You cannot stop exploitation with exploitation.

In a conversation yesterday, a friend mentioned a trend among his Gen Z peers that when faced with a perceived problem, blame a group, and then exploit them for to your service. For example: If housing is higher than you like, take money from the “rich” to buy as house for you. If you think you need higher pay, don’t work but demand businesses pay more before you do. If the fake promises of a politician aren’t fulfilled, then those in the way should be cancelled. If vaccines will help you join forces with others who wish to exploit too, get jabbed!
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In short, Gen Z has been led to feel exploited and therefore feel justified in exploiting. A regular eye for an eye. But in this case, a real eye for a manufactured eye. How have they been exploited? By not allowing their appetite and desires become rightfully fulfilled the way they perceive it should.
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Every generation has appetites and desires. But for ages, these were tempered with work, virtues, and contentment. But today, many have been spiritually formed to accept nothing less than a bigger plate of food, brought by a another’s butler, paid for by a thousand content and exploited people.
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What is this exploitation they seek against their phantom abusers? Taxes, shaming, perpetually increasing regulation on anything and everything, money printing, journalistic manipulation and political hacks that defy all reason for power. But behind that? Appetite and desire that resists virtue and contentment. They don’t want a better world; They want a more extravagant lifestyle.
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If our society focused as much on the thrills of contentment as it did on the thrills of recycling, we’d stop exploiting neighbors we claim to love and save ourselves from our own brooding darkness and pending extinction. Amazing how such an old-fashioned word and simple concept can save a soul, and, by itself, make a more extravagant life.
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Thanks for coming to my #sundaysermon.