Fasting and feasting

I recently had lunch with a new college graduate who went to my school and now attends my church. He is also a great dude. His generation is much maligned for producing shiftless, jobless, relationship-less, directionless, phone-addled zombies. During the lunch he said something that shocked and challenged me with its simplicity. It also made me proud.

He talked about technology and the omnipresent temptation to sexual sin it provides. I asked how he and his friends fight against that. “We do a lot of hanging out,” he explained. “We do cookouts, bonfires, game nights, get together to watch the NBA playoffs … pretty much anything to not be alone and bored.”

This guy is the last guy in the world who would, of his own volition, watch the NBA playoffs.

It took a minute for it to sink in. You mean you just hang out? I thought your generation was terrible at that? I thought you were so busy screaming into headsets or doomscrolling as to have no available time for hanging out?

“Yeah, I mean sometimes it’s awkward at first if somebody is explaining a sport you don’t understand and you’re on your fifth ‘yeah, crazy,’ … but it’s basically great,” he explained.

“That is so impressive,” I said, because I was genuinely impressed. He looked at me like I was crazy.

You mean you don’t have to discuss chapters of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (also good, for the record) at a coffee shop to be “doing” discipleship? It’s almost as though the fight of faith is best fought by just being together, which is often cheap (or free) and requires only the effort needed to gather.

My generation (Gen X) has gotten flabby in this area. We used to host dinners and game nights but have wound those down over the years due to both perceived “busyness” (i.e. “I’d rather watch a show”) and our own subtle worship of our own kids/families (i.e. “It’s little Johnny’s last Tuesday of the fall semester as a sophomore ever and we need to just be together as a family.”) These are, of course, fine choices and aren’t sinful in and of themselves. But I miss the excitement of just being with other like-minded believers in a non-church setting (i.e. not a service or a members’ meeting, etc.) and the stories we used to tell and the ideas we used to share.

I don’t want us Christians to lose the ability to hang out. I never want to be so busy bloviating into a podcast microphone or bloviating words into a column or (heaven forbid) vomiting words all over X, that we have nothing left for the actual, interesting people in our lives. X won’t be there with a casserole when your wife gets sick.

Encouragingly, I’ve seen my son (also early post-college) and his friends leaning into this as well. They are all rugged dudes, but they chat on the phone almost every night like they’re girls in a 1980s John Hughes movie (in a good way). This is how they fill the void and battle temptation. They talk together. About whatever. And it’s awesome.

Talking together like normal people has been sitting there in front of us the whole time. It’s pretty much the best way to use your phone.

These Gen Z guys are fasting from sin but feasting on the joy of being together. Sometimes they take relational bullets for “not being ready to lead a family,” which has replaced, “I’m taking time away from you to Date Jesus” as Gen Z’s preferred breakup copy.

But their commitment to this proves that they are ready for something. They are linking arms and battling sin.

I’m proud of them.