24 ..."If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
I've thought that was an interesting analogy Jesus used here, when He talks about taking up the cross - after all, that would be the form of death that He would endure. So, we reflect on what occurred there: the Son of God laid down His life to pay the price for our sins. Paul tells us we have been crucified with Christ. So, each day, we are to identify with what Jesus did for us, get our eyes off ourselves and to, as Hebrews says, fix our eyes on Jesus - in Him, we can know peace and satisfaction.
14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;
15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
16 Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
It seems like a young lady in her 20's would have better things to do than take provocative videos of herself and post them on Tik Tok, but that's what has happened and has set off a trend. An article at The Federalist states:
All over TikTok, young women are taking videos of themselves in .5 zoom suggestively dancing in various public places, particularly public transit.
The trend was kicked off by 22-year-old TikToker Sabrina Bahsoon, who recorded herself dancing in the London Underground, known colloquially as the tube. Participants in the trend began using the hashtag “tubegirl,” which currently has over 1.2 billion views on TikTok.
So, Bahsoon has apparently drawn rave reviews from some media outlets, as the article notes, such as...
...ABC praising Bahsoon for taking “confidence to the next level” and The Daily Mail reporting that she’s “empowering Gen-Zers to ‘overcome social anxiety.’”
The article adds:
She describes the “movement” she’s created as an exercise in “confidence.”
And, now New York has its own self-proclaimed "tube girl," Lohanny Santos.
But, the writer of the Federalist piece, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, who is the daughter of Fox News personalities Sean and Rachel Campos Duffy, says that there are better things to do:
Either everyone participating in the tube girl trend has had their sense of propriety and self-awareness completely broken by the internet, or they do feel awkward dancing in crowded public spaces with no music.
If they do feel embarrassment, why do it? There are plenty of causes in the world for young people to stand up for and bravely deviate from the crowd. Christians are called to do this every day. The tube girl trend isn’t about courage, though.
Her conclusion:
Participants are making themselves look foolish and the people around them feel uncomfortable for views, likes, and shares on TikTok. The only “cause” the tube girl trend promotes is self-obsession. TikTokers are engaging in it “for the gram” or for “clout.” In other words, they are sacrificing their dignity in the physical world for validation in the digital world.Duffy-Alfonso contrasts how her parents, when they were in school, met at a particular "spot" to "socialize," with how "millennials grew up using apps and text messaging to plan events and hang-outs." And now, with Gen Z:
Apps aren’t used to coordinate social interactions — they are the social interactions. Zoomers are reportedly glued to their screens for an average of over 7 hours a day. For young people who spend exorbitant amounts of their waking hours online, it’s only natural that their internet personas would matter more than their real-world identities. This is why swaths of young women are willing to look silly in public in order to look sexy and carefree on TikTok.
And, the consequences? She reports that, "Gen Z is the most mentally ill generation to date," adding:
It’s ironic that such disturbing rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety are coming from the generation superfixed on “self-care” and “self-confidence.”
Duffy-Alfonso referenced an Insider article that says: "The suicide rate among people aged 10 to 24 increased 56% between 2007 and 2017, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
The article notes:
In 2017, 13% of teens reported having experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year, Pew Research Center reported. In 2007, when more millennials were teens, that number was just 8%.
Social media might be fueling the increase in mental illness, as Gen Z is the first truly digital generation. Pew Research Center found 45% of teens aged 13 to 17 said they use the internet "almost constantly." Over-use of social media can cause loneliness, depression, and anxiety, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America reported.
There is certainly a spiritual component. We are not called to this type of self-obsession, and it has real-world consequences. As the Federalist writer notes:
St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote, “Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man’s own will.” Unfortunately, Gen Z is the most irreligious generation to date, and therefore, unlike previous generations, does not have the same spiritual foundation guiding them to live virtuous lives. Couple that with the rise of the digital world and our culture’s active rejection of morality, and you end up with the least happy generation in modern memory.
John Stonestreet and Shane Morris write for Breakpoint:
Saint Augustine famously observed that the human heart is restless until its rest is found in God. That applies not only to individuals but also to cultures and entire generations. Practically speaking, this “restlessness” can take many forms, including an unprecedented mental health crisis.
They go on to say, regarding St. Augustine:
Despite his lack of familiarity with Gen Z, he would speak of their “restless hearts” seeking in politics, gender identity, and self-expression what can only be found in a relationship with our Maker.
But, again, there is hope through the gospel; Stonestreet and Morris continue:
In the face of Gen Z’s mental health crisis, it is the Gospel and not gloom that should motivate and inform us. As blogger and author Samuel James pointed out on Twitter, mentally broken young people may be primed to hear the truth: “Evangelicals need to disabuse themselves of the idea that Gen-Z is a wholly unreachable mass of buffered selves. The mental health crisis may cut right through secularization like butter.”
God has made us for Himself. The kind of postmodern individualism that Gen Z was raised with will never deliver on its promises. This mental health crisis is a spiritual crisis. We have the opportunity to introduce a generation of restless hearts to the One able to deliver on His promises to bring rest to their souls.
We hear it time and again - social media is a harmful force in general, and especially in the lives of young people. Now, with the ability to "interact" virtually and express themselves in an online setting, the lines between reality and fantasy can sometimes become blurred. How do you explain a person going into a public place and dancing around provocatively, with music only heard through the "performer"'s headphones?
The glorification of self is repeatedly warned against in the Bible - our "audience," ultimately, is, as Big Daddy Weave sang years ago, an "Audience of One." What we do is to please Him. Certainly, we are to enjoy our lives as we follow the Lord, and He can give us incredible joy beyond what we can imagine. But, we have to regard Him as our source of satisfaction.
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