first sexual experience and higher age for first marriage. So they were having sex sooner and getting married later. They were having children. Excuse me. Having children was no longer directly tied to being married. This is a key generational shift in that living together became very acceptable. Think TV shows like Friends who really speak to the Gen X and the early millennials generation or any of them. Seinfeld. I know I love it, but I hate it's. Not good. All right. Divorce rate fell rapidly after the 1980s. High self esteem and they became focused on self materialistic lifestyles, materialism of the affluence of our country in the fed into this tremendously TV showcased this materialism. The growing divide between rich and poor with the decline in manufacturing so a college degree was now becoming more and more necessary. The 90s were tough, cynical and considered generally negative in a lot of ways, grunge and rap music in particular. Those two categories, those two genres really showcased what was real life for the majority of this generation. They have thick skin, but they're open to new ideas. They're conscious about saving the planet and loved the Reagan generation. The personal computer was a major development during this time. Millennials going rapid fire. We'll come back to some of this next week. Relentlessly self confident yes, we are. [00:35:43] 911 and the housing bubble and the tech bubble, all bursting. the.com boom took that self confidence and did weird things with it. After 2000, the first singular pronouns began to take off in literature to a decrease in collective pronouns. Students spent less time doing homework. So what's interesting is some of the research she found said that there was less time doing homework, but the grades went up. [00:36:08] So that doesn't necessarily mean we got smarter. It means that we were handed participation grades. [00:36:15] There is some actual data that legitimizes that entitlement. However, as a six year old, I'm sorry, I didn't have the emotional maturity to say, sorry, Coach, I didn't deserve that trophy. So it's only I take a responsibility. Individualism continued to promote self focus. Narcissism began to rise. Digital natives. This generation considered digital natives. It's a generation that came of age as the Internet was advancing. Vfacebook.com came out in 2004. [00:36:39] College stupidity lived forever online for bosses and children to now find. Didn't mean for that to rhyme, but it did. Our lives now were documented and they stayed there, and we didn't know how to deal with that. And we're still learning how to deal with that. They were high earners. There is a perception that they don't make a lot of money, they live in poverty. We don't. We actually make more than generation for us. But the perception part has changed tremendously. [00:37:02] All right, we will breeze through real quick. Gen Z. 23% of the population, 2020. There's a lot of them, and they're coming. Gender fluidity. A rise in the LGBTQ community. They're growing up slowly, slower, with delayed adulthood. There's an interest in physical and emotional safety while also restricting free speech or speech. Racially conscious, dissatisfied, depressed, pessimistic, increased online communication and political polarization. [00:37:31] We're going to skip ahead real quick. [00:37:36] I'm sorry, Jen's. Ears. To cut you guys short. We'll come back to it. And it doesn't mean to paint them all in a negative light. But when you look at research based off of counseling numbers, when you look at research based off of suicide rates, when you look at divorce rates, when you look at the categories that are generally negative, we've seen a steady increase. And they may be highest among our two youngest generations, but they didn't start there. [00:38:00] I started here because we all have a hand in this. [00:38:05] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. If we allow society and culture to dictate where we EB and flow in life, then we will absolutely find a really broad, easy way. That way leads to destruction, and Jesus guaranteed that. [00:38:23] A difficult way is learning to navigate life and the nuance that life offers to us in this class. A goal I have for us is that we begin to think very deeply about the technology that we implore in our life. Most historians use world events, world wars, pandemics, catastrophes to kind of put in the barriers of different generations to divide them. What Jean Twinsey does is she uses technology as the main break. We talked about the year 2012. [00:38:56] There's a tremendous uphill climb in depression, anxiety and suicide ideation in our country round about the year 2012. The year 2012 is the year that more than half for the very first time, more than half of American teenagers had social media. [00:39:14] We are going to look at a lot of statistics, but we're also going to look at the impact of what those statistics really mean when we get into the Bible and when we get into our homes, whether whatever generation we're part of, we have to become very skilled at identifying what is the world and what is not the world. When John writes to not love the world and the things that are in the world, it's a warning, because those things do not lead to salvation. Those things do not lead to eternal life here and in heaven with God. Those things do not lead to peace and joy and happiness, the joy that God has intended and designed us to participate in. [00:39:59] We have to be very wise and very clever. [00:40:03] Despite where we grew up, we cannot base all of our emotions and thoughts and feelings towards another generation based solely off of how it was in our day. Because the fact of the matter is we all live in this day, and we have to figure out how to navigate as the body of Christ today. Those of you that are older, I need your wisdom in my life. I need to hear about walking uphill in snow both ways. I just don't know how that's possible. I want to learn. Physics were different in the day, right? [00:40:32] If you're younger than me, I need your help. Oftentimes turning on my phone because my children locked me out and they change it to Portuguese and I don't know how to get back. But you do. [00:40:42] We need each other. When you look in the New Testament, you see this amazing revolution going on in Acts. [00:40:50] It's a new way of life for a group of people that were God's chosen people. Many of them were very slow to adapt, very slow to accept, very slow to listen. When over and over again, Jesus says, listen, I've been telling you it's me. It's me. Me. The one you've been thinking about, the one that you've been praying about, the one that your parents and your grandparents and the generations before you have been telling you about, I'm here, and they were hard headed. [00:41:18] We know the gospel. We have access to God any time of day, and yet we still take it for granted. We still allow the things of the world to come in and cloud our vision of what reality should be based off of a biblical worldview, a biblical view, a biblical filter. And we also let it come between each other. And that is unacceptable. It takes a little creativity, a whole lot of patience, and a whole lot of effort. And that's something that every one of us possess, no matter our age, no matter when we were born, no matter the circumstances. Let's pray, and then we'll be dismissed. Father, we're grateful for the blessings you've given to us tonight. We thank you especially for being together. Thank you for your word. We thank you very much for bringing multiple ages together to be a part of Your kingdom helping us. Please help us to see that we need each other, that we need the wisdom and the experience of each other. We need to be in each other's lives. We need to form deep forms of community and family here. God, we are set apart from the world. [00:42:18] We are your chosen people Help us to live in a way that glorifies you and grows Your kingdom every day. Help us to learn to leverage technology and the tools that we have today to communicate, to do just that, to glorify you. I pray that this study will be one that benefits not just those that are here in the room, but anyone that comes in contact with us, as well as those that are joining us online. Father, we love you and we thank you in Christ's name. Amen.