By the end of 2024, Gen Z is set to outnumber Baby Boomers in the workforce, per CBS News and an Axios report from late 2023. As this shift takes place, we should prepare to see workplace culture gradually shift along with it. 

But here’s an idea: what if we’re focusing on the wrong question?

Why do so many young men spend hours a week immersed in these virtual worlds? Are there any spiritual implications that come with this?

The purpose of life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever–sometimes we accomplish that by entering a period of suffering and serving Him in the midst of it.

You are not the deciding factor in your worthiness to go boldly before the throne or to live the life God has called you to live.

As I have grown in my faith, it has dawned on me that every aspect of life provides for me an opportunity to drink deeply the goodness of God.

Your despair is not as much about what you’re going THROUGH as it is who you’re going TO.

So how, then, does the believer take hold of this blessing and add to the joy of the Lord they experience in their day-to-day living? Unsurprisingly, this starts by understanding just what the Christian preacher means when he declares “we now have freedom from death in Christ.”

Because of Him, we are not defined by our sin.

I have never before sat down to begin a writing project so utterly doomed to fail as my current venture–which, make no mistake, is the entry you are currently reading.

Attending the weekly assembly is not a chore. It is not an obligation to dutifully check off your list, or, if possible, avoid. It is the power epicenter of the Christian walk, the well from which to draw every week in order to fill your courage as you brave the chaos of life and ministry.

I lament the corrupt, sin-stained, moral wasteland in which we grew up–it certainly unleashes a viscous onslaught of doubt and discouragement upon any Gen Zer who dares venture beyond its materialistic, live-for-the-moment philosophy in search of something greater–in search of what author Andrew Klavan refers to as the Truth and Beauty, something difficult to articulate that I will nonetheless boil down to “the joy that comes from glorifying and enjoying God in the everyday.”

If a society leaves God behind, it’s not going to be a clean break. There will be a void that Jesus once filled, and each member of Generation Z will try to fill this void in a different way.

To examine sin nature and proclaim “it’s not fair” just isn’t the practical or sensical way to look at it.

The primary cause of the gaping hole of emptiness and despair that is so prevalent in my generation boils down to the pursuit of everything but a purposeful relationship with God. We pursue our ever-changing whims, which take the form of new friends, career, video games, and college in order to find something that will fill us up.

Many in my generation are concerned Christianity is oppressive to women, the product of a tyrannical patriarchy that remains alive and well today.

This issue in particular is a huge hangup for Gen Zers who would otherwise be inclined to follow Jesus. Many of them know someone who is gay–a friend, family member, classmate, or coworker–if they themselves are not. Gen Zers are more likely than any previous generation to identify as something other than heterosexual. This issue hits close to home for them, and any perceived opposition to it can be interpreted as an attack against themselves or their loved ones. In their mind, the Christian view on this topic is just too narrow-minded. Too extreme. Too discriminatory.

Christianity. Buddhism. Islam. Hinduism. Scientology. Satanism. Those are just a few of the major faiths, with the comprehensive list extending far beyond this. The average Gen Zer, who now has a world of information pertaining to all these faiths available to them in their pocket, certainly has a large smorgasbord of religions from which to choose–perhaps more so than any previous generation in human history.

There is no repellant to the faith greater than the sinful actions of someone who identifies as a Christian, and there are few character flaws humanity, both inside and outside the Church, despises more than hypocrisy.