Disillusionment occurs when real life does not live up to expectations.
This from Sarah Cunningham at the end of the first chapter of Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation. Sometimes I wonder if the disillusionment that twentysomethings feel isn’t (at least partly) due to their own lack of interest and enthusiasm. Now, I agree that we cannot place all the blame on this generation. Our parents have taught us that the best things in life are given to us. They have shown us that we have to pay for good food, after all going out is so much better than staying in. They have shown us that true entertainment is passive; spending a wad of money on something that we can watch is always the best bet (the more money spent the better the entertainment, or so the common wisdom goes). No wonder we want to be able to sit back in church and be inspired, this is the attitude we have been trained to have.
This attitude, however, does not seem to provide what we really want.
Our real life experiences do not seem to live up to the hype that our parents have grown for us. We are not fulfilled sitting on our rumps having things given to us. Like our parents in their youth, we want to work, we want to be engaged, we want to be part of something bigger, we want to change the world.
Sarah outlines a dozen different characteristics that she uses to describe the twentysomething generation. In her list she outlines something that is deeply contradictory.
Twentysomethings want instant gratification.
But
Twentysomethings like technology, but we prefer human contact.
And
Twentysomethings value community.
These are contradictory things because community and human contact take time and effort. This means that twentysomethings are impatient when we are waiting for something to happen, but we are willing to put time and effort into things that we find really valuable, namely community.
So it is not that we do not want to put the effort in, we just want to put it into things that are different from the expectations of our parents. If we are forced to sit and listen, then it had better be a darn good show. If we are allowed to interact and relate, then we can be patient and enduring.
If we are disillusioned because our lives do not live up to our expectations, do we work to change our lives or our expectations?
[...] one of those serendipitous moments I stumbled blindly across this post from a church blog. This from Sarah Cunningham at the end of the first chapter of Dear Church: [...]