Social Conditions

FOMO, or fear of missing out, isn’t just a painful feeling—it’s also a big phishing vulnerability for young adults on social media.

Two recent studies of Instagram users between the ages of 16 and 29 show that the promise of a social opportunity can be so alluring that it can cause many young people to let down their guard and fall for a phishing scam.

The lead researcher on one of these studies said:

In my study, 82.9% fell for a suspicious link in a message at least once, and particularly for those that appeared to be from a friend or a follower. They interacted without a second thought because they trust the Instagram platform.

Additionally, young adults in particular have an intense fear of missing out on social experiences. One of my studies showed that phishing messages promising social opportunities—like an invite that says, “Check out this private event happening tonight!”—were the most successful. FOMO drives impulsive decision-making, making young adults particularly easy targets for social-engineering attacks.

Derek Thompson, a writer for The Atlantic, notes that as our homes have become less social, residential architecture has become more anti-social. Thompson writes:

Clifton Harness is a co-founder of TestFit, a firm that makes software to design layouts for new housing developments. He told me that the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design is that every room is built to accommodate maximal screen time. “In design meetings with developers and architects, you have to assure everybody that there will be space for a wall-mounted flatscreen television in every room,” he said. “It used to be ‘Let’s make sure our rooms have great light.’ But now, when the question is ‘How do we give the most comfort to the most people?’ the answer is to feed their screen addiction.”

Bobby Fijan, a real-estate developer, said last year that “for the most part, apartments are built for Netflix and chill.” From studying floor plans, he noticed that bedrooms, walk-in closets, and other private spaces are growing. “I think we’re building for aloneness,” Fijan told me.

49.6 million. According to the Global Slavery Index that's the latest estimate for the number of slaves in the world today. It could be just another number in a blur of facts that fly by our faces in a day, but this nearly 50 million number has a face. It includes women and men, boys and girls who are held in bondage as sex slaves, domestic servants, and child soldiers.

Of course, that is only an estimate since slavery thrives in darkness. But another news item gives this statistic an even more horrifying angle. A British paper shared a story about “Daniel” (not his real name) who was brought into the U.K. for what he had been told was a "life-changing opportunity.” He thought he was going to get a better job. Instead, it was then that he realized there was no job opportunity and he had been brought to the UK to give a kidney to a stranger.

"He was going to literally be cut up like a piece of meat, take what they wanted out of him and then stitch him back up," according to Cristina Huddleston, from the anti-modern slavery group Justice and Care.

Luckily for Daniel, the doctors had become suspicious that he didn't know what was going on and feared he was being coerced. So, they halted the process.

Daniel was not free of his traffickers though. Back in the flat where he was staying, two men came to examine him. It was then he overheard a conversation about sending him back to Nigeria to remove his kidney there.

He fled, and after two nights sleeping rough, he walked into a police station near Heathrow, triggering an investigation that would lead to the UK's first prosecution for human trafficking for organ removal.

Despite international and domestic efforts, about 10 percent of all transplants worldwide are believed to be illegal—approximately 12,000 organs per year. For example, according to the World Health Organization as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world. While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs, and livers, kidneys are the most sought-after organs … The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation, and the salesman who trades the organ.

In his book Forgive, Tim Keller tells the story of a friend of his who was a PhD student at Yale. Keller’s friend once told him that modern people think about slavery and say, “How could people have ever accepted such a monstrosity?” Keller continues:

My friend said, “That’s not the way historians think. They ask: considering the fact it was universally believed by all societies that we had the right to attack an enslaved, weaker people, and since everybody had always done it, the real historical question is, why did it occur to anybody that it was wrong? Whoever first had that idea?”

My friend then answered his own question, pointing out that the first voices in the fourth, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries who called for the abolition of slavery were all Christians. And the Christian, who called for this justice, believed there was a God of love, who demanded that we love our neighbors—all our neighbors—as ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln biographer Jon Meacham notes, “There was no evident political gain to be had for Lincoln [to be anti-slavery]; quite the opposite. So why did he … state so clearly that slavery was unjust?”

Someone close to Lincoln pointed to the following story:

One morning in … the city [Lincoln] passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely [young woman] was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that “bidders might satisfy themselves” whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not.

The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of “unconquerable hate.” Bidding his companions follow him he said, “By God, boys, let's get away from this.”

Meacham concludes, “That experience formed one element of Lincoln's reaction, if not the main one. ‘The slavery question offered bothered me as far back as 1836 to 1840’, Lincoln said in 1858. ‘I was troubled and grieved over it.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, are we today troubled and grieved by the injustice of the world?

In 1989 [in Los Angeles], Mother Teresa visited some homeless Latino men living in a church-sponsored shelter program. Mother Teresa expressed the hope that people in Los Angeles would find housing, food, and work for these men.

Someone asked if she realized that it was against the law for American citizens to employ illegal aliens or offer them shelter. Mother Teresa replied, "Is it not breaking the law of God to keep them on the streets?"

In his book Adrift, New York University professor Scott Galloway writes:

We used to be more involved in our communities. In the 1990s most Americans attended some form of religious service, and large numbers got involved in community-based clubs like Rotary and enrolled their kids in team-building programs like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. But over the course of the past 30 years, something's changed. Now fewer than half of Americans go to a church, temple, or mosque, and many of us no longer talk to our neighbors.

Supporting these statements, he offers statistics like these:

Percentage of Americans with church membership in 1990: 68%. In 2020: 47% Percentage of Americans who talked to their neighbors in 2008: 71%. In 2017: 54%

When Bernard Robins saw the three officers eyeing him from their department cruiser, it was a familiar look. He’d been stopped by police multiple times before as a teen and young adult, but previously chalked up those encounters to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also familiar because he’d logged plenty of time in a cruiser himself, as a member of the LA Police Department.

So, he conducted himself as he always does in these scenarios – he kept things polite, kept his hands in plain view, and informed the officers that he also wore the badge. None of that mattered to these officers, who still handcuffed Robins, despite no wrongdoing on his part.

Off duty that day, Robins had been spending time in pursuit of his passion, filmmaking. Having just come from a shoot for a film he’d written, Robins was chatting with a lighting tech that he knew. Police eventually detained Robins because they suspected the tech of criminal activity, but failed to release him even after he supplied them with identification confirming his status as an officer.

Robins says that after returning to work, his supervisor and many of his colleagues were generally supportive. Nevertheless, he wondered if his fellow officers would have his back out in the field, particularly after he discovered rumors that he was gang affiliated, a charge he vehemently denies. Robins eventually sued the department, accusing members of a gang unit of racially profiling him.

Robins said the incident shook his faith in policing, causing him to reconsider whether he could still participate in the organization he’d been so excited to join just three years prior. During his mandated sessions with a police psychologist before his return, Robins had been encouraged to just put on the uniform and see how it felt. It was the same unform that he’d previously been proud to wear. Robins said, “All I did was put the uniform on, but it just felt too uncomfortable.” And after that, he told his supervisor that he was done.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes taking a stand for what is right involves relinquishing power and position. It also means telling the truth, even when it comes at a cost to one's career prospects.

Through its constellation of tiny homes, The Chandler Boulevard Bridge Home Village has brought opportunity and vitality to 41 residents of North Hollywood.

Jolinn Bracey is one such resident, and she’s grateful for the changes she’s already experienced. She said, "This has given me a place to reconfigure myself. It put me back into the practice of being consistent in the normal things that you do. It grounds you."

Though Bracey’s home is only 64 square feet, it has a bed, racks for clothing, air conditioning (a must-have in southern California), and a feature that most of us take for granted: a front door with a lock. Bracey said, "It's the first time in a long time that I don't feel like someone is going to come up on me.”

Residents are fed three meals a day and have access to showers, both of which are tremendously rejuvenating after going without. Rowan Vansleve, president of the nonprofit that operates Chandler, said, "It's really humbling to say, 'I can't feed myself. I can't house myself. I can't get a hot shower.’ We do everything we can to make this site welcoming. We call it the 'Love Club.’”

Bracey has plans to move into an apartment, just a few blocks away from the parking garage where she used to sleep in her car. She is also two classes away from completing an associate’s degree program at a local community college. She hopes to use her education to eventually help other Chandler residents. "I just want to help everybody not go through what I went through."

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we serve the poor and help those without homes get into stable housing, we're helping to live out the compassion of Jesus, who publicly identified with the downtrodden and the destitute as part of his ministry.

Before her death in January 2020, Cathy Boone had been living on the streets for years, struggling with drug abuse and mental illness. But for her father, Jack Spithill, said the tragedy was multiplied tenfold by the revelation that she died without collecting any of the inheritance she was due after her mother’s death, an amount that totaled over $900,000.

Her father said, “It just didn’t make any sense to me. That money was just sitting there, and she needed help in the worst way. I think my failure to recognize her mental health issues. I kind of gave up on her because of the drugs and I shouldn’t have done that.”

Spithill said that after he lost touch with Boone, he was unsure if she even knew she was entitled to an inheritance, or if so, how to go about collecting. Court records say that after her mother died, estate representatives tried to contact Boone via phone and email, spoke to other family members, sent her messages via Facebook, and even ran ads in the newspaper … to no effect. They even hired a private investigator, but came up empty.

That Boone was entitled to any sort of money was news to those who knew her best. “She was a special person as far as I’m concerned,” said Donny Holder, a friend who shared cigarettes and coffee with Boone at the local McDonald’s. “She was a sweetheart … I fell in love with her.”

Local public guardian Chris Rosin says Boone might’ve gotten help if the court could’ve established her inability to care for herself, but added it’s a steep benchmark to clear without criminal charges or urgent medical needs. Johnathan Kvale, another friend with similar struggles said, “We’re not just statistics. These are good folks. It’s just circumstances.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Inheritance - Regardless of anyone's earthly circumstances, if they put their faith in Christ and receive the gift of salvation, they have an eternal inheritance. 2) Body of Christ; Caring – As members of the church, we should all be willing to pay special attention to the helpless whom God brings into our lives.

For most homeowners in a hot housing market, the value of their property tends to rise dramatically. But not for Carlette Duffy. Her home seemed not to rise in value much at all, and Duffy couldn’t find a satisfactory explanation--that is, until the answer was too obvious to ignore.

Duffy was looking to borrow against its equity when she got an appraisal for her home. She was surprised when the appraised amount was $125,000, which seemed low compared to the findings she’d seen anecdotally from other friends and family. So, she had another appraisal done, and the second came out at just $110,000, just ten thousand more than when she’d bought the place four years prior.

Nagged by her suspicions that the lowball offers were because she was African-American, Duffy again got a third appraisal. But this time, she took pains not to reveal her racial identity, by corresponding via email, and asking a friend’s white husband to stand in during the appraiser’s visit to the home. That appraisal came back at $259,000--more than double the original amount.

The rep who conducted the second appraisal claimed that his work was driven by relevant data. But according to Andre Perry, a researcher who studies housing discrimination, that explanation fails to account for the history of institutional racism in real estate.

Perry said, "It's almost when people see Black neighborhoods, they see twice as much crime than there actually is. They see worse education than there actually is. I think this is what's happening when appraisers, lenders, real estate agents see Blackness. They devalue the asset. They devalue the property."

Duffy has since teamed up with the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana to file a complaint with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We dishonor the image of God when we are unwilling to treat people of other racial groups equally. We are all God's creative masterpieces, and we should be treated as such.

A legacy sometimes ends up obscuring achievements. Jackie Robinson may have been fearful of this happening to his legacy when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. At that time, Robinson requested that his induction plaque focus exclusively on his statistics and record as a baseball player. He did not want it to make any mention of his role as a historic “first” in Major League Baseball, as the first Black player to cross the league’s color line and begin desegregating the game.

Robinson was right that his legacy is worth celebrating: career batting average of .311, in the top 20 of his era, and six championships in 10 seasons, which still stands as the National League’s record. If he had been anything other than a trailblazer, he’d still be remembered for his impressive talents.

However, in 2008, Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson announced the decision to update the plaque and include information regarding Robinson’s status as a man who helped change sports and society. He said that Robinson’s “impact is not fully defined without mention of his extreme courage in breaking baseball’s color barrier. The time is right to recognize his contribution to history, not only as a Hall of Fame player, but also as a civil rights pioneer.”

Gretchen Sorin, director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program said, “This is a country that loves to ignore its history of discrimination. People say to me, ‘I had no idea,’ about discrimination that took place, even within their lifetimes.”

Jackie Robinson’s career stands as one of the most powerful testimonials to that history, and something would be amiss if his Hall of Fame citation ignored the racism he faced. Still, the story behind the plaque reveals a more private struggle of Robinson’s: to be seen as a man and not just a message. His current plaque reads a little differently once you know that Robinson never wanted it that way.

Writer Al Hsu tells this story:

I grew up in an affluent community that was something like 94 percent white. During high school, I went to a Christian leadership program at a camp in the woods. One day, we had a canoe race. My team was in a canoe with two paddles. But another canoe was given only one paddle. Another didn’t get any paddles; they had to use their hands. And another group didn’t even have a canoe; they had an old, leaky rowboat.

The race started, and my canoe zipped across the lake, racing smoothly. I looked back and noticed that the other teams were behind--far behind. The folks in the rowboat had found a tree branch they were trying to use as an oar to pull them along. My canoe won the race, and my team sat and watched, waiting for the rest to come in.

Afterward, we had a group time to debrief. My team was happy that we had won. Some of the others laughed about the accommodations they had made to try to compete. And some were just frustrated and mad at the exercise.

The counselors asked my winning team, “Why didn’t you go back and help the others?” I didn’t get it. I said, “I thought we weren’t supposed to. We were given two paddles, so we used them and won the race.” I figured there was a reason that the others had disadvantages, and they were supposed to figure out what to do.

It wasn’t until the following summer, when I went on an urban ministry trip, that I started to get it. We were in an underprivileged community struggling with poverty, drugs, crime. Leaders gave us some background about the realities of redlining and how structural systems caused injustice, and I realized in a visceral way that this was not right. This was not what God intended for the world. That dislocation and displacement in a community just ten miles from my suburban home, helped me change.

Sarah Friedmann writes in “Trailblazers”:

In 1957, my parents moved into Levittown, Pennsylvania. It was a brand-new suburban community and these homes were finally at a price that Army veterans could afford. That August, another family moved into Levittown. The father, Bill Myers, had served in the US Army. The mom, Daisy Myers had a bachelor’s degree. And the Myers family, like my family, was growing: they had three young children, and we had two.

When my family moved in, we were greeted by a smiling member of the local Welcome Wagon. When the Myers family moved in, they got a different greeting.

The local newspaper reported: … Small groups of agitated Levittowners are already gathering in front of the Myers home. By midnight, more than 200 shouting men, women and children cluster on the Myers’ front lawn. A group of teens throw rocks through the Myers’ front picture window, and 15 police officers are dispatched to the scene. … Now, with the violence increasing, the sheriff wires the Pennsylvania State Police asking for immediate assistance. His request states, “... the citizens of Levittown are out of control.”

What do we learn from this tale of two families? We learn there are two kinds of racism. The first kind is “personal racism,” like we see in the 200 people who mobbed the Myers’ front lawn. But there is also a second kind of racism, “structural racism.” The kind of legal and financial structures that make sure whites like the Millers get a loan and a home and make sure blacks like the Myers, don’t.

The Levitt Organization had already sold over 15,000 homes in Levittown: and every single one went to a white family. Bill and Daisy Myers bought their home directly from an existing owner, so they were not screened out by the Levitt Organization. But they also had to get around the structural practices of our federal government. The FHA and VA “only subsidized post-war housing, like Levittowns, on the condition that the homes weren’t sold to African Americans.”

It's bizarre that I was raised in a planned community that was carefully designed from its beginning to be all-white, to keep out persons of color. But here’s what’s even more bizarre: We ALL live in Levittown. Every single one of us who lives in America is living in a culture that from its beginning was created for the benefit of white people and for the exclusion of non-white people.

James Charles decided that he wanted to help alleviate the problem of people without homes. Lacking access to any kind of large-scale shelter, Charles did the next best thing and used what he owned--a car dealership. In a Facebook post for his Kiplin Auto Group, Charles announced that he was offering up a safe space in his lot for people who need to sleep in their cars, promising an environment “free from disturbance, trespassing, harassment or worse.”

Charles said, “We know that some families are struggling and in a tough situation. Whole families sleeping in the car. You would say … (how about) the shelters? They are full guys. ... We can’t put everyone in a hotel, but we can get you a safe place for the night.”

Since the initial announcement and the media coverage it generated, Charles has received donations from others wanting to help. He started a GoFundMe campaign for the families staying on his lot, pledging to add $200 for every car sale.

Possible Preaching Angle:

To be the hands and feet of Jesus, we must see Him in others, particularly those in need, whom we are in a position to help.

Bright, affable Jay’Veontae Hudson isn’t the typical student that one would associate with chronic homelessness. But his senior year will be his first at Portland’s Parkrose High School with a stable home situation.

As a middle schooler, his family situation prompted a sudden leave. After bouncing around with friends and family members alike, Hudson was constantly moving from place to place. Upon arriving at Parkrose, he got connected to the Gateway System. This is a district-mandated set of programs that help provide kids like him with the necessary resources they need. But still, he needed more help. “There was a place to go,” Hudson said, “but there was no place to live.”

One year, as spring break approached, he reached out to a friend. The friend put him in touch with an English teacher named Jacquelyn Meza, whose parents had some extra space. While Hudson stayed with her parents, Meza put more time and effort to find Hudson a more permanent situation.

Eventually, Hudson ended up staying with math teacher Tammy Stamp, who agreed to be a foster care provider. Now, instead of relying solely upon his own wits and resources, he has Stamp as another loving presence to help. Hudson said, “It’s weird because I’m used to being the only one responsible for myself. She buys all my toothpaste and floss now.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Being the hands and feet of Jesus means helping not only to meet spiritual and emotional needs, but also physical needs.

The first time you park your car in the vast, cold cavern of the underground garage and step onto the [hospital] elevator, you may feel alien and forsaken. Perhaps you’ll feel that you have been singled out unfairly, plucked from your healthy life and cast into this cruel ordeal [of cancer].

Walking through the lobby with a manila envelope of X-rays under your arm and a folder of lab reports and notes from your previous doctor, you’ll sense the deep tremor of your animal fear, a barely audible uneasiness trickling up from somewhere inside you.

But there is good news, too. As you pass one hallway after another, looking for elevator B, you’ll see that this place is full of people—riding the escalators, reading books and magazines, checking their phones near the coffeepots. And it will dawn on you that most of these people have cancer. In fact, it seems as if the whole world has cancer. With relief and dismay you’ll realize, I’m not special. Everybody here has cancer. The withered old Jewish lefty newspaper editor. The Latino landscape contractor with the stone-roughened hands. The tough lesbian with the bleached-blond crew cut and the black leather jacket. And you will be cushioned and bolstered by the sheer number and variety of your fellows.

This strange country of cancer, it turns out, is the true democracy—one more real than the nation that lies outside these walls and more authentic than the lofty statements of politicians; a democracy more incontrovertible than platitudes or aspiration.

A high-powered New York attorney went viral, but for all the wrong reasons.

Handheld cell-phone video of Aaron Schlossberg spread like wildfire on Facebook after an encounter he had with a cashier at a Fresh Kitchen eatery in Manhattan. Schlossberg was angry at the cashier for speaking to coworkers—and other restaurant patrons—in Spanish.

In the footage, Schlossberg can be seen loudly and angrily berating several employees who appear to be of Hispanic descent, implying they are undocumented workers receiving public assistance, which he resents contributing toward as a taxpayer. Toward the video's end, he threatens them with deportation by calling Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE).

Schlossberg was recorded by a fellow patron in the store who felt his behavior was rude and uncalled for, and within hours he had been identified online and his business pages on Yelp and other review sites had been deluged with negative reviews.

To make things worse, savvy internet sleuths pointed out an important tidbit from his business website—it advertises consultations in Hebrew, French, Chinese … and yes, Spanish.

Potential Preaching Angles: When we attack others for trivial things, we reveal our own depravity first. Kindness is an easy way to generate goodwill, and hypocrisy is an easy way to squander it.

A blog on The Henry Ford website remembers the brave decision made by Rosa Parks in 1955:

It's one of the most famous moments in modern American civil rights history: On a chilly December evening in 1955, on a busy street in the capital of Alabama, a 42-year-old seamstress boarded a segregated city bus to return home after a long day of work, taking a seat near the middle, just behind the front "white" section. At the next stop, more passengers got on. When every seat in the white section was taken, the bus driver ordered the black passengers in the middle row to stand so a white man could sit. The seamstress refused.

But theologian Michael Horton notes that this extraordinary act flowed from Rosa Parks' ordinary life of obeying and following Jesus. Horton writes:

Rosa Parks didn't wake up one day and decide to become the "first Lady of Civil Rights." She just boarded a bus as she did every day for work and decided that this day she wasn't going to sit in the back as a proper black person was expected to do in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama. She knew who she was and what she wanted. She knew the cost, and she made the decision to pursue what they believed in enough to sacrifice her own security. At that point, she wasn't even joining a movement. She was just the right person at the right place and time. What made her the right person were countless influences, relationships, and experiences—most of them seemingly insignificant and forgotten. God had already shaped her into the sort of person who would do such a thing. For her at least, it was an ordinary thing to refuse to sit in the back of the bus on this particular trip. But for history it had radical repercussions.

In his book, Chase the Lion Mark Batterson shares that:

Shortly after being installed as the twentieth pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a sermon in November of 1954 titled "Transformed Nonconformist." "The Christian is called upon not to be like a thermometer conforming to the temperature of his society," said King, "but he must be like a thermostat serving to transform the temperature of his society..

"I have seen many white people who sincerely oppose segregation and [discrimination]," said King. "But they never took a [real] stand against it because of fear of standing alone." Are you willing not just to stand but to stand alone?

On December 1, 1955, a transformed nonconformist boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus just five blocks from the pulpit where King delivered that sermon. When the white section filled up with passengers, the bus driver ordered Rosa Parks to give up her seat in the colored section. Rosa politely refused. She took a moral stand by remaining seated.

"Our mistreatment was not right," Rosa said. "I was just tired of it." It wasn't a physical tiredness; it was a moral tiredness. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in." Rosa Park's stand against racial segregation started a ripple effect. It led to a court battle, which led to a citywide boycott, which led to the Supreme Court ruling segregation unconstitutional.

Until the pain of staying the same becomes more acute than the pain of change, nothing happens. We simply maintain the status quo. And we convince ourselves that playing it safe is safe. But the greatest risk is taking no risks at all.