Tik Tok Theology No 1

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“Kids these days!” The older generations have repeated this moan for probably as long as there have been older generations. One can imagine the old codger complaining about these newfangled horseless carriages ripping through the town at seven miles per hour.

“Why can’t these youngsters just ride horses like respectable ladies and gentlemen?” On and on the grumble grows: these “ungrateful youngsters” spending all their time listening to that latest fancy gadget: the radio.

The imagination need not stretch far, or the memory for that matter. I am only in my mid-forties (47 almost 48 is mid-forties and I will not hear any nonsense to the contrary), and I have recognized the “Greatest generation” (they may have named themselves, I am not sure) complaining about the Boomers, the Boomers complaining about Gen X. Generation X and the Boomers complaining about the Millennials, and apparently the Millennials are complaining about Gen Z! In every case it seems the younger generation has it “too easy” and is “entitled” and “just won’t work hard enough” and “needs to toughen up!”

This is probably not complete nonsense, in at least one sense: we are all probably a little soft and need to “toughen up” compared to most people in the world. We have very little perspective as a group in western first world countries. The fact is that Boomers and Gen Alpha alike have become accustomed to a lifestyle that would make a 17th century Russian Czar, blush over the opulence. The level of comfort and ease we have access to, in general, is an embarrassment of riches compared to most of the people inhabiting this Earth. Perhaps you protest at the sweeping claims here. Fair enough, maybe you have had a rough go of it. These observations are intended to set the scene for the main point, not to outline an exceptionless set of facts to shame us all.                                                                                           

I want to explore what it has caused, in a general sense, to have progressed, generation following generation, to increased access to ease. I want to analyze and consider how it may have left our bellies unguarded to the wolves.

We have, in this era, increased our cynicism, but “a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”¹  The trusted institutions cannot be trusted now, if they ever could have been. Healthy skepticism is, well, healthy. But the postmodern philosophers have devalued discipline and soldiered on in their cynicism far past reason. They have replaced skepticism about some truth claims to an unanchored skepticism about truth itself.

In doing so, turning all sense to nonsense, they have led their pupils to abandon the idea of building their houses on the Rock, or even on the sand for that matter, to the fantastical venture of constructing castles in the air.

I will slow down and get to the heart of the matter. I contend that we have, as a culture, slipped the mooring of our ship and left ourselves to the will of the current. This is the real story of generational shift. The subject is complex, therefore I will begin with an example, and, if the Lord Wills it, go onto the broader theme in future articles.

Many of you, although likely not all, have engaged with social media to the point of discovering “reels” or “shorts.” I will refer to the whole of these short form usually vertical videos that fill the screen of a smartphone as Tik Toks.

If you like to giggle at a video of a cat flailing about after touching tin foil on a kitchen counter (the depiction may be real or output by some kind of AI) then Tik Toks are just the things for a few minutes of lighthearted fun. Tik Toks, however, cover much more ground than aiming to produce a lighthearted chuckle. There are political Tik Toks and literary Tik Toks, Tik Toks about psychology and Tik Toks about psoriasis. No doubt there are also a plethora of Tik Toks of a more prurient nature, although the algorithms have graciously spared me that rubbish to this point.

I have published plenty of Tik Toks myself, mostly clips of preaching. And therein lies the rub. Tik Toks are not just trying to entertain, many of them are attempting to persuade.

Traditionally, proper persuasion has taken more than a 30 second monologue with the latest popular music as a backing track. But with Tik Toks the pretentious, the petty and the polemic all aim for the pithy.²  Most fail, but the “user” often lacks the tools to discern the meaningful, the logical, and the reasonable, from the simply catchy.

And here is where the generational complaint may have its strongest point. It is not that the generations are any different in general. “There is nothing new under the sun.”³  The problem is that the discernment “built in” by education in past generations, is wholly inadequate to defend the current generation from the glut of “content,” they are receiving.

How do you match tools for discernment developed and intended for a person slowly reading a 400 page book with time to ponder with tools for a person furiously “swiping” through cat videos and videos on how to place your absurdly large fake eyelashes on correctly, and political diatribes and philosophical rants all at a pace that would dizzy the mind of the most astute logician?

How does one make the time to discern the good from the bad, the true from the false, the manipulative from the helpful?

The postmodern removal of truth as a concept beginning in the 20th century then erupting and spewing its unreasonable “deductions” into the 21st may have begun in the towers of academia, but down into the culture at large the magma seeps.

We send our children to daycare and kindergarten, or let them mentally absorb the latest expressions of “content for kids” on the many screens that litter our homes.  We continue to journey to nowhere, the blind leading the blind, and all falling into the ditch.⁴ 

A person posts a Tik Tok  of comedian, Ricky Gervais, claiming that Christians are just like atheists. It’s just that atheists believe in one less god. After all, people used to believe in thousands of gods. See! Christians are atheists about all of those other gods, atheists just include one more!

Quips like these could seem like wisdom but for the gaping holes in logic. Christians, of course, believe in God because of, among other proofs, the evidence of God in the world,⁵  and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.⁶  To suggest that characters like Odin and Thor are backed by equal evidence is ludicrously libelous. Christians do not choose among a pantheon of potential gods with equal evidence for the existence of each. Christians believe because their reason, not just their hearts lead them to Jesus Christ.

If I said I did not believe in Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar, and then added, after all other people do not believe in King Arthur or Helen of Troy, I just believe in one less historical person than them. Such a claim would show its warts, because the reason we believe in Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln is based on the evidence of their existence. In the same way, a Christian believes in God and His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, based on the evidence.

Certainly, a skeptic can make an effort to point out flaws in the evidence, but that may take more than allowed by the average Tik Tok. Instead arguments like the one above are substituted.

These fallacies slip through the intellectual net of many Tik Tok users, either because of who says them, or how clever they appear without thoughtful discernment.

Perhaps this could be solved by simply using discernment concerning the source of our information. It may be wise to avoid getting your theology from the court jester (no offense to the court jester, Mr. Gervais is a talented comic) and of course it is possible that a court jester could bring out some truths others avoid, let us not stray into ad hominem. But, as a general rule, discernment dictates skepticism where skepticism is due.

This generality regarding what sources we look to for our content actually does very little to solve the more pressing problem. We have not been taught to reason effectively and so when reason is called for, we are ineffective.

Tik Tok convinces us because the muscles of our reason are malnourished and emaciated.

Our muscles are weak because those who should have been servants and shepherds to the next generations, leading them to the thick and wholesome pastures of intellectual strength and development, abandoned those fields for stony ashen landscapes as soon as they substituted “my truth” and “your truth” for THE TRUTH.

In this “new age” they led us into, Tik Tok persuades and thoughtfulness fades.

The solution is not complicated. It is just difficult. Those used to ease must be shaken hard before they will abandon it for difficulty and discomfort. Every diet fad contrived or imagined is pushed to this culture, but we are excessively timid about stating the obvious. Eat less and exercise more.

In the same way, the solution here is simple. Learn to think. Learn to reason well. Read more, and watch fewer Tik Toks. Not complicated, just not easy.

Although the road may be difficult, the destination is likely to be more satisfying than you may now predict. Just as the person who follows the obvious path to physical health finds more energy and surprisingly more ease in the end by simply eating less and exercising more. The person who will labor in the intellectual life will find joys unknown and frankly unimagined by one who has never taken up the labor.

I do not know the likelihood that we will arrest the current race to the bottom in discernment for our culture. But I do know that you, the individual reader, can harden your head to make room for a softer heart and build the armor the wolves cannot get their canines through easily.

So, enjoy your funny cats and your cute kids saying the hilarious things they say in a Scottish accent, or the how-to Tik Tok on avoiding lines at Disney World (not that I would ever…). But guard your mind and guide your heart because the current that pushes this society’s unmoored ship is not a current of chance, but of an evil will.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood.⁷  So put on the full armor of God. He is, after all, the One who has given you the ability to reason.⁸   Do Him the honor of building it.

1. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
2. Pithy: “having substance and point : tersely cogent,” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pithy 
 3. Ecclesiastes 1:9(B) NKJV 
4. Matthew 15:14 
5. Romans 1:18-22 
6. Acts 1:1-3 
7. Ephesians 6 
8. Genesis 1:26-31