Reality

Despite decades of medical and cosmetic innovations, we haven't quite yet reached Never-Never Land, where no one ever grows older. But we're not that far away from a related place, Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost.

According to an article in The New Yorker by Tim Lu, we've entered an age of Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost. Thanks to G.P.S, Bluetooth, and the Internet, it is becoming harder both to become lost and to lose things.

This generation could be the last to have a real sense of what it means to get lost or to lose treasured objects. "Get lost" will become an archaic expression. Most of us will react to that possibility with relief. Yet it seems worth wondering whether something will be lost in Never-Lost Land, in a world without such a common and universally defining experience.

Sure, it's a relief, Lu argues, but have we lost something in the process of never losing anything. Lu continues: "While no one wants to lose their dog, or treasured object, maybe there's something to be gained by losing things, in the right dosage, at least … It helps toughen us, and it helps us understand the way the world actually is, which is to say, really quite indifferent to our well-being." He also thinks that by losing things it helps us stay less attached to the material world.

But will we ever reach Never-Lost Land? Wu doesn't think so. Instead, he thinks we will live in Nearly-Never-Lost Land, "where loss will be less common, but, when it does happen, even more traumatizing." He ends by saying, "It is something of the paradox of technological progress that, in our efforts to become invulnerable, we usually gain new, unexpected vulnerabilities, leaving us in vaguely the same condition after all."

The word "manifest" has been named Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year for 2024, after celebrities such as pop star Dua Lipa and gymnast Simone Biles spoke of “manifesting” their success.

The term, which has gained traction on TikTok, was looked up almost 130,000 times on the Cambridge Dictionary website this year. Its use widened greatly across all types of media due to events in 2024, and it shows how the meanings of a word can change over time.

Formerly, “manifest” was used very differently. For example, Chaucer used the oldest sense of the verb manifest: "to show something clearly, through signs or actions." The verb is still used frequently in this way. For example, people can manifest their dissatisfaction, or symptoms of an illness can manifest themselves.

However, in 2024 the term "to manifest" has evolved to be used in the sense of "to imagine achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen."

Dr. Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University, cautioned that the idea of manifesting success has no scientific validity.

Manifesting is what psychologists call “magical thinking” or the general illusion that specific mental rituals can change the world around us.

Manifesting gained tremendous popularity during the pandemic on TikTok with billions of views, including the popular 3-6-9 method which calls for writing down your wishes three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed. This procedure promotes obsessive and compulsive behavior with no discernible benefits.

But can we really blame people for trying it, when prominent celebrities have been openly “manifesting” their success?

Manifesting wealth, love, and power can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Think of the dangerous idea that you can cure serious diseases simply by wishing them away.

However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking involving effort and goal setting contrasted with moving reality with your mind. The former is healthy, whereas the latter is pseudoscience.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While wishing for something may be a natural human response, the Bible encourages a more proactive approach that combines faith, hope, and action. It emphasizes the importance of aligning our desires with God's will and taking steps to bring about positive change.

In his novel, This Is Happiness, Niall Williams’ elderly narrator, Noe (pronounced No), remembers when electricity and light came to their little Irish village of Faha:

I’m aware here that it may be hard to imagine the enormity of this moment, the threshold that once crossed would leave behind a world that had endured for centuries, and that this moment was only sixty years ago.

Consider this: when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. Dust and cobwebs were discovered to have been thickening on every surface since the sixteenth century. Reality was appalling. It turned out Siney Dunne’s fine head of hair was a wig, not even close in color to the scruff of his neck, and Marian McGlynn’s healthy allure was in fact a caked make-up the color of red turf ash.

In the week following the switch-on, (store owner) Tom Clohessy couldn’t keep mirrors in stock, as people came in from out the country and bought looking glasses of all variety, went home, and in merciless illumination endured the chastening of all flesh when they saw what they looked like for the first time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Such is the illumination of the gospel—in a person’s heart, in a community, even in a culture. It’s no surprise, then, that John 3:19 says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” James 1:23-24 warns against the folly of looking in the mirror of God’s Word only to walk away without changing.

Our existence on a Goldilocks planet in a Goldilocks universe is so statistically improbable that many scientists believe in the multiverse. In other words, so many universes exist that it’s not surprising to find one planet in one of them that’s just right for human life.

Other scientists don’t want to make such a leap of faith. They see this world as the result of intelligent design. That, however, suggests God. So, atheists seeking an alternative are following Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, who suggested that we “are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.” Neil deGrasse Tyson gave the theory credibility by saying it was a 50-50 possibility, and Richard Dawkins has taken it seriously. Elon Musk semi-popularized it in 2016 by saying he thought it true.

That raises the question: Who or what is the simulator? Some say our distant descendants with incredibly high-powered computers. One of the theory’s basic weaknesses is that, as Bostrom acknowledges, it assumes the concept that silicon-based processors in a computer will become conscious and comparable to the neural networks of human brains. Simulation theory has many other weaknesses, and those who understand the problems of both the simulation and multiverse hypotheses should head to the logical alternative: God.

How often do we as parents imagine our children playing a professional sport? Whether it is swimming, gymnastics, college football, or basketball, there is often the hope that our child will make the cut.

‌Youth sports is a big industry in the United States. The Aspen Institute says it is a “30-40 billion dollar,” industry. The average family spends around $883 a year to cover the costs of just one primary sport. We might ask "Is the cost worth the investment?"

‌The reality is that only 3% of High School basketball players will play at college level. And this number drops significantly further along the professional level.

‌According to the NCAA, “Only 0.02 to 0.03 percent of high school players end up playing in the NBA or WNBA.” Think about that number! That means out of 10,000 high school players only 1 or 2 will ever get the chance to play a professional sport.

‌Possible Preaching Angle:

It is so easy to get focused on the wrong goals. Matthew 25:14-30 makes clear that it is not the amount of the talent, but our attitude towards our gifts that is crucial. We each have been given at least one gift and different abilities. Jesus says do not look at what others do, instead make a difference with the talent you have been given.

When Desirae Kelly woke at 5am, she knew something was off. Kelly felt an unsettling fluttering sensation in her right ear, but initially dismissed it, thinking it was the comforter on her bed. She only sought medical attention after being persuaded by her fiancé.

Sitting in the clinic's waiting room, Kelly felt the mysterious movement again, this time accompanied by pain near her eardrum. By this point Kelly thought it was earwax. The nurse, however, made a startling revelation. There was something in her ear, and it was moving.

The nurse treated Kelly's ear by irrigating it with water, which prompted a black object to fall onto her sweater. To her horror, it was a live spider, about the size of a nickel. Fortunately, there was no damage to her eardrum, and no medication was required to prevent infection.

Despite the reassurance that her ear was free of spider remnants or eggs, the incident left a lasting impact on Kelly. Every night since the traumatic event, she has worn earplugs, unable to shake the uneasy and violating feeling of a spider crawling out of her ear.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We need God's help to be truly aware of what's going on inside. If we're not careful about how we live, and if we're not faithful to practice a rhythm of self-examination, we might be surprised by the ugliness we find in our own selves.

The moment we’ve all breathlessly waited for is finally here: Dictionaries are announcing their words of the year. In December, the US’s most esteemed lexicon, Merriam-Webster, revealed its choice: “authentic.”

In its announcement, the dictionary said the word had seen a big jump in searches this year, thanks to discussions “about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.” The concept of authenticity sits at the intersection of what’s been on our collective minds.

Large language models like ChatGPT and image generators like Dall-E have left us uncertain about what’s genuine, from student essays to the pope’s fashion choices. When it comes to the news, online mis- and disinformation, along with armies of bots, have us operating under different sets of facts.

Sure enough, other leading dictionaries’ words of the year are remarkably similar. Cambridge chose “hallucinate,” focusing its announcement on generative AI: “It’s capable of producing false information – hallucinations – and presenting this information as fact.” Collins didn’t beat around the bush: its word of the year is “AI.”

In a polarized world, the dictionaries’ solidarity suggests there’s something we can all agree on: robots are terrifying. AI is an obsession that seems to cross generations. Whether you’re a boomer or Gen Z, OpenAI feels like a sign of change far beyond NFTs, the metaverse, and all the other fads we were told would transform humanity.

Social media feeds have become carefully curated extensions of ourselves—like little aspirational art projects. As Merriam-Webster points out, authenticity itself has become a performance. In other words, we’re getting very good at pretending to be real.

Add-on fees are driving consumers crazy. From restaurants and hotels to concerts and food delivery, we are increasingly shown a low price online, only to click through and find a range of fees that yield a much higher price at checkout.

The term drip pricing was popularized by a 2012 Federal Trade Commission conference. Its spread is associated with the proliferation of airline fees after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet an example of the phenomenon that long predates 2001 is stores’ practice of listing goods without the sales tax, which gets added at checkout.

Why not include the sales tax with the sticker price? One study from 2019 showed consumers punish that sort of transparency. A grocery store let the authors tag some products with the familiar pretax price and some with the total price including tax. For example, a hair brush’s price tag showed $5.79 before tax, and beneath that $6.22 with the tax. Sales volume dropped for products with price tags that included the tax than a control group without the tax.

This isn’t because shoppers didn’t know the tax rate or which items were taxable. In fact, 75% of shoppers surveyed knew the sales tax within 0.5 percentage point, and most knew what goods were taxable. So, the tax-inclusive price tag didn’t give them new information; it was just that transparent reminders turned some people off.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus never practiced “drip pricing.” He never hid the total costs for following him. It may turn some people off, but he always put the full cost upfront.

For decades television, and recently the internet and social media, have taken a strong foothold on people's minds, shaping perceptions, opinions, and effectively distracting people from reality. In 1961, Newton Minow, head of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a speech before TV-industry leaders. Television had become “a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.” He stated that they were turning TV into “a vast wasteland.”

Major tech companies, from Microsoft to Google and Facebook's Meta, have invested vast amounts in recent years in augmented and virtual reality. "Their approaches vary, but their goal is the same: to transform entertainment from something we choose, channel by channel or stream by stream, into something we inhabit. In the metaverse, the promise goes, we will finally be able to do what science fiction foretold: live within our illusions." Why just surf the net when we can live there?

Various science fiction writers such as George Orwell (1984), Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451), and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) have predicted people will simply give in to the deluge of compelling entertainment. "We will become so distracted and dazed by our fictions that we’ll lose our sense of what is real. We will make our escapes so comprehensive that we cannot free ourselves from them. The result will be a populace that forgets how to think, how to empathize with one another, even how to govern and be governed."

As one columnist recently observed, “It’s a place where people form communities and alliances, nurture friendships and sexual relationships, yell and flirt, cheer and pray.” It’s “a place people don’t just visit but inhabit.”

Outside magazine featured Kurt Steiner, currently the world’s greatest stone skipper. Over 22 years, he has won 17 tournaments. In 2013, he threw a rock that skipped so many times it defied science.

Steiner has dedicated his entire life to stone skipping. It helps him deal with his depression, and he even claims it can help us achieve “inner balance.” But his quest (like every idol we worship) has cost him dearly. In part, his dedication (or worship) left him broke, divorced, and, since the death of his greatest rival, adrift from his stone-skipping peers. Now, in middle age, with a growing list of aches and pains, he contemplates the reality that he throws rocks not simply because he wants to, but because he has no choice.

Kurt split from his wife in 2017. He said:

I like to solve puzzles. My marriage was the biggest puzzle of all … Everything good was there, for a couple of [messed]-up people. But she ultimately couldn’t cope with my particularities of being [messed]-up—and it was mutual. I couldn’t be that somebody who was deserving of some kind of normalcy and love, I couldn’t be that. I tried. But I couldn’t get it the way she needed without damaging myself further.

The article concluded with Kurt’s longing for the real source of his quest:

I’ve had to accept that there are things about myself I’m never gonna get right … I don’t want to say I am never happy, or that I don’t know what that is. Stone skipping does reward me, in the way it makes me forget, in the way it gives me hope … Skipping stones makes me happy, because there are hints of happiness writ large. That happiness is not dead.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It’s easy to judge Kurt for the obsession which hasn’t healed his brokenness. But we should ask ourselves: What are the idols of my heart that prevent me from worshiping the true God?

The popular Pursuit of Wonder YouTube channel (almost two million subscribers) gives an excellent concise insight on Existentialism. One segment is noteworthy:

Now more than ever we are exposed to a plethora of ideas about life. The Internet has made it so we can consume a seemingly unending amount of content on the topic of living most effectively. However, simultaneously, this access to information has also allowed the consumer to realize just how conflicting most ideas are.

In the West, the popularity of traditional religion (has) reduced as a result. (And) for many, the increasing access to information has revealed that the world is basically without any discernible truth, and most ideas about how to live are inconclusive and unreliable. It is fair to speculate that this could be a major contributing factor to the modern world's increasing levels of anxiety, cynicism, and disillusion.

Choosing between conflicting ideas of how to live has always been an issue for the individual. But in the modern world, where conflicting ideas are constantly smacking us in the face, we can often find ourselves failing in our attempt to find footing in this reality.

At birth it's as if we are all given a slab of clay. We get to choose what to mold it into. However, … there is no right or wrong way to mold the clay. Rather there are endless ways, all equally absurd, all equally meaningless.

You can watch the video here.

When the prospect of war threatened the viability of the annual international classical Kharkiv Music Fest, organizers were left scrambling. But their answer was found in the same place as many other Ukrainians looking for shelter amidst the conflict: underground.

Instead of the Kharkiv Philharmonic concert hall, musicians assembled their instruments inside of an underground subway station. They played their instruments for a grateful public in an ad hoc event known as the “concert between explosions.”

Among the first pieces was the Ukrainian national anthem, played while members of the audience stood with their hands over the hearts. Art director Vitali Alekseenok said, “Music can unite. It’s important now for those who stay in Kharkiv to be united.”

The program was intended to highlight the connections between Ukraine and other Western Europeans. It included arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs, interspersed with works by Bach, Dvorak, and other well-known composers.

One violinist said that the concert was unique among his performance experiences. “There was no stage excitement that usually happens when performing for people. But I knew that I was where I should be.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in a time of deadly conflict, music and art are gifts that can point us back to God.

In a recent Cosmopolitan article, Pauline Jayne Isaac lists the 36 greatest on-screen love stories of all time. She begins:

The most famous movie couples have the ability to turn cynics into believers, critics into fans, and can even warm the iciest of hearts. Whether it's a romantic comedy or a drama—the outcome is the same. Love stories make you believe in love.

But the title reveals a problem; "Sorry, But I Just Have to Say It: These Iconic Movie Couples Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love.” Unrealistic expectations are, of course, a key issue in marriages.

Over the years, of course, countless love stories have been told at the box office. Isaac limited her list by selecting stories that met three criteria: "the couples have to be aspirational, the chemistry palpable, and most importantly, the love has to be intense."

Perhaps Hollywood love stories create unrealistic expectations because they are not love stories. An authentic love story is not built on the glamour of aspiration, the feel of chemistry, and thrill of intensity, experiences that come and go while real love remains.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s work of grace in Jesus Christ is a “legit love story." It has "the ability to turn cynics into believers, critics into fans, and can even warm the iciest of hearts.”

Americans say they believe in “true love.” In a recent survey, 61 percent of women and 72 percent of men believe in love at first sight. Another poll asked, “Do you believe in the idea of soul mates, that is two people who are destined to be together?” 74 percent of men and 71 percent of women answered “yes.” This often creates extremely unrealistic expectations in marriage about how a spouse will meet our needs.

Research has also shown that our expectations for love and romance are heavily influenced by the movies and shows we watch. But the actors in these “true love/soulmate” movies can’t live up to the reality they create on the screen. Researcher Arthur Brooks says:

Hollywood doesn’t have your love interests at heart. When you indulge in a romantic comedy, consider its source. … “A-list” screen stars have a divorce rate of 52 percent within the first 16 years of their first or subsequent marriages, more than 10 points higher than the rate after the same length of time among Americans who wed in the 1970s; more than 20 points higher than Americans who wed for the first time in the 1960s. Not even the creators of the movie can achieve the standard they are promoting. Enjoy the occasional rom-com as entertainment if you must, but do so in the way you do science fiction, because it is about as realistic.

Many contemporary atheists give the impression that faith and science are completely incompatible. For instance, atheist Steven Pinker says, “The findings of science imply that the belief systems of all the world's traditional religions and cultures … are factually mistaken.” In his book, The Atheist Guide to Reality, Alex Rosenberg writes, “Atheism is a demanding, rigorous, breathtaking grip on reality, one that has been vindicated beyond reasonable doubt. It’s called Science.”

But there are many other voices that would disagree with this view. For instance:

MIT professor Jing Kong, who grew up in China and became a Christian, says, "My research is only a platform for me to do God's work. His creation, the way he made this world, is very interesting. It’s amazing, really.”

Andrew Goslar, Oxford professor of applied ethnobiology, claims, “My coming to faith in Christ did not rest on one single issue … It was holistic a redefining of perspectives that came together through every aspect of my life.”

Cambridge professor of experimental physics, Russell Cowburn, expresses what dozens of leading scientists agree with, “Understanding more of science didn't make God’s role smaller. It allows us to see his creative activity in more detail.”

In a recent issue of Wired, Zak Jason writes:

In the 2003 Major League Baseball season, Oreo Queefs stood five-foot-zero, weighed 385 pounds, and, impossibly, stole 214 bases, obliterating the century-old single-season record of 138. A walrus with the legs of a cheetah, Queefs also regularly blasted the ball 500 feet to the opposite field. Over just two seasons with the Florida Marlins, he batted .680, hit 203 home runs, and was ejected for charging the mound 46 times. Then, before even reaching his super alien prime, Queefs vanished into thin air.

A few weeks ago, I received a text from the Marlins manager about what happened to the former Golden Glove winner. Queefs has fallen on hard times. The now 43-year-old lives with his uncle in a rented trailer in Nevada, where they run a failing off-off-Strip sausage stand called Queefs’ Kielbasa Kiosk. He is twice divorced, hasn’t seen his 15-year-old son in 12 years, and is on probation for attempted robbery of a bait-and-tackle shop.

In reality, Oreo Queefs exists only on a PlayStation 2 memory card, now likely corroding in a landfill. The manager is my childhood friend Chris, onetime owner of the EA Sports game MVP Baseball 2003. We conceived Queefs one summer night the only way two 13-year-old boys know how: (via) the game’s Create-a-Player screen. We chose his height, weight, speed, and batting hot zones. We watched with pride as he eviscerated the league. I haven’t played any of these games in a decade, but over the years my friends and I have updated one another on the lives of our created characters. They’ve all plummeted from glory.

The media has been overanalyzing why millennials can’t grow up ever since the oldest millennials have been legal grown-ups. Still, I can’t help but take the fact that at 32—an age when Jesus Christ was leading his friends and much of humanity to eternal salvation—my friends and I text one another during the workday about the video game characters we created when we were teenagers.

The writer Sam Anderson recently quipped that “the world of sports media is basically where American men go to avoid therapy.” As kids, we lived our dreams vicariously through video game characters record-shattering successes. As adults, we process our real setbacks and failures through their imagined setbacks and failures.

Layoffs, anxieties, illnesses, divorce, fertility issues—these are a few of the realities of adulthood that men are generally less than forthcoming about. Instead of discussing these directly, they cope through abstraction. When we talk about our created characters becoming has-beens, we’re (childishly) saying we’re not children anymore. When we bring them up, they finally open the door for us to talk intimately about struggles in our own lives. These children of our childhood are now ad hoc therapists of adulthood.

For about five dollars you can buy a four-inch plastic bobblehead Jesus that bounces on a metal spring and adheres firmly to the dashboard of your car. One advertisement for this product says you can “stick him where you need forgiveness” and he will “guide you through the valley of gridlock.”

The dashboard Jesus has become a cultural phenomenon. In the song “Plastic Jesus” Billy Idol sings, “With my plastic Jesus, goodbye and I'll go far, with my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.” Paul Newman sang it in the movie Cool Hand Luke. The words begin, “Well, I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.”

To lots of people, Jesus, church, and Christianity are cultural trappings but not life-changing realities. Author Josh McDowell warns that many people today see Jesus “like a plastic statue on a car dashboard—smiling, robed, a halo suspended above his head.” But that superstitious or sentimental view of Jesus is a myth. Jesus of Nazareth was no plastic saint. He’s a real-world kind of Savior.

It’s not important whether you have Jesus on your car’s dashboard, but it’s vital to know he’s living in your heart. He isn’t plastic, he’s powerful. He’s not small, he’s infinite. He’s not a good-luck token. He’s the risen Lord of time and eternity.

Author Gad Saad is one of the leading voices exposing the harm and folly of political correctness in the US and Canada. In his most recent book, he explores the current futile practice known as “virtue signaling.” Most often on social media, people express moral outrage just by hash-tagging a cause and doing nothing else. Just one example is the #BringBackOurGirls, that was used by millions globally because of the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram. The only thing that came out of all the virtue signaling was the feeding of one’s ego and the social message that they are progressive and a good person.

Saad gives an example of a public display of valor known as “costly signaling”:

The Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, have a very powerful way of differentiating prospective warriors from their fake counterparts. They sedate bullet ants, whose sting is akin to being shot, and then weave them into leaf gloves. Initiates wear the gloves for several minutes and must withstand the stings of hundreds of these ants as they come out of their sedated torpor. One sting causes unimaginable pain, and yet the inductees must withstand the suffering with restrained dignity (they cannot holler).

One such ordeal would be sufficient to test anyone’s toughness, and yet the young men must endure this tribulation twenty separate times. If all it took to become a warrior was the completion of ten push-ups, nearly everyone could complete the task. ... (It is) a rite of passage that serves as an honest signal of toughness and courage, and you’ve solved the problem of identifying the fakers.

You can watch the YouTube video of the tribal ritual here.