12 troubling trends we’re witnessing …

Life is never static, change is happening all the time.

As you know, change can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing. From a combination of the news and research I follow and/or conduct, especially as a Christian clinical therapist (but also as a minister), as well as what I have observed by counseling thousands of people, there is some unhealthy change we should take note of. Here are 12 troubling trends I’ve identified that are affecting our times:

1. Failing families. Trouble among marriages has always been something in the news and of concern, but I have never witnessed the fracture of the family to the degree I see today. It used to be home was a place you could always go back to, and family were always people you could count on. Not today. In 2018, families are so fractured that it’s common for people to cobble together a hodge-podge of relationships to fill in the family void.

2. Comfort over content. What made up the content of one’s life used to be a chief concern, today there is an overwhelming emphasis on comfort. People used to be willing to sacrifice in order for the content of their lives to contain certain things; today, a great deal of effort and resources are invested to ensure the highest levels of comfort, even at the expense of critical content.

3. Idolization of entertainment. Perhaps some of the roots of a near addiction to entertainment began when our parents adapted the television as a babysitter. For a couple decades now, we’ve “settled the child” by keeping them entertained, and have become adults who insist on the same. Quiet times, times of stillness, or any time not taken with work or responsibilities are all moments we now demand be filled with some form of entertainment. Common today are weekends spent never getting out of pajamas so as to be comfortable indulging in “Netflix marathons” and doing as little as possible other than being entertained.

4. We scan rather than read. In the print media world, it used to be you had a headline and the first paragraph or so to capture a potential reader’s attention and draw them into a story. But with a majority of people going online for their news and information, we have become increasingly used to scanning headlines and “stories” that are barely longer than a single paragraph! A new practice of news organizations for their online content is to not open a story with the first paragraph, but to first offer a few bullet points of key information readers can scan in an effort to draw “scanners” into an article. Imagine how much we’re limiting ourselves when we not only rarely read books (including the Bible), but now reduce our reading from less than a news story or magazine article to paragraphs or bullet points. Several digital “experts” are saying the trend today is increasingly toward video, where we don’t read at all but instead consume content visually.

5. Do nothing big. Instead of our leaders challenging us to do great things, they’ve persistently taught us for a couple decades now to approach things with baby steps. As a result, a trend is that we’re making most of life a series of baby steps instead of risking great things and taking BIG steps.

6. Minimizing communication. In America today we are witnessing an epidemic of loneliness. Could it be that our minimizing our communication with others could have contributed to that? Instead of spending time on the phone with a friend, we tell our closest buddies and BFF’s “don’t call if it can be texted.” When we reduce our communications with the people we’re closest to down to a line of text, is it any wonder we’re witnessing a crisis of loneliness?

7. From rescuers to voyeurs. The church has never been perfect, but it has been more like the church we read about in the Bible than it is today. It used to be when someone was struggling, suffering, or in need, the church would rescue those who needed rescuing. Today, we’re increasingly watching their demise as we limit ourselves to offering “thoughts and prayers.”

8. Opinion trumps truth. Human beings have always thought more highly of themselves than they should, but in 2018 the personal opinion has been given a status that is superior to truth. For many, it no longer matters that the Bible clearly teaches something other than what they believe, personal opinion is given a rank of priority.

9. Memes over theology and doctrine. So, if we’re not reading our Bibles, have become “scanners,” and prioritize personal opinions, it’s really no surprise that what passes for our theology and doctrine today comes more from memes via social media than time spent studying the Word.

10. Everything customized for self. A strong behavioral trend coming to us from the digital world is a desire for everything to be customized for self. The church actually feed this thinking early on when it spent a couple decades preaching, teaching, and structuring ministries around “felt needs” as a philosophy of “church growth.” The digital world has followed suit, as screens and sites can all be customized, laid out, altered, and “decorated” to meet the needs, interests, and desires of the user. We’ve become accustomed to having things customized just for us.

11. Undiscipled and unequipped. The church has failed at discipling and equipping Christians for a few decades. The result we’re seeing now is that Christians remain undiscipled and unequipped to such a degree they don’t have an understanding of some of the most basic tenets of the Christian faith. A recent survey of the “state of American theology,” conducted by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, reveals a disturbing lack of understanding about biblical Christianity from professing Christians. Read about the research outcomes, as reported by Christianity Today, here.

12. Alarming lack of self-awareness. We have become so lacking in self-awareness that various voices are sounding the alarm, especially the mental health community. It isn’t that we’re just busy people with no time to think, contemplate, and consider, it’s that we would rather be comfortable and entertained when we do have time. One result is that we have become wildly lacking in self-awareness, to the point mental health professionals are increasingly focusing on teaching and equipping clients about the need to enhance their self-awareness.

Seeing such troubling trends doesn’t mean the sky is falling, there’s always some things we should be aware of and concerned about. We can use that awareness to learn and improve so that the ways in which we live becomes less troublesome.

Scotty