35 Days
And the Book Intro...
Wow. Over a month in and we’re cruising.
Honestly, this past week and this upcoming week are providing me with minimal time to engage well on social media, which means the numbers across the board are down.
HOWEVER, by August 1, we should be in good shape, and ready for a 50-day surge on the back half of these 100 Days of Prayer.
I’ll give y’all a more full update next week, but this week’s email has another purpose.
I just wanted share the Intro and Title with y’all.
So, here it is…
The Intro
Our generation is really good at everything virtual and virtually good at nothing real.
Welcome to the most anxious, most relationally dysfunctional,² most spiritually starved generation in the history of the Western world.³
We’ve lost ourselves. We’ve lost others. We’ve lost God.
And they’re all linked.
Whenever we misunderstand God, we lose sight of our humanity. After all, if God isn’t real, really real, then humans are nothing more than a bunch of molecules.
So we’ve made ourselves animals, like hamsters sprinting on wheels until we wear ourselves out in the pursuit of the perfect, authentic, original “me.” The “me” that doesn’t exist. We’ve made ourselves bots, hijacked and programmed to be more comfortable with loveless machines than people, always holding out for the perfect, authentic, original “them” to marry or befriend or give birth to. The “them” that doesn’t exist. We’ve made ourselves gods, unable to recognize another God who demands everything from us, and uploading in his stead a perfect, authentic, original version of “God” we cheffed up. A “God” who doesn’t exist.
But don’t you see? We’ve lost what it means to be human.
Our time and attention have been stolen by things that don’t love us, by manipulative algorithms that train us—whether we realize it or not—in the religion that starts and ends with ME.
But there is another who demands your attention.
There is another who claimed to be the True Human.
His name is Jesus Christ.
Our generation feels immense pressure to tame Jesus, to squeeze Him inside the plastic box of our digitized imaginations. Because our algorithms only push forward what people want to hear, we quickly discard the parts of Jesus we don’t like. Jesus the hater? Jesus the homophobe? Swipe left. Jesus the health and wealth guru? Jesus the happiness genie? Swipe right. Maybe if we make Him more appealing our Jesus can survive this world’s beatings.
But Jesus doesn’t need our help surviving the world’s criticism.
The world already killed Him—and yet still He lives.
Do you want to be you? Then you should want God to be God. Jesus will not be a human of our making. He would only have us be humans of His making.
Let me say this: if you’re a Christian in the western world, you probably don’t know the Jesus of the Bible. You’ve probably missed Him for some cheapened, plastic, virtual version. And so you’ve probably missed yourself (and others) for some cheapened, plastic, virtual version too.
Yet our generation is as hungry as any generation in decades. You’re probably starving for something more. For revival. For real life.
This book is my attempt to be real with you.
To bring you into reality.
I want to show you the unabridged, raw, unedited version of Jesus we see in the Bible. In doing so, I want to show you the raw version of myself, because even after six years of theological school, the best way I can tell you about the Lord and Love of my life is not simply to tell you how I know Him but how He has known me.
Then I want to show you that He is real. And that He knows and loves you as much as he knows and loves me.
This book is an emergency letter to the Christians of my generation, a plea for us to beware the lies perpetuated by our algorithms, a guide for us to be human in an increasingly robotic world, and a call to take joy in the crazy, costly, and worthy yet misunderstood fullness of the True Human, Jesus Christ.
It’s a prayer for awakening.
1. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024).
2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community (Washington, DC: HHS, 2023), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf.National Center for Health Statistics, “Marriage and Divorce,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm.Jean M. Twenge, iGen (New York: Atria Books, 2017), 143-178; 203-226.
3. Pew Research Center, “8 in 10 Americans Say Religion Is Losing Influence in Public Life,” March 15, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/03/15/8-in-10-americans-say-religion-is-losing-influence-in-public-life/.
The Title
Originally, I named my book, “The Algorithm,” playing off of the ways our devices are teaching us to be human more than our God is. But after many, many edits, “The True Human” won out—and I’m happy it did!
The focal point, after all, is not algorithms. It’s Jesus.
No one else can restore us to our true selves. He alone brings revival.
That’s why we settled on…
“The True Human: 7 Ways Our Generation Misunderstands Jesus (and Ourselves).”
It is only when we see Jesus rightly that we will find any freedom from our own identity crises. We need to see God to reflect Him. We are His imagers, after all.
So much more to come (and I’ll want your help voting on some things)… but right now I’m falling asleep! I’ll send you a further update soon.
Let me know if you like it!
PRESSING PRAYER:
1) Endorsees. I just sent emails out to all my endorsees inviting them to endorse my book. Please pray for favor!
2) BOOK Completion. Need everything done by August 1. That day is coming SO SO Fast. Pray for strength and dependency.
3) Gen Z & revival. I’m excited to share more with y’all on this topic soon. There’s some really interesting findings about this generation’s explosive growth in Christianity that came out this week.
4) Gen Z & the church. It’s become clear that Gen Z actually really likes the idea of Jesus, but we don’t want to be with broken people, so we’re trying to take Jesus without His church. This cripples us. Pray for freedom.
Alright y’all.
Let’s keep walking in the Light!
J.T.