The Rise of Apathy
One of the more disturbing trends in the United States is the rapid growth of apathy.
60% don’t vote regularly. And 45% of eligible votes never vote at all. When asked, the standard replies are, “It doesn’t make a difference” and “why bother?”. Comfortably numb at home, these disengaged citizens see no reason to participate as long as their little lives are undisturbed. They see no relevance between politics, government, laws and policies and their personal world.
Or, if they do see the importance, find the pull of inertia greater than the need to rouse themselves and do something about it. The apathy party is the largest political party of all.
USA today just published a study in another area of life that, in times past, would have gotten people out of their seats. Our fastest growing religion is apathy about all things spiritual.
It’s not that these folks are atheistic or even agnostic. It’s that they find religion, spirituality, and even God to be irrelevant to their daily lives. They see no need for a deeper meaning or a higher purpose, and they really don’t care. They have too many other personal pursuits and pleasures to bother about such things.
Whereas the prior two generations would have affirmed the “spiritual but not religious” mantra, and designed their own religion to meet their personal needs, the emerging generations apparently see religion as totally unnecessary for self-fulfillment. ”Why should I care?” and “Why is this relevant?” are the questions they’re asking.
The researchers uncovered these attitudes by abandoning the stock questions that have a culturally right answer, and they probed the deeper thinking of people instead. Underneath the lip-service to the concept of God was a deeper belief in the irrelevance of God for them personally. Instead of attacking Him like the new atheists, they’ve been ignoring Him to death and finding that, for them, it doesn’t matter. They are untroubled by questions of meaning, or of the afterlife, or of filling a spiritual whole inside of them. ”What hole?” they ask.
The implications of this shift are profound.
First, the Evangelical church can no longer assume a common ground of spiritual need with people. They don’t feel the need at all. Nor can we assume a common ground of belief in God or of even caring about the question of His existence. We’re going to hear a lot of “I don’t have time for this” responses and “who cares?” questions.
Second, our engagements with people will need to answer two questions, “Why is this relevant?” and “Why should you care?” And we will have to wait for circumstances to dethrone their egos and overwhelm their sense of control with pain they can’t evade or avoid. Personal control religion is the true religion of apathy, and it’s heading for a fall.
The grandiosity and personal bigness of “I am above it all demanding it all be relevant to me” cannot be sustained forever. This generation is also the most addicted generation we’ve ever seen, and all addictions demand more and more and give less and less until they demand everything and give nothing–destroying the self-constructed little world of the ego.
So the question is, “Will we be ready and willing and able to meet people at the bottom of their lives?” And, “Will we ourselves surrender control and get small and lowly under God, and allow the unrelieved pain He sends to dethrone our religious egos and drive us back to His grace?” “Will we give up arguing over yesterday’s questions, and unite to demonstrate by our own lives the beauty and majesty of knowing Christ?”
In other words, we will have to understand and allow God to heal our own apathy–the apathy inside the Evangelical church. If God is preparing us for a great opportunity ahead (which I believe He is), then we ourselves will need to go where He’s going to take legions of apathetic people. Our greatest witness will be our own redeemed brokenness and the resulting compassion we show the soon-to-be-broken apathetic people all around us.
More on that topic the next time…..
