Dr. Jean Twenge – is someone who I just learned of, through one of our members who met her in a department meeting at Cornell. I was curious that it was only a department meeting, when I learned that she was a prominent author and professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
Hopefully we can bring her back Ithaca and Cornell in a larger venue.
She has written the book “iGen” (a title which she has coined, for the most recent generation of students now enrolled in undergraduate programs in college). The “I” could stand for a lot of things, but it primarily references the “I Phone” and all of the cultural changes which have been brought on by a generation of youth who have their phones as an artificial appendage… Now growing less artificial and more integral to the way that they function.
I’m not done reading the book, but I am going to take a risk and begin to make some comments about the book’s observations about the tremendous shifts brought about by a generation of people who are more allied to their phone than probably anything else in their world.
Confirmation class is generally tremendously engaging when I teach it… That’s my completely unbiased opinion. Okay, probably not, but having taught confirmation for over 30 years, I can tell you that the bleary-eyed look of the current confirmands is somewhat novel in the history of distracted catechumens.
It turns out that when I ask about their habits, primarily, regarding the evening before confirmation class, it’s no surprise to learn that they were up in the wee hours of the morning texting friends and monitoring webpages and social media.
First I note that I appreciate their honesty, because I realize that at some level they understand this is not the best stewardship of their time, or their sleep opportunities.
I have often made the observation that when Jesus was tempted He was in the wilderness. Satan can get access to us no matter how we try to isolate ourselves. He can take the most mundane of things and turn them into temptations to serve and glorify ourselves… like rocks, (Matthew 4:3). So to me the cell phone, despite its magnificent blessings and power, is the “anti-wilderness.” It is not isolation but rather, integration, investment and symbiosis with the culture. Very much like the clown fish in the sea anemone, the users and the web itself are mutually dependent upon each other.
But the problem is the imagined “benefit,” is nothing approaching the “life” (“bios”) which the user believes the web and the smart phone offers.
Contrary to sustaining, and giving life, we find that many of the applications of the smart phone and up taking far more than they give. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are dramatically increasing in this iGen cohort.
What they really need is a symbiosis, which really gives “life.”
One of the reasons that Jesus said “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world…. I am the bread of life…” (John 6:33, 35 a)
Interestingly one of the observations of the book is that those among the iGen cohort who engage in worship, and the socially vital life of living as an engaged Christian, is less anxiety, depression, and rates of suicide.
When Dietrich 
Bonhoeffer wrote his book “Life Together” (which is the etymology of the word symbiosis), it was at the dawn of a darkness and divisiveness which would bring a world war. The Lutheran pastor realized that the solution to the divisions cultivated in the darkness of deception, was for the Church to be so intimately connected with Christ through faith, the word, keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, and literally being Christ’s Body, i.e. His presence, on earth.
When Jesus said He is the bread which comes down out of heaven and gives “life to the world” (John 6), He was saying more than simply He feeds us. He was saying that we need to consume Him. Although John 6 has sacramental overtones, Lutherans have typically understood Jesus’ words here as talking about consuming Him by faith. He becomes the staple of our life. Paul would put it another way in Ephesians 1:10, when he said that life without Christ is a headless life… But God’s plan is to reattach the world to its proper Head.
That is “life indeed” (I Timothy 6:19)
Christmas and Epiphany peace,
Pastor Rob Foote
