Reflection Of My Hero's Journey By Schuchardt
As a youth ministry major reaching out to the teenagers of the generation born into the Digital Age, I wish that every one of my youth group kids would take the reading of Schuchardt to heart. One of the biggest challenges of my career will be to draw teenagers into a closer relationship with Christ than with technology. I feel like a hypocrite saying this, though, because I know that I’m guilty of experiencing the vices of the virtual life, which I suspect may become even more apparent during my media fast. Schuchardt mentioned this, but I think he should have expanded into an eighth vice about how social media can deteriorate communication instead of enhance it. When I’m messaging somebody, I feel confident about holding a conversation
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If we were living in the Oral Age in which we didn’t have access to this information overload, we would not be aware of this information in the first place, so that would make us just as apathetic without media as with media. However, I can acutely relate to when Schuchardt questions about “How to care at all when there’s too much to care about is most likely going to be one of the greatest struggles of your entire life” (245). One of the problems I face with extreme empathy as a youth ministry major is the sheer number of lives that I’m connected with. Between the youth group I volunteer with right now and the second youth group I led as an intern over the summer, there’s so many lives for me to care about that it’s easy for me to take the opposite route of not being able to engage as deep as I could if I focused on a smaller number of students. I have a few Facebook “friends” who I like to view as my fanclub. Similar to the fans of a major celebrity, these people will “like” almost anything I post on social media no matter what. It makes me feel good to think that they actually care about me but in actuality, these people only invested a matter of seconds of their though process on me before scrolling on. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time that I’ve talked to a few of the members of my “fanclub.” After reading the faith-transforming book Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman, I became convinced of how superficial the act of “caring” as a fan can
If we were living in the Oral Age in which we didn’t have access to this information overload, we would not be aware of this information in the first place, so that would make us just as apathetic without media as with media. However, I can acutely relate to when Schuchardt questions about “How to care at all when there’s too much to care about is most likely going to be one of the greatest struggles of your entire life” (245). One of the problems I face with extreme empathy as a youth ministry major is the sheer number of lives that I’m connected with. Between the youth group I volunteer with right now and the second youth group I led as an intern over the summer, there’s so many lives for me to care about that it’s easy for me to take the opposite route of not being able to engage as deep as I could if I focused on a smaller number of students. I have a few Facebook “friends” who I like to view as my fanclub. Similar to the fans of a major celebrity, these people will “like” almost anything I post on social media no matter what. It makes me feel good to think that they actually care about me but in actuality, these people only invested a matter of seconds of their though process on me before scrolling on. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time that I’ve talked to a few of the members of my “fanclub.” After reading the faith-transforming book Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman, I became convinced of how superficial the act of “caring” as a fan can