The Gospel for iGens – Scot McKnight

eric posted on September 22, 2009

Reared on self-esteem and impervious to guilt, the next generation needs good news that can break through their defenses.

The first step a young man takes toward a woman who he thinks might be his future is delicate. The operative words seem to be “sensitive” and “careful” and “first impressions matter.” As in love, so in “gospeling” (or evangelism). When Peter preached at Pentecost, he opened his sermon with a time-honored citation of Scripture and then sketched, in third person, what had happened to Jesus. Only then did he zero in on his audience: “and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death” (Acts 2:23). When Paul got behind the dais on the Areopagus, he opened with one of the most seeker-sensitive sermons in history: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious” (17:22). With that opening Paul paved a way to warn the Greeks of the coming judgment. These examples show that biblical evangelism is marked by both boldness and sensitivity to audience.

Teaching twenty-somethings for nearly 15 years has made me acutely aware of a significant trend. It has everything to do with what to assume when it comes to evangelism. Emerging adults (those between 18 and 30) form a generation that is largely insensitive to the potency of God’s holiness, and are therefore insensitive to the magnificence of his grace, the shocking nature of his love, and that gratitude forms the core of the Christian life. Some today complain about these matters. But I doubt very much that ramping up moral exhortations and warning about an endless hell are the proper places to begin with emerging adults. Paul was sensitive to his audience; we need to be as well.

Self in a castle
The typical emerging adult, if I can capture the trend in one expression, is a “self in a castle.” That is to say, the “self” is protected from the onslaughts of those who will attack it. I suspect that this is something unique in history. Never has a generation been more in tune with the self and more protective of the self. How did we get here? What led to the self-in-a-castle condition among this generation, whom I call the iGens?

First, Mr. Rogers. I have no desire to blame Mr. Rogers; I like Fred Rogers and his image-of-God set loose in helping young children understand who they are. But Mr. Rogers, for all his good, gave to the current generation a free-standing consciousness that daily says, “I am okay.” Whether the current generation watched him or not is hardly the point; he’s in the air because of a trend that has been riding the airwaves since the 1960s.

iGens have a robust enough self-image to think Jesus is just like them.

Second, Sesame Street. Played out daily for this generation was a show that baptized diversity, sanctified difference, and affirmed the radical uniqueness of every person—regardless of their color, beliefs, or personalities. If Mr. Rogers indoctrinated a generation to believe”I’m okay,” Sesame Street focused on “We are all okay.” Once again, even if current iGens did not directly watch Sesame Street, the themes of the show express a movement that gets at the central attribute of iGens.

Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street are early examples of the self-esteem movement. Jean Twenge’s book Generation Me is an excellent treatment of this issue; her subtitle opens the windows on the movement: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable than Ever Before. She ought to know; she’s one of them.

Twenge is a professor of sociology at San Diego State University, and her research method has been to study the history of answers to standard personality tests over the last 50 years. She provides raw numbers that are worthy of serious attention, and she offers stinging (and sometimes exaggerated, provocative, and hilarious) illustrations. She tells us that the American educational system and other cultural forces have so focused on self-esteem that they are producing a generation of potential narcissists. This sentence summarizes her assessment of iGens: “The individual has always come first, and feeling good about yourself has always been a primary virtue.”

Twenge’s study examines how this general conclusion emerges from her analysis of social trends when it comes to social etiquette, the centrality of “me,” the belief that iGens can be anything they want to be, their experience with pre-marital sex, and their cynical disposition. This culture of self-esteem has also raised expectations of personal accomplishment, in some cases, so high that depression and anxiety accompany iGens like their iPods.

Note what she’s not saying: iGens are not selfish or spoiled. Instead, they are intoxicated with the impact of 40 years of education that has focused singularly on self-esteem as the entitlement of each and every person for nothing more than being alive. As Twenge puts it, “GenMe is not self-absorbed; we’re self-important.”

Please don’t get me wrong. iGens may have the healthiest, most robust egos in the history of the West, and some of this self-perception is profoundly good. Nevertheless, this robust self-perception is more than a formidable issue when it comes to the gospel and to church life today.

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