What the World Was Selling
What the world was selling was the comfort of Laodicea; that’s what America was selling. We didn’t choose the world we were born into. The same people who told us “I wish you didn’t have to grow up in this world” are now asking why we can’t. You cannot budget your way out of a structural problem. They moved the goalposts and called us lazy for not reaching them. Every generation has a crisis. Ours had several, back-to-back, before we turned twenty. The math isn’t hard. The income needed to buy a home more than doubled. Our wages didn’t. Frugality is a virtue. It is not a substitute for a livable economy. We were raised inside the wreckage of 2008, dealt with endless wars in the Middle East, graduated into COVID, and handed the bill for both. America made promises it quietly stopped intending to keep. The accusation isn’t really about our spending habits. It’s about not wanting to answer for the conditions they left us in.
You call us soft. You should call us what we actually are: the first generation raised entirely inside a machine built to exploit them. A lost generation.
My Friend
What do you tell a friend that you have known since birth when he says, “We are set up for failure?” How can you say he is wrong when he did everything right? He got the job, he got married, he spends his money well, he wants to be a good man, but he can barely afford the place he rents, his bills, his insurance, his payments, and his future life.
When I came into work, my lifelong friend asked me a question about insurance and what he had received in the mail from his loan company for the truck he bought last year. He told me that they said that the address for the loan did not match the address for the insurance on the truck. I told him I would check it out, but to me, why should it matter where the addresses are? I researched and found out the headaches that could be caused if the addresses were not correct and told him. We both came to the conclusion that he would likely have to get on his own insurance, already on a stretched-thin budget. He said that he did not know how he would afford it, and I said I know, everything is so expensive nowadays, and he responded, saying, “Yeah, it’s like we were set up for failure.” He said that with it being the first of the month, his checking account was already drained from bills like electricity, rent, and trash, so how could he afford an insurance policy of $220?
I told him I know. And I’m sorry.
How do you live with that? That happened this past Monday, and I have thought of it every day since. How do you tell your best friend from birth that the world is structurally built in a way that we fail no matter what we do? I thank God we both realize that “it is what it is” and that God is in control. We were placed in this generation for a reason, and I know we can handle it.
The Honest Truth
We did not choose the world we were born into. Instead, it was chosen for us. The choices made before us are what created the world we live in today. Before any of Gen Z was born, the world was turning. People voted. People shouted. People hated. People loved. But above all, people made change occur.
We could go back to Adam and Eve, but instead, I will begin after WW2. After the war, America became the world’s superpower, the currency of choice. It worked for a while. The USA was benefiting from a world that needed to be rebuilt, and we had the goods and services to build it back up. But we became too bold. We tried being the world leader and a beacon of light. So we stretched ourselves thin. Along came the Vietnam War and LBJ, and the currency of choice was deteriorating. Excess spending and welfare programs, which began for the working whites. The world noticed, and Nixon wisely but regrettably took us off the gold standard, which gave us a second wind, a band-aid on a bullet hole. Reagan comes into power after a stagflationary period and realizes that we are no longer tied to gold, in which we had to budget our spending against the gold we held. Without the gold standard, nothing was stopping us from printing money to fund growth and stimulate the economy. But this had consequences. Every President followed suit, except Clinton, who benefited from a tech boom, ever-increasing the deficit and kicking the can of debt down the road onto the next generation. 9/11 and the wars that ensued, the 2008 financial crisis, abnormally low interest rates during the 2010s, COVID, and now the Iran War. Every one of those events compounded the debt, compounded the damage. And it landed on us. The theory of excess is not new. In the 1890s of the Gilded Age, a man named Veblen saw through the ruse. He saw that the economy in which America thrived meant that only a few would partake in its success. He called it “conspicuous consumption,” meaning that people spent to display wealth, not to spend and use. Reagan didn’t invent this, he nationalized it. What Veblen proved in 1899 was that excess is not a side effect of a prosperous economy. It is the point of it. Status is the product. Consumption is the worship. America didn’t stumble into a culture of more. It was engineered that way, one advertisement, one policy, one tax cut at a time.
The Bill Comes Due
Actions have consequences. It is something I have heard since I was a little boy. At some point in life, you will have to face the music and stop to see the handwriting on the wall. Nothing lasts forever, especially when it is rooted deeply in sin. A nation rooted in excess, in deception, in slavery, in debauchery, in lust, and evil. Why do we wonder how we got here? It is simple. We made the choices long ago, and now we must face the consequences.
When our nation was founded, it was built on the backs of strong-minded men and slaves. After the Civil War, it was built on monopolies and grueling working conditions. During the Roaring 20s, it was built on excess and speculation. After WW2, it was built on supremacy and segregation. After the 1960s, it was built on drugs, dishonest politics, prostitution, war, sex, and gambling.
So again, why do we wonder how we got here?
Our entire society is built on extraction. Whether what is extracted is attention, money, lust, time, opinion, debt, mindsets, etc, they all work for the same end, you and me. The greatest commodity ever invented. Once they realized a human life could be commodified, not just wheat, oil, gold, or labor, the profit became infinite. Because unlike oil, you don’t run out of people. And unlike wheat, human need regenerates daily.
Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook knowing it was destroying teenage girls and chose growth anyway. The Sackler family manufactured the opioid crisis deliberately, extracted billions while communities collapsed, then hid the money before declaring bankruptcy. Rupert Murdoch built a media empire on one discovery that outrage is more profitable than truth. Jeff Bezos normalized instant consumption at a civilizational scale while his warehouse workers couldn’t afford what they shipped. ByteDance built TikTok, the most powerful behavior-modification tool ever created, and China banned it for its own children. The cartels filled every void the pharmaceutical companies created.
None of this was accidental. Every decision had a meeting. Every meeting had minutes. Every minute had a profit motive.
A society built on sex, Onlyfans, with shows all over television about immoral relationships that glorify showing skin, being crude, and having sex above all else. Teenagers see this daily, to the point where most use items and drugs that reward the acts of lust and sin, like condoms and Plan B.
A society built on comparison. Whether it be through Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok, children and even adults are subjected to seeing the best of everyone, missing out on the reality of life that would sober us. This leads to self-hatred and self-diagnosing. No wonder there is a new mental disorder every week, because our society is hardwired to pathologize normal human responses to an abnormal environment.
A society built on ruthlessness, on condemnation, on blaming others, on division. There is no common ground. It is all or nothing. We see it daily. Republicans vs. Democrats. Blacks vs. Whites. Majority vs. Minority. Us vs. The World. And the crazy thing is, we MUST choose a side, the world tells us. We have to choose. And once we do, you can forget about being able to speak to the other side. It splits families, friends, relationships, and even religion.
A society built on excess and power. All the advertisements. All the cars. The technology. The fashion. The wealth. More, more, more, more, and more. If you don’t have it, buy it. If you can’t afford it, buy it with debt. And if you can’t buy it with debt, find a way, by any means necessary. Because the rat race doesn’t stop. If you fall behind, you will die. If you don’t get ahead, someone else will, and your family will go hungry. Why care about the janitor when the CEO is right there? Why show respect when you receive nothing from it? Stay in your lane. Fix yourself. Others are not your problem.
A society built on perfection. Who is the hottest? The sexiest? The most beautiful? The most handsome? The strongest? If it is not you, then you have to try. It is an endless cycle. It produces addiction. Whether to the mirror through eating disorders, or steroids, or Ozempic. Photos that are edited and filtered, where reality is hidden. Plastic surgery is normalized. Girls end up on the surgeon’s table at nineteen, and boys end up revolving their lives around supplements. Life is more fake than real.
A society built on destruction. Drugs have done more damage to this nation than any enemy, foreign or domestic. Drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, and opioids. Built to suppress emotion. Once a culture learns to medicate its pain, it learns to medicate its guilt too.
A nation that would rather medicate its way out of consequence. A nation that decided that reality is optional.
I will be honest with you if you have gotten this far. This is a tough write. May God have mercy on us all.
The Consequences
“If what you see is all you see, then you do not see all there is to be seen.” – Kirk Franklin
Mark Twain said, “History may not repeat, but it often does rhyme.” There is no better place to confirm this statement than in the financial markets.
Mathematically, we cannot take a page out of LBJ and Reagan’s playbook anymore. We cannot cut taxation, spend more, and expect the world to cover the bill. We live in a nation that has made itself its own god. Guy Debord called this the Society of the Spectacle in 1967: when a civilization turns everything, faith, identity, desire, even patriotism, into a product, the spectacle becomes the religion. We called it culture. He called it spectacle. Scripture called it idolatry. “Making America Great Again” is not a policy. It is a prayer to an idol. But you cannot fix something that is broken into a million pieces, 39,200,000,000,000 to be exact. A nation that borrows from its children to fund its comfort has not just made a financial error; it has made a confession. Scripture warned us: the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. We called it monetary policy. God called it what it is.
“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
We heard what God said. We just didn’t think it applied to us.
We traded the kingdom for an empire. And now the empire is falling.
A First-Hand Experience
Growing up, we were all told to excel in school, for it would determine our future. Nothing else mattered but getting a good education and grades. In middle school, we took placement tests for college to try to find a specific major that would fit our interests and strengths. In high school, we had to take the ACT. Yet, once we got to college, we were told that we should never have gone in the first place.
After stressing out about grades throughout our lives, cramming for tests, working on projects, writing papers, speaking up in class, and going the extra mile for credit, it ended up being a “stupid decision.” We all heard and hear today that college is useless. Well, why did you force it on us in the first place? I could have told you that college was not for most people, BUT THEY DID IT ANYWAY. Why? Because we were conditioned to think that college meant success, and anything less than that meant failure. The system was set up to train us to go to college. But somehow it is our fault. The pipeline was not a mistake; it was a market. Student loan debt in America now sits at $1.7 trillion. Someone collected that money. Universities expanded. Administrators multiplied. Tuition doubled, then tripled. The system didn’t accidentally condition an entire generation to take on debt for degrees; it was profitable to do so. We were the product. The diploma was the receipt.
Growing up, we were all told to work hard, and you can enjoy a happy life. I believed that for most of my life. But how can you believe something that is a bygone fairy tale? “The American Dream,” they said. Own a home, with a white picket fence, with four kids, two dogs, some land, two cars, and you can live the rest of your days happily in the land of the free. That dream is dead. Even older adults from other generations cannot afford a home, let alone Gen Z. Most cannot afford rent. So what is the point of working a job? To buy food that is processed and unhealthy? To numb ourselves by drowning in entertainment? To go into debt to try to afford that so-called “American Dream?” And on top of that, that job in which we were told to work hard couldn’t care less about us. Rarely do you see companies that actually care about their employees’ well-being over the bottom line. Gone are the days of Christmas bonuses just because. AND, the currency you are being paid has lost nearly 90% of its value in 55 years. The American Dream didn’t die. It was purchased. After 1980, housing stopped being treated as shelter and started being treated as a financial asset. Low interest rates in the 2010s poured gasoline on it. Private equity began buying single-family homes at scale, converting neighborhoods into portfolios. The dream wasn’t deferred; it was acquired by someone else and converted into your rent check.
Growing up, we were told that we should find a man or woman to create a family with. Nowadays, you can rarely meet anyone without the use of technology. Again, gone are the days of “blind dates.” There are no surprises, yet everyone has something to hide. Both men and women would rather have one-night stands than actually commit. Want to build a family? Have a baby? Expect to pay at a minimum of $10,000. Diapers? Might as well take out a loan. Divorce rates have never been higher. Men want to be women and women want to be men. No one wants love; we all just want lust, to only feel the good and remove the bad.
Growing up, we were told we could change the world. I believed this one growing up. Politicians lie. Almost all are corrupt and bought by someone or something. Want to change something? You have to have money to run. Think I’m wrong? On average, for a mayoral race, the fee for running is $25,000. Try changing the world when you can barely afford rent, work at a job for a depreciating currency wage, have no family, and are in a corrupt system. And even if you do make it, why try? Good men and women have been killed for trying to do the right thing. It seems that the world wants us not to even try. Most don’t, and I can’t blame them. You show up and rally. You tell others what you know. You do all of these things, and nothing changes. If anything, it gets worse. Every waking hour, it seems that this world gets more evil, and for the generation that is the most online, hopelessness is the water we drown in. Without Christ, life is hopeless.
Gen Me
I grew up in a family with a special needs sibling. This made me see the world in ways that others didn’t. It gave me a deeper understanding of human emotion and tendencies, and instilled a deep passion for empathy. It also meant I was watching America decline in real time before I had words for what I was seeing. I also grew up during the late 2000s and early 2010s, during a period of financial turmoil in America.
Looking back, it is funny seeing how God works.
At nine years old, I dealt with depression and anxiety. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, like something drastic was going to happen and upend my life. Nothing ever did, but the feeling that something would happen caused me a lot of hurt and pain. But that feeling also made me grow up fast, which had its ups and downs. I grew up being called an “old soul,” and found myself repeatedly understanding older generations and the history behind how we got here in this world. I was hyperaware of my surroundings, especially in the years after the Great Recession. My generation was in an interesting spot in history; we had all the knowledge of the ages in our hands through technology. This opened doors to music, cultures, movies, art, mindsets, opinions, and everything ever written. Never before in history had there been as much of a change in terms of information and economic growth as the internet and mobile phones.
My generation and I were able to learn about slavery, the Civil Rights, the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, JFK, and Abraham Lincoln. We learned about the harsh realities of this country, but we also learned about the triumphs of this nation over Great Britain, over Hitler’s Germany, over communism, and how together we built the greatest nation on earth.
So growing up, it was easy to see how far we had fallen. It was easy to see how America was not the beacon of light in the world, and how we had traded a kingdom for an empire.
The World Sells the Comfort of Laodicea
What the world is selling is the comfort of Laodicea; that’s what America is selling. The safety of comfort and guard against risk numbs us into a state of decay. The endless rat race to reach such things is what made the church lukewarm. It is our prison. And capitalism needed it that way. A prophetic church, one that names economic injustice, that preaches against mammon, that refuses to turn worship into a transaction, is a direct threat to a system built on consumption. A comfortable, consumer Christianity is not. The megachurch model, the prosperity gospel, the church as brand: these are not corruptions that happened to capitalism. They are products that capitalism prefers. The machine does not fear a church that is too busy chasing comfort to challenge it.
But Christ did not come for us to worry about such things. He came so that we could have life to the fullest. His love. We were placed in this generation not by accident but by design, not to fix an empire that was always going to fall, but to be faithful inside the wreckage of it. The early church didn’t have an empire either. They had each other, and they had Him. That has to be enough. The only thing that isn’t a prison. Maranatha.
If you got this far, thank you. I appreciate you more than you know! Updates will be made to this article.
