One Of The Big Questions
Outreach Magazine is running an essay contest for university students asking the question: What is one major spiritual challenge facing my generation today? (BTW, thanks for bringing this to my attention, Dan)
I'm curious to hear what you all have to say about it. I'm sure there are many that we can come up with...but here's one I've been seeing:
From some of my conversations with campus pastors and people in general, I feel that one of the major growing problems is the dwindling of personal relationships. Many students today have had "tools" available to them that allow them to keep from developing many social skills and personal relationships with others, such as video games, computers, texting, and MySpace. The result is an avoidance of emotionally taxing situations, like confrontations.
Family relationships suffer when students are able to avoid communication with their family, such as talking about their day over dinner, in favor of non-personal communication while surfing the internet or playing video games. Even "romantic" relationships then suffer because alternatives like casual sex are preferred over a deeper emotional relationship because they are "easier". At the same time, many are desperate for any kind of personal communication that they look for it in places like online games, like World of Warcraft, where they can talk with others, but only get to know them on a superficial level.
Meanwhile, most of these individuals are in search of some kind of emotional bond, but don't know how to establish or build them. These are those who we need to be reaching out to as a church, and an inviting church website can be a great way to do so. However, it cannot be the work of the website alone, but a combined effort of the foot-in-the-door approach of the website, and the welcoming love of a strong congregation.
Don't get me wrong, as I do play video games and spend time online (obviously 
) and they clearly have their benefits, but I have plenty of outlets for "offline" personal communication. Heck, I would rather speak to my friends on the phone than IM them, and I'm definitely not much of a phone guy. The key is a balance, so that we don't lose touch with the world we are living in.
Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying this, but it's a concern I, and others, have been seeing develop. Just one more thing to keep in mind as we go down the line...
What are your thoughts? What is one of the major spiritual challenges facing our/your generation today? And how do we deal with it?
Greg, I agree with your observation completely. I have thought the same thing myself. I can't tell you how often I have seen kids carrying around those hand held video games into restaurants and other places with their family. What a family relationship killer.
I've also heard many times, when I tell someone that they should call someone, they say, "oh, naw, I'll just email them."
It is weird how the generational changes happen. It seems like my generation is much more relational than my father's, which is awesome, but instead of getting better, I fear that it will get much worse with all this non-face to face style of communication. You are right on in talking about the emotional easiness to this trend. I think that this is just going to keep getting worse for a while, and that is scary especially considering that I've got my first child on the way.
Josh, thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in this opinion. I was afraid I had scared people off for a little bit there!