Society

A New York Times article explored how our world has changed in the aftermath of the pandemic.

At first, the solidarity was breathtaking. Out of concern for ourselves and one another, we suspended nearly all interpersonal activity for months, wiping our lives almost entirely clean of the very people we were trying to protect. But, perversely, that solidarity destroyed our social fabric… For several months the daily lives of many Americans were reduced to the boundaries of their nuclear unit and their phones and televisions and computers. Isolated, we saw one another first as threats and then as something less than real… Politics started to look more like a zone of virtual reality, too, and many Americans came to see their fellow humans as mindless drones.

It was deeply unsettling to realize that our modern, wealthy world was no fortress against contagion, mass death and pandemic hysteria of various kinds. The end of the end of history has been declared countless times since 2001, but no event punctuated the point as clearly as Covid-19.

The emergency began at a time of geopolitical uncertainty, but it ended in an unmistakable polycrisis: beyond Covid, its supply shocks and inflation surge, there was a debt crisis and an ongoing climate emergency, wars in Europe and soon the Middle East and renewed great-power conflict with China…

It looks like we finally got those Roaring Twenties we were promised. In 2020, the phrase was used to suggest an age of parties and sex and social recklessness was on the way, as 330 million cooped-up Americans let off some steam. [But] in 2025 … the world does not seem now more buoyant or full of hope, but abrasive and rapacious and shaped nearly everywhere by a barely suppressed rage. We have still not reckoned with all we have lost.

From the Roman Empire to the Maya civilization, history is filled with social collapses. Traditionally, historians have studied these downturns qualitatively, by diving into the twists and turns of individual societies.

But a team of scientists has taken a broader approach, looking for enduring patterns of human behavior on a vaster scale of time and space. In a study published in May 2024, the researchers wanted to answer a profound question: Why are some societies more resilient than others?

The study, published in the journal Nature, compared 16 societies scattered across the world, in places like the Yukon and the Australian outback. With powerful statistical models, the researchers analyzed 30,000 years of archaeological records, tracing the impact of wars, famines, and climate change.

The researchers looked for factors that explained why societies in some cases suffered long, deep downturns, while others experienced smaller drops in their populations and bounced back more quickly.

One feature that stood out was the frequency of downturns. You might expect that going through a lot of them would wear societies down, making them more vulnerable to new catastrophes. But the opposite seems to have occurred. They found that going through downturns enabled societies to get through future shocks faster. The more often a society went through them, the more resilient it eventually became.

A reporter from The Wall Street Journal spoke to several people about the economy. One was Kristine Funck, a nurse in Ohio, has won steady pay raises, built retirement savings, and owns her home. The other was Alfredo Arguello, who opened a restaurant outside Nashville when the pandemic hit, now owns a second one, and employs close to 50 people.

Economists are noticing that while economic measures are improving, Americans are feeling gloomier. “Unstable” is how Arguello describes it. Said Funck: “Even though I’m OK right now, there’s a sense it could all go away in a second.” There’s a striking disconnect that has puzzled economists and business owners.

But press Americans harder, and the immediate economy emerges as only one factor in the gloomy outlook. Americans feel sour about the economy, many say, because their long-term security feels fragile and vulnerable to wide-ranging social and political threats.

Interviews with Americans across the country—some affluent, some just scraping by; some with advanced degrees and others with blue-collar jobs; some Republican, some Democrat—show they are weighed down by fears of an unpredictable world in which no one in government or business is competent to steer the nation through precarious times.

“You could argue unemployment is 3.7%, but who cares with this level of uncertainty?” said Arguello. “Because that’s what people are feeling. They’re not feeling hope. They’re not feeling one country. They’re feeling a divisive, divided United States of America.”

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Brooks concludes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, haven’t you heard? Mister Rogers said so—and now his simple advice on how to be a good person has been backed by sophisticated polling data. A recent Gallup poll on health and well-being showed that saying hello to more than one neighbor correlated with greater self-perception of well-being.

Averaged across five dimensions that included career, communal, physical, financial, and social well-being, the increase which greeting a neighbor had led to around a two-point increase on a scale of 0-100 up until the sixth neighbor, at which point further greetings had no measured impact.

Men were more likely to greet neighbors than women, as were people with children under the age of 18 in the household, and people with a household income of more than $120k a year. Individuals aged 40 to 65+ were the most common greeters of neighbors, and 27% of the participants greeted five neighbors or more in a day.

The report continued, “Notably, greeting neighbors is also linked to career wellbeing (liking what you do each day), physical wellbeing (having energy to get things done), and financial wellbeing (managing your money well).”

The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on our social lives. Time spent with friends went down. Time spent alone went up. According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6.5 hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline. By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization, and new technologies all played a role in the drop.

COVID then deepened this trend. In 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).

Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers, and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019 and only 10 hours a week in 2021. On average, Americans did not transfer that lost time to spouses, partners, or children. Instead, they chose to be alone.

In William Shatner’s new book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, the Star Trek actor reflects on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as the actor and author details below, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience. He wrote:

My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

Debates about acceptable holiday greetings occasionally roil American retail stores and cable news shows. But when it comes to cards, most people prefer “Merry Christmas.” According to an industry survey, Americans send about 1.6 billion Christmas cards every year, and 53 percent carry the traditional religious greeting. “Happy Holidays” ranks second in card choice, and the more generic “Season’s Greetings” comes fourth after “other.”

The Christmas card tradition has proved surprisingly durable. It dates back to the Victorian era, when the celebration of Christmas was transformed into a family-centered commercial holiday. Queen Victoria started sending Christmas cards in the 1880s. Calvin Coolidge sent the first one from the White House about 40 years later.

The tradition sagged a little in the 21st century with the rise of social media; especially Facebook. But then Millennials revived the tradition as a way to add a personal connection to holiday celebrations. Card-sending households mail, on average, about 30 cards, and most people prefer pictures of kids and an old-fashioned “Merry Christmas.”

Preferred Christmas Card Greetings:

Merry Christmas 53%

Happy Holidays 21%

Season’s Greetings 12%

Other Messages 14%

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even amid today’s growing secularism, people are drawn to the joy and hope that the traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting brings. It is a constant witness to the birth of the hope of the world.

A video from content creators Aperture gives a brief overview of the basic questions people ask about personal morality: "If I steal from the rich and use it to feed the poor, is that good or is that bad? If I drive over the speed limit to get my sick child to the hospital, is that good or is that bad? What is good? And what is bad? What is morality, and do you, as a person, have morals?"

Morality is what society treats as right and acceptable. They’re the standards of thoughts and actions that everyone in a group agrees to follow so they can all live peacefully. Stealing is against the law. However, a lot of people would consider stealing a piece of bread to save a homeless person from dying of hunger, moral. Driving over the speed limit is a crime, but when it could help save the life of the child in the backseat of your car, it becomes the most noble of actions.

The authors of the video say,

As humans evolve and learn new things, our morals change. This is why morality isn’t stagnant. It evolves with time. Think about issues like pre-marital sex, same-sex relationships, abortion, marijuana use. These are all things that were considered immoral long ago. But today, society is beginning to accept all of these as moral. We’ve learned to be tolerant of people regardless of their personal beliefs or preferences. And while not everyone might agree to all of these things or practice it themselves, things seem to have flipped. ...

You can watch the video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society is changing, but in the wrong direction. What was once immoral, is now considered moral as long “as no one is hurt.” But God’s law never changes because it is based on his holy nature. Society can attempt to redefine right and wrong, but that doesn’t change God’s law.

In his book Making Sense of God, Tim Keller writes:

When The Star-Spangled Banner is sung at sporting events, the climactic phrase comes to an elongated high note: “O’er the land of the freeee ….” The cheers begin here. Even though the song goes on to talk about “the brave,” this is an afterthought. Both the melody line and our culture highlights freedom as the main theme and value of our society.

Freedom has come to be defined as the absence of any limitations or constraints on us. By this definition, the fewer boundaries we have on our choices and actions, the freer we feel ourselves to be. Held in this form, I want to argue that the narrative has gone wrong and is doing damage.

Modern freedom is the freedom of self-assertion. I am free if I may do whatever I want. But defining freedom this way … is unworkable because it is an impossibility …. We need some kind of moral norms and constraints on our actions if we are to live together.

Throughout history, human beings have always attempted to regulate behavior in order for people in a society to live peacefully and productively. Religious and secular values, societal laws, education, and politics have all been used to motivate people to adopt the better sides of our nature. The great atheist nation China has begun to implement a bold new plan to foster a more moral and industrious society.

The government has begun evaluating and ranking every citizen based on their behavior. As of 2020 all citizens have a new identity number and a social-credit record. Because of widespread concerns by Chinese citizens of the prevalence of corruption, scams, and scandals, the Communist Party has developed a system that would “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

Good behavior is rewarded while bad is punished. “Rewards for high social credit—in other words, being deemed trustworthy—may include perks like free access to gym facilities, public transportation discounts, and shorter wait times in hospitals. Punishments for low social credit could include restrictions on renting an apartment, buying a home, or enrolling a child in one’s preferred school.”

Psychologists warn of the downsides: “People whose futures are tied to the score may make cold calculations about friends’ likely numbers in an effort to make sure no one becomes a drag on their or their family’s prospects. And they may decide against friending some individuals—or whole groups of people altogether.”

Author Katy Kelleher reflects on something that is ubiquitous in every home--mirrors. She observes that mirrors are a lot like photographs:

… Like photographs, mirrors have been used to create false realities. We act as though what we see in the mirror is complete — a self fully formed and rendered truly. But the mirror is only capable of showing what others see. Mirrors reinforce the idea that a person’s value lies on the outside of their body, that it’s possible to learn our value by examining (and altering) our appearance.

Mirrors can convey the false idea that our appearance is more important than personality and character. Kelleher knows this yet she is “not exempt from the desire … to be visually appraised by relative strangers and found acceptable, attractive, worthy. I look at my face in a mirror and I don’t see myself — I see how others might see me, how others might know me, want me. Sometimes, I find myself substituting a camera for a mirror. I turn my iPhone toward my face and use its small screen to check my teeth before a meeting. ... I glean information from this image, but I can also get lost in it, or overwhelmed by it.”

Kelleher finds this all claustrophobic:

Everything is visible, but nothing really matters. We know the mirror is a trick and a trap. But we also know it’s a tool to succeed in a system that is broken, a world that assigns value arbitrarily and penalizes those who can’t adequately perform or conform. Perhaps that’s the ugliest thing about mirrors. They reveal more about society than they do about individuals, and what they show isn’t always attractive.

Have you ever seen an Amish horse and buggy going down the road, driven by a bearded man with a black hat? You might have heard that these traditional Christian groups think all technology is bad, but that's not true. They're really just doing something we all should be doing, which is practicing discernment.

When an Amish community member is interested in using a new technology, the community asks whether it will be helpful or harmful to relationships in the community. In one case, a community member wanted to buy a hay baler to make his work more efficient. But the community wondered how this would affect relationships if workers no longer had to work with each other. Another wanted to run propane gas into his family's bedrooms so each could have a light on at night, but the community wondered whether this would separate the family in the evening, where they'd previously shared the evening together in the living room. They rejected both ideas.

You and I might come to different conclusions than the Amish about technology, but we would be wise to ask the same sorts of questions: How will this smartphone, or this social media app, affect relationships within my home? Will this subscription to Disney+ bring our family together or give us more reasons to live separate lives?

Aaron Smith was tired of the typical online dating scene. But unlike most people with that same sense of dissatisfaction, he took a unique course of action. Smith reached out to software engineering friend Scott McDowell, who helped to develop a new dating app entitled Singularity. It’s tagline? “Online Dating Simplified.”

Smith said, “The biggest problem with other apps is that my face isn’t featured prominently.” He went on to explain the app’s killer feature--the lack of other male competition. He’s the only one on the app, and as users swipe for more options, they get a variety of different pictures of Smith in different outfits and locations. He said, “If life gives you lemons, you should first make lemonade. Then make sure no other companies can produce or distribute their own soft drinks. So, the only game in town is lemonade.”

Smith has yet to meet that special someone, but he remains upbeat and optimistic. He said, “Hopefully it will give people a chuckle about just the absurdity of what we’re reduced to as a society.”

Potential Preaching Angles: God isn’t insecure, but is jealous over our devotion. God wants to be our number one priority, and sometimes will remove distractions that get in the way.

Pastor/author Timothy Keller used the following thought experiment to demonstrate how our sexual feelings and desires can be influenced by social forces:

Imagine an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in AD 800. He has two very strong inner impulses and feelings. One is aggression. He loves to smash and kill people when they show him disrespect. Living in a shame-and-honor culture with its warrior ethic, he will identify with that feeling. He will say to himself, "That's me!" That's who I am! I will express that. The other feeling he senses is same-sex attraction. To that he will say, "That's not me." I will control and suppress that impulse.

Now imagine a young man walking around Manhattan today. He has the same two inward impulses, both equally strong, both difficult to control. What will he say? He will look at the aggression and think, "This is not who I want to be, and will seek deliverance in therapy and anger-management programs." He will look at his sexual desire, however, and conclude, "That is who I am."

Keller concludes, "And where did our Anglo-Saxon warrior and our Manhattan man get their grids? From their cultures, their communities, their heroic stories … they are filtering their feelings, jettisoning some and embracing others. They are choosing to be the selves their cultures tell them they may be."

Phil Cooke and Jonathan Bock write that in 1997, Stan Dobbs left a career in the computer industry and packed up for seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. While also working on staff at a church, he recognized the incredible numbers of singles and young couples living in apartments who reported feeling lonely and unable to connect with other people. It's one of the great ironies of our culture: multiple families packed into a single building who don't know or rarely come in contact with each other. "Fifty percent of the population of Dallas lives in apartments," Dobbs said, "and yet the existing outreach strategies have been terribly ineffective in reaching apartment residents."

Stan had an unusual idea. In 2000, he launched an organization called Apartment Life in downtown Fort Worth with the goal of penetrating the walls of massive apartment complexes with the message of the gospel. He created a concept he called Community Activities and Resident Services (CARES) teams. A team consists of either a married couple or two singles of the same gender, and they are given a free apartment for working eighty hours per month to assist the apartment complex management in building community and serving residents.

Stan's job is to sell the apartment owner on the idea that giving a free apartment to a Christian couple will be good for his or her bottom line. His goal is to convince the owner that in exchange for free rent, the couple's job is to create a better and more vibrant sense of community within the complex. To accomplish that, they become what some might call "chaplains" for the residents. They visit the sick, hold community events, set up basketball leagues, and throw pool parties—all designed to bring people together.

And it's worked. To date, there are more than one hundred of these teams working to bring a stronger sense of community to people who would otherwise never know their next-door neighbor. And since these team members are Christian couples, spiritual conversations naturally happen. Even though Apartment Life is driven by a Christian commitment, the apartment owners couldn't be more thrilled.

Editor’s Note: The ministry is still going strong as of 2025

For the past 100 years the Amish have resisted new technological advancements like the television and the automobile. But during the same time they've welcomed modern medicine to treat serious diseases, which do not impede their sense of community. Why?

Jameson Wetmore is an engineer and social researcher at the Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He has studied the Amish intensively, and their perspective on technology. He commented recently in an interview:

The reason the Amish rejected television is because it is a one-way conduit to bring another society into their living rooms. And they want to maintain the society as they have created it. And the automobile as well. As soon as you have a car, your ability to leave your local community becomes significantly easier. You no longer have to rely on your neighbor for eggs when you run out. You can literally take half an hour and run to the store. In a horse and buggy, when you don't have your own chickens, that's a half-day process.

I asked one Amish person why they didn't use automobiles. He simply smiled and turned to me and said, "Look what they did to your society." And I asked what do you mean? "Well, do you know your neighbor? Do you know the names of your neighbors?" And, at the time, I had to admit to the fact that I didn't.

David Finn, an acclaimed professional photographer and lifelong New Yorker, wrote a fascinating book, How to Look At Everything. Finn recounts how he was affected by a single photograph he took while amassing a portfolio of shots for use in a book documenting life in New York City. This particular photo was taken out a car window and captured a man walking down the street while reading a book (a pedtextrian in the predigital age). Only after Finn had developed the film, did he notice a second man seated on a stoop as the reader-walker went by. The juxtaposition of the two men made for a most arresting image, one that prompted inner refection.

Finn concluded: "Why did I consider it such a revelation? Why did so many familiar sights now look so different? It was because I had never looked so intently at the scenes of daily life before. And as I looked through my viewfinder, my mind gave new meaning to what I was seeing. I saw more than what was there because I was paying such close attention to what I was photographing." Finn no longer saw himself as just a photographer, but rather a "walker in the city." This different look at himself transformed his ability to look outside himself.

Want to be more skilled at looking? Look intently at the scenes of your daily life. Pay closer attention to where you are and what you are doing. See yourself as an observer, a walker in your city.

Stop. Look. Listen.

G. K. Chesterton once quipped, "We make our friends; we make our enemies, but God makes our next door neighbor. … We have to love our neighbor because he is there." The nearness of our neighbor is providential, as God never gets the address wrong.

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state and never its tool."