My thanks goes to ChurchSocial for sponsoring the blog this week. Church Social gives congregations a safe place to communicate, share information, and manage membership online.
There are a few new Kindle deals to close out the week.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Great Rewiring of Childhood)

This article offers some helpful perspectives on living as Christians during politically-charged times.

“When was the last time you were at a funeral when someone didn’t take the opportunity to talk about their own life when eulogizing the person who has died? We all do it. It’s nearly impossible not to.” In this sense, Glenna says, it’s often wise to “borrow” a death.

Keri Folmar describes and celebrates the many ministries of godly women.

Nick Batzig says “We don’t have to be weighed down with perpetual regrets for not having loved believers as we ought to have loved them here and now.” This is a very freeing thought.

Randy Alcorn asks and answers the “color blindness” question.

You don’t have to agree with everything an article says to benefit from it. And that was the case for me with this one (though I am generally in favor of offering some programming for at least the youngest children during services).

“I would still have passed that way even if I had known I would be mistreated, for by sharing his burden I became the first to share in his sufferings.”

There are two little rules which, if we would observe them, would work a marvelous change in most of our lives. One is, “Never be discouraged.” The other is, “Never be a discourager.”
—J.R. Miller

I know I’m getting old and all that, and I’m aware this means that I’ll be tempted to look unfavorably at people who are younger than myself. I know I’ll be tempted to consider what people were like when I was young and to stand in judgment of what people are like today. Yet even with all that in mind, it’s undeniable that the younger generation today is different from the generations that came before it. That difference is expressed in many different ways, though perhaps the ones we notice most are the levels of anxiety experienced by young people along with their relationship to social media.

The Anxious Generation

This has long been a subject of disquieted fascination to Jonathan Haidt, who many know as one of the co-authors of The Coddling of the American Mind. In his new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, he links the two factors (technology and anxiety) and says “the members of Gen Z are the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up.” This radical new way of growing up is what he refers to as the Great Rewiring of Childhood. Essentially, beginning in the late 90s, children began to be raised in a world that was radically different from the world as it had been before. It was a world in which young people grew into adulthood being constantly formed by new devices and apps. And in Haidt’s telling, these devices and apps did far more harm than good.
He says there are four technology-based trends that together generated the Great Rewiring: the spread of high-speed internet in the early 2000s; the arrival of the iPhone (followed by its many imitators) in 2007; the introduction of social media and the later creation of the “like” and “retweet” capabilities in 2009; and the combination of the front-facing camera with Instagram in 2010-2012. 
With these pieces in place, “Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and … unsuitable for children and adolescents.” Here’s why: “Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness—perpetually—to managing what became their online brand.” Hence, “they spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families, thereby reducing their participation in embodied social behaviors that are essential for successful human development.” In other words, the commitment to technology interrupted their social and emotional development and maturation. 
There’s a second plotline in the Great Rewiring and it is the way parents, beginning in the 80s and 90s, began to overprotect their children. Where children develop best when they are given a measure of freedom and allowed to face risk and make decisions, parents began to overprotect their children, denying them developmental opportunities that had been available to previous generations. Unable to roam and play freely, children instead gravitated to computer-based and then phone-based forms of play. Haidt’s central claim “is that these two trends—overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world—are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”
That is his claim, but can he prove it? In my assessment, he does. Haidt is a non-Christian social psychologist, so relies on an evolutionary understanding of humanity to explain, for example, why children need free play to develop and why men are particularly drawn to pornography. And though I disagree with much of his methodology, I agree with many of his conclusions—conclusions that are often far easier to reach through a biblical framework than a secular one. (Which is to say, I don’t think evolution is necessary or even helpful when considering why men are drawn to porn; the Bible has a better and more compelling answer.)
Haidt begins by setting the context in a chapter he ominously titles “A Surge of Suffering.” He shows how teens are becoming increasingly miserable and suffering increased rates of depression and mental illness. From here he moves to the backstory and, in three chapters, tells how childhood was transformed by fears of safety and a gravitation toward solo, indoor play. In four chapters he describes the Great Rewiring, pausing to show how boys and girls have both suffered, though in different ways—girls especially through the rise of Instagram and chasing impossible standards of beauty and boys through the ubiquity and captivating power of pornography. Both became anxious and, in many ways, ill-equipped to thrive in adulthood.
With the descriptive part of the book behind him, he advances to prescribing ways that we should respond. He suggests four reforms that parents and other adult authorities would do well to consider: Children should not be given smartphones before high school; children should not be given access to social media before the age of 16; schools should be phone-free; and children should be given far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. Of course, many of these reforms must be determined on a community (or even national) basis more than an individual one, so he offers some potential ways to advance communally.
The Anxious Generation is a sobering and challenging book that advances many of the concerns raised in previous bestsellers like The Coddling of the American Mind, iGen, and The Shallows. It aptly shows how technology and overprotection have combined to both shape and harm an entire generation. Encouragingly, it also provides clear and well-informed instructions for parents and other adults that can help today’s young people escape the system and live healthier lives. I recommend the book and its instructions to anyone, but especially to parents. 

May the God of love and peace be with you today.

This is a good one. “Here are three things we should strive for: Christians who are willing to confront but aren’t eager for controversy. Christians who pursue a gentle revival, not a holy war. Christians who eavesdrop on Jesus’ intercession instead of joining Satan’s accusations.”

This article grapples with “whataboutery,” the inclination to apply Scripture to everyone else before ourselves.

R. Scott Clark explains why church discipline is not mean. To the contrary, when carried out as intended, it is a form of love. “In our time, the tendency is to view the church as a means of therapy, merely as a place of fellowship and encouragement, but not as the divinely instituted embassy in which the keys of the Kingdom of God are administered. Viewed thus, the very idea of church discipline seems high-handed, arbitrary, unjust, and even cruel. After all, the reasoning goes, who are those sinners to judge this sinner?”

Andy Farmer offers some helpful thoughts on offering opinions. “I’ve had to develop a kind of ‘rules of engagement’ so that I respond appropriately when I’m ever asked or pressed to engage a hot cultural topic. Here’s how I parse it out…”

“You are not alone, Christian believer! God’s people have always wrestled with fear, with questions, with sickening doubts when it comes to the many challenges of living in a sinful world. Yet the answer continually returns: there is no need to fear!”

This video from SBTS will help you better understand biblical typology—a key subject for understanding Scripture.

The parent who spares the rod does not only ruin the child, but also ruins a future relationship with the child. The parent who spares the rod hates his son, but he also hates himself.

If believers are lost, God loses more than they do, for he loses his honour, he loses his character for truthfulness, and the glory of his name is tarnished.
—Charles Spurgeon