I live with a foot in two different worlds. In one world, I exist in the world of Public Education. I work with teenagers, I work to teach them and guide them through their high school experience. It is challenging and frustrating because I compete for their attention every minute. I am fortunate that my district has a no-cell phone policy. If I even see a cell phone in class, I can write a referral for that student. If I tell a student to put the cell phone away and they don't, I can have them removed from class. It definitely helps the situation, but the damage has been done. Students have whittled their attention span down to three minutes at maximum. Most of them can pay close attention in 30-second sections. They very quickly get bored, they want to be entertained and they don't have to have to put much thought into everything.
It is not uncommon for students today to be entitled. They feel they are deserving of what they want and they get upset when they don't get it. They often do not put much effort into things, but they want those around them to put maximum effort into them. In the 90s, we saw spoiled, elite, rich students who behaved this way. In the 90s tv sitcoms, often a rich and popular girl would behave this way. This behavior is no longer a parody, and it is not limited to the spoiled rich kid. It is now commonplace.
It would be nice to be able to just accuse the youth of acting this way, but it is not just high school students. Adults in their 20s, 30s, and even into middle age act this way more and more. The entitled behavior and attitude have spread into all areas of society. The reality of being mentally lazy has stretched from one end of life to the other. It has become a problem for modern Americans, we are connected to our electronics but disconnected from our community. We are united by our desire to be connected but divided by our ideology and selfish ambitions.
We live in a Tictok world, a place where everyone can be a star. I have made some videos and one of my car videos has over a million views. It is easy to get caught up in that kind of attention, and people begin to really focus on their 30 seconds of fame. The problem is, Tiktok is a fleeting popularity, it is empty and void. We are simply making the companies rich that own these apps, and we are subjecting ourselves to hours of advertisements. It has been customized for us, and as a result, we have become very selfish. We now see what we want to see, and we hear what we want to hear. We watch the shows, movies, and videos that agree with us. We have people who are an echo chamber of our ideas. We even watch and listen to the news that fits our political and social agenda. We are no longer confronted with the truth, no one really seems to want to know what the truth is. We are simply content with what we agree with and what we like.
This is a challenging environment for the church. The church exists to share the Gospel. The other world I exist in is one of Biblical truth. The Bible holds facts, if I like it or if I don't. The Gospel will not change to fix my ideas or beliefs. When confronted with scripture, I need to change for it, not change it to suit me. The Bible should inform my life, but unfortunately, we see this consumer-driven culture more and more willing to change the Bible. It has been re-interpreted to fit our social narrative, and to allow for the things we once agreed were morally wrong. People are using the Bible to justify abortion, transgenderism, same-sex marriage, and any other social or political movement they want to hold on to. The Bible no longer shapes us, the American culture is seeking to shape the Bible.
We must reject the Tiktok culture and cling to a Biblical worldview. As hard as it is, we must not allow the world and the powers that be to move us from the orthodox teaching of Scripture. This post would be torn apart by this self-seeking world, and if I allow myself to be taken and swayed by popular opinion, it would be easy to just keep silent and not put myself in the crosshairs of the woke worldview. My prayer is that men in women in the church will reject the Tiktok-ism of modern America and strive to have one shaped by God's opinion, not the internet's.
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