A GENERATION WITHOUT GOD: A JOURNEY FROM INDIFFERENCE TO "TSHEPANG"

NKJV – Psalm 61vs2 
From the end of the earth I will cry to You, When my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

One of the more disturbing plays I’ve read is a local one called Tshepang. Set in a neglected town, it explores the issue of systemic violence and centers on the sexual abuse of a baby girl, whose name is the title of the play. A standout moment is an attitude of total indifference by the woman who watches the tragic scene. Saying nothing, she leaves the doorway and stumbles toward the town's local bar.

Fortunately, not all of us will witness scenes as harrowing as these. Yet we share the world with a generation growing as numb to the reality of its state as the lady watching on. Moral indifference is a slow cook, and while such a generation may call it progress, it is a symptom of spiritual decline. Removing its virtuous pillars and feeding its sensual appetites, it discards a higher source and drifts towards a condition where moral distinction is fading, and where the fundamental principles of right and wrong are compromised. The result is moral apathy. A generation without God is one without a moral compass, and as such, it nurtures a heart overwhelmed by the currents of this world and looks at sin with indifference. Yet without a diagnosis, it lives without its remedy. Indeed, for such to happen, this generation must first acknowledge its spiritual state and the tides that come to poison it. Perhaps then, it will cry out for its Savior.

The current tides in mass media and literature do not bring neutral messages; with them come all the necessary ideas and moods which tie this generation to the temporal, teaching that the baser, more fleshly aspirations are all that exist in this world. As these messages form the cultural feeding trough of a generation, they bolster the belief that any aspiration toward spiritual truth is unnecessary and outdated. To start, the music scene provides good examples, and current artists flaunt lyrics like:
“You want me, I want you, baby.”
“I kissed a girl and I liked it” - (sung by a girl)
“I have been a (G), throw up the (L), sex in the (A-M), uh / I can put you in first class.”
“Material girl! I want Chanel Nine boots.”
“It's about damn time, turn up the music, let's celebrate.”

Inherent in these lyrics are the themes feeding the ears and hearts of this generation, predisposing them to very hollow truths and, especially, to a world without transcendence. All on public radio - where the soul of a generation is reflected - they come with very breathy verses, and the repetitious beats and lyrics they deliver, foster melodies that turn in circles - all to the voices of what sound like burdened people, longing for something to quench their desires, yet never able to fulfil them; sad products, perhaps, of the very messages they espouse. Here is a generation where license is encouraged and where the freedom to do as one pleases is praised. It is raised on self-expression, preaching its fundamental idea that the flesh must be ministered to; it is the penultimate god, and the earth its only kingdom. But in such a state, ignoring its spiritual sickness, it may, in turn, only propose a shallow healing. So that, like the woman in Tshepang, a bar may well become its healing place. Only it rings eerie when it becomes a generation's salutary chorus. For in the words of a current top 10: “Everyone’s in the bar gettin’ tipsy.”

Similar messages are inherent in contemporary literature. The anime or manga comics reveal very explicit material, and the vacuous smiles of cover characters greet you while other comics show off their ‘graphic content’ stickers, all standing at the perfect height for inquisitive children. They appeal to incredibly base desires. Girls flaunt big hairstyles and laugh rambunctiously, and their half-dressed bodies resemble sweets out of candy stores rather than people from planet earth.

And this kind of corporeal focus isn’t confined to comics alone. In more mainstream novels, there exists an overwhelming collection of disillusioned and fractured protagonists, all navigating life through an existential gaze, desperate to find wholeness through love or to fulfil lusts, which the authors are happy to detail. And even this love is a loose, misguided thing or an intense kind of self-love, exacerbated by characters ill-receptive to things like correction or guidance because, with a self-inflicted status, no one seems to understand them. The popularity of these books is a tell-tale sign of a generation tied to the here and now, thirstier for ideals like freedom, pleasure, and self-expression, and less so for eternal - and even divine - values like truth, goodness, or self-sacrifice. It reveals a generation very aware of its rights, but one never quite able to forgive or to see things from another, more critical perspective – and always with a certain inability to see itself as the one needing change. The value of truth becomes an entirely subjective concept, and its meaning is replaced with anything that brings happiness, such that when something feels right, it must be true. (There is even a book which, in its title, states it is not a book - allowing the reader to make their own meaning: a classic tribute to postmodernism's “death of the author,” and a celebration of the independent spirit. No wonder the sacred is scoffed at. Who needs God in this life? With certainty, He is one author this generation tries hard to discard.)

Undoubtedly, the pace of life has changed, and with the advent of both parents working, and a volatile financial market, emotional and psychological help provides helpful coping tools. It is not, then, self-help that is the issue, but rather, the direction it is taking, where ironically, the practice has become one of isolating people rather than providing them with a community to support. Thus, in these self-help aisles, interesting corners are visited by this generation. While acknowledging the diversity of this genre, the overall tone seems driven by a mantra of personal agency and ‘getting rid’ of things, and a better life seems possible only when everyone else disappears. Admitting no deeper, spiritual needs, healing becomes a very psychological process, founded always on self-empowerment. Those subscribing to these truths feel a constant urge to empower themselves and conquer things - inner strength will remove all the enemies, and a good ‘kapow!’ will heal the soul. A quick look online reveals a laudatory review of a current best-seller, praising it for ideas that help us to “focus inwards towards self-ownership and intentional living.” It continues: “What do I want? How do I want to live? It’s about giving yourself permission to pursue your goals” and continues… “stepping into personal agency, making choices that support your own growth, happiness, and well-being—without being ‘held back’ by others”.

This is only one example of the deluge of books in this category. All preach the same pseudo motivational messages, and while it is true that lifestyles have changed and help is needed, there seems to be a perpetual turning inwards towards self, and a celebration of the permission to do so. But with this fixation on self and on its own aspirations, this generation replaces working together with attempts to rid the other. Weakness is celebrated only when it connotes ‘truth to oneself’ or ‘autonomy’ and is less celebrated for its ability to produce a value like humility. Hence, the idea of an authority like God slowly becomes a strange, archaic concept. Looking through these books, it wasn’t long before a sentence (in parentheses) stated that our minds come ‘not from design but evolution’. The author needed to clarify, in passing, that we are in a world without the possibility of an intelligent creator - and this a book for all walks of life to benefit from. In its desire to help, the book removed all possibility that salvation could be found in another name. No, that remains child’s play. Leave it to the facts and stats to heal, as well as to the very people who need help, to heal themselves. Well did Paul say that when a generation worships the creature, it betrays the truth of its omnipotent creator.

Yet even in school curricula, there is an overwhelming theme of self. Here, it is coupled with an incessant itch for appraisal and self-affirmation, and existence seems governed by lives in a constant crisis. The move is toward explicit socio-cultural and psychological categories, which increasingly serve as discussion platforms. The rigorously planned Life Orientation syllabus (that subject responsible for the souls of our youth) reveals such themes as pornography, gender diversity, and self-harm, and indeed, while relevant issues, their gravity is lost on a group of adolescents who tend to sensationalize ideas rather than consider them. Worse still, these themes are presented as rites of passage, normalizing the idea that all and sundry must at some stage go through them, rather than showing them for what they are: sad, but contingent realities.

In a collaborative learning effort, the selection of sustainable earth ideas by 11 out of the 12 groups was quite revealing. The goal of these presentations was to advocate a need for responsible, earthly citizenship, and the humanities took a seat far towards the back. As much as this became an eager celebration of science and new invention, it wasn’t difficult to sense humanity getting a firm slap on the wrist. Presentations included topics like ‘The History of Grey Water Infiltration’ and ended with more dreary topics like ‘The History of Cardboard.’ ‘History’ in these titles served as pledges, reminding us of our responsibility to deliver the next generation with a smaller carbon footprint - a task that, statistically, we are failing.

In all of these presentations, there lay the undercurrent of a higher, secular authority, announcing that Earth is our god and, as such, deserves our worship. And while we are to consider the earth and take good care of it, by the end of the day, humanity’s best response, it seemed, would be to float around naked, emaciated through a diet of grass and bugs, because, in our very existence, we taint the Earth: we are quite a naughty bunch, and the fewer of us, the better. Tied more literally to earthly ideas, the honorable stance is that we become good stewards of the environment. Though nothing wrong with such a view, it was the idea that earthly stewardship replaced a stewardship of the soul. Again, the here and now was celebrated, and with such a vision, the Earth becomes far more important than the more human values, especially the things of eternity.

It is difficult to prove an abstract concept, and its presence is perhaps better felt than tabulated. This is to say, that while the ideas of this generation have their protagonists, its messages are better characterized by a feeling and a mood. In all of the stimuli surrounding this generation – and these examples before exploring the online world - it is difficult not to feel a common theme: a desire to tie itself to soulish desires and, sometimes, blindly - as in its less culpable followers - reject a transcendent source. It is fair to suggest that this is a generation governed by the dictum of Nietzsche, who wrote, “God is dead.” Yet, this same generation seems unaware of the sentence following it, “And we have killed him”. So that while it may be comfortable without God, it seems oblivious to its part in removing Him and, further, leaves its spiritual remedy in a vacuum. The healing of a moral sickness needs a spiritual surgeon, not a fleshly one, and first, it must be diagnosed with a spiritual stethoscope. Without such, this generation must stare at sin but can only walk away from it. And as there is a will in God’s removal, this generation is as much a mouthpiece for its messages as a partaker in its depravities: no better evidence is its view of the human being, and the undoing of its most precious relationship.

On the walls of local buildings, read the countless advertisements for abortion. Words like “quick” and “same day” make the whole procedure a cold, clinical thing, betraying the idea of a generation that cherishes its unborn. A generation that walks with God places value on the person, the least, because it is formed in the image of God and holds the intrinsic worth of His workmanship. It is in this sense, then, that the human being is different from the animal. But the death of God blurs the existence of a higher moral source, and in such a world, anything becomes sacred.

Not far off, a gathering of animal activists fights for the plight of the mud prawn, making it difficult not to view both scenarios with a kind of incredulity. As this generation hails the things it can feel, so it hails the things it can see, and there is as much to tell about a generation through the life it protects as the life it chooses to ignore. But when energy is spent hiding objective truth, freedom is granted first to those who can speak for it, and not to those who must die because of its consequences. Thus, a generation defined by its fleshly appetites will find a way to remove the sanctity of human life, because that truth is inconvenient. Also, there are other priorities worth fighting for, as one of its older songs challenges us: “You’ve got to fight for the right to party.” Perhaps it is so, that this struggle for freedom is not always for the right to a sincere choice as much as for the comfort of convenience.

In this generation's curious fight for rights, like our mud prawn, the rights of animals have come to the fore. But there is something more sinister than admirable in the whole thing, and a status has been given to animals which unveils an eerie sentimentality. This is why - as with its blurring of moral boundaries - language is also changing, and it is not uncommon to hear human terms being used for things like pets. In conversation, I was intrigued to hear the owner of two pets refer to them as ‘her children’ and her as ‘their mother’: she left work one day to care for her ‘children’, going as far as to say that she would die for them. This was not an activist but a perfectly normal mother, waiting to pick up her (human) children from school, and who, by that stage, I felt slightly sorry for. In all of this lies a sense that animals, while deserving of their rights, have been given equal sanctity to human beings, and that the divine scale of nature is disappearing. (In questioning a class about what carries deeper value, their pets or human life, I wasn’t surprised, then, when it took some time to get a clear response.) Thus, as animals are turned into persons, a generation may well look at the assault of a baby with indifference. But while it does this, it may not make a moral judgment, nor determine whether its discernment is true; both are possible only through the lens of a higher Judge - that judge who this generation has worked hard to get rid of, but who has determined that man is fearfully and wonderfully formed. Surely a generation would do well to carry the same reverence for its species as that with which it was made.

As the egalitarian march continues and the sanctity of persons and animals is conflated, there lies deep within the heart of this generation other divine institutions to deconstruct. Marriage provides a ready target. Sincerely under attack, it is construed as little more than a prison sentence and replaced with a more ‘independent,’ spiced-up version of commitment. One of the latest radio advertisements, equipped with a giggling and provocative voice-over, instructs: “Commitment is messy; it's much better with no strings attached and without the burden of commitment.” Again, on prime-time radio, the idea is to paint marriage as a snare and infidelity as a normal part of its process. But there is nothing normal about it - nor about the sniffles and tears of a child too young to comprehend separation and then forced to navigate school and social life with Mom and Dad on different teams.

With its burdensome connotations, marriage is now viewed as an institution making victims of its advocates - and these must be set free. It is framed as a sentence to endure, not a relationship to be constructed. The tearing down of grand narratives is a trademark of this generation. But like dubious revolutionary figures of the past, when all the virtuous pillars have come down, nothing of substance arrives to replace them. And so, dressed as its emperor, this generation flaunts its latest set of clothes - scoffing at the honor and dignity of marriage - all the while oblivious that it remains the most undignified. It is all a show for immediacy and sex—a colorful smokescreen to obscure the sanctity of two people becoming one.

Adding to this, a new strain has entered the ring: marriage is not only cumbersome but degrading. Here, the motive is an obsession with pseudo-equality and social justice and a thirst to make traditional or conservative truth ‘problematic.’ With a fascination for labels, established roles like husband and wife are pushed aside to make way for terms like partner, co-parent, and birth parent - terms that are more inclusive, gender-neutral, and, of course, less oppressive. In fact, so many terms are problematic that it is difficult not to feel a sense of boredom driving this generation; even the most innocuous terms must be chewed on and spat out. And when a generation usurps the language of tradition, it has far more to do with a degradation of values than any desire to add to its dictionary.

Rubbing salt into their wounds, those who walk on older paths must also be ridiculed and mocking them are often current songs. Again, on public radio, a recent song reveals: “Mummy don't know Daddy's getting hot at the body shop.” Here, every bit of uncertainty is thrown at the marriage union, painting it as a failing, clumsy institution, never able to fulfil the desires of husband or wife: Daddy is at it again, frequenting body shops and pursuing secret lives hidden from Mummy. With the title ‘Unholy,’ its message of promiscuity is not lost on older listeners. But no doubt, younger ears would wonder why Daddy was in a body shop at all - and how on earth he is ‘getting hot’ in one. All the seeds for unsettling discussion are sown, and so while this generation picks apart the functions of a father and mother, some of its greatest casualties become its own sons and daughters.

But the victims are more. Those on the periphery also become opponents in this game of charades. For as much as this generation has its leaders, there are those who genuinely look to be led. But with its dichotomous ideology, which pedantically categorizes people into us and them, the beauty and nuance of humanity are lost. Under the banner of justice and equality, a sincere intention of this generation is to view all people through a microscopic lens of privilege and representation. Even ancient figures like Antigone are resurrected and become heroes for their cause: it is not King Creon she fights, but the entire patriarchy - that she fought against her sister and was happy to be married (to a man) becomes an oversight in her character. Thus, the colorful spectrum of human nuance is reduced to a victim-oppressor dichotomy, and sincere mistakes - and the differences that exist in character or personality - are not acknowledged. Any difference in thinking, and a perfectly reasonable person becomes a bigot, and forms part of the common enemy. This is a world without humor, where every minute step is politicized and where decent discussion no longer exists. Yet millions of hurt people traverse the world, and the ranting of an embittered group sells badly to those who may agree with its ideas but stand looking from the fence. Proverbs 2vs9 speaks to the realization of similar values, revealing God’s desire for humanity to ‘understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path’ But a generation quick to promote its own definitions is one that has also missed the pinnacle meaning of righteousness, which is a value given and not usurped and which also signifies a beginning from a platform of truth. The values above lie deep within the heart of God and, with righteousness, connote spiritual ideas and healing, not simply the loose acquisition of rights. Yet, as this generation follows a path to remove God, it bereaves both its source of wellness and the very ideals it is so desperate to see come to pass.

A story in Numbers reveals a nation that, because of disobedience and a lack of belief, is bitten by serpents. But in the restoration of God, Moses raises a fiery serpent, and when the poisoned individuals look at it, they find healing. In many ways, this generation embodies a similar state: afflicted by the poison of its own serpents, it lives tethered to a perpetual looking downward and inward, separated from transcendence and from a belief in the existence of God. And where does a generation go when it has no God to cry to? At this table, it may only feed on fleshly delicacies and, without reaching for any spiritual needs, does so at their expense. Here, this generation becomes the lady of indifference, who - without healing - must anxiously experience her pain, attending amusements that can only numb her. Through the ubiquity of its own media and culture, where the ideas of its new sanctities and commitments are declared, it forges on, pronouncing its own righteousness, anxious that all will listen. The characteristics of its behavior epitomize a type of victim status, to which end the volume of its cries is turned up until the dogmas of its constitution are heard. While its leaders are aware of their aim, its more docile adherents faithfully mouth the messages, and yet all collect at the same end of the pool - the whole of which the world must now learn to share. But this generation's self-diagnosis of ‘oppressed’ may not be entirely wrong. It errs only in the type of oppression it endures - one which it has rejected for years. This generation is not a victim of being unheard or of its messages being ignored. Rather, it is a victim of its infatuations and liberties, a victim without reverence and worship, all of which have produced its greatest malaise: a heart that suffers from spiritual impoverishment, and therefore moral indifference. There is no fear of God before its eyes, because in its heart there is no God to fear.

The story of Moses and the serpent is not commonly known. Possibly, it is more significant in a function it serves later on: for in its New Testament reference, two verses above, it lies hidden by the majesty of its subsequent verse, forming the preface for John 3:16 - a powerful verse in its message of hope, healing, and the expanse of God’s love. Such love is the antithesis of indifference.

But now to Tshepang. Where lies her significance? And what is the weight of a little girl's assault when it lies hidden in a world so marked by abuse? Perhaps it is that, in her story, she survives, or that, in English, her name means hope. Or perhaps it is that her delicate frame, invaded not only by the abuse that broke it but also by the surgery that healed it, may form its own preface - not just for the love of God, but for His provision for a whole generation's healing. Only this love may remove a generation from its sin and turn indifference toward Tshepang. For though it sings with bold defiance, it meets a God who gives it worship; and while it scurries from righteous clarity, it meets a God who lives to woo. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Seemingly insignificant, the word “so” speaks as much to the scope of God’s love as it does to the manner, so that while we may appreciate its depth, we may equally respond to its call. Christ was lifted up - and lifted up to die upon a cross. Here, He bore the stripes through which humankind may be healed, and, having passed through the most unjust of trials, rose to bring righteous justice for all. But as a nation once looked down at the poison of its serpents, so too must this generation acknowledge the state of its heart. When this happens, it may finally look up. And, as it does it will find a Savior who weeps but who graciously saves. In such a place, and with such a Savior, it may even sing: We have sought, and we have found - for we have called upon the Rock that is higher than I.

Greg Kyle has been a dedicated high school educator for 16 years and currently serves as the Head of Student Affairs, specializing in English, History and Dramatic Arts. He also forms part of the leadership in his local church in South Africa. With a passion for the well-being of adolescents, as well as that of adults, he has spent time addressing the challenges people face, both personally and spiritually. His commitment has extended to writing, where he has contributed to newsletters and essays in his current capacity. Should you wish to get hold of him please email: gregjkyle@gmail.com