Free Screens and Teens by Kathy Koch Page B

frequently
not
centered in the God of the Bible or a relationship with Jesus Christ. This is often the case even for those who claim to know and love Him. Rather, their worldview is centered inthemselves. They and their technology are most important. Without realizing it, they’ve become their own gods.
    Many young people make decisions only with themselves in mind. This has been true of many teens throughout time, but this kind of self-on-the-throne does seem to be at an all-time high. Teens can behave as if the world revolves around them—or at least as if they wish it did! My coworker, project manager Nancy Matheis, visualizes their worldview as a wheel. Each teen is at the center of his or her world. The spokes, representing things like family, peers, ideas, goals, school, church, media, and other technology, all point to them. All these aspects of their lives are in place and designed to serve them.
    A Christian worldview could also be represented by a wheel. God would be at the center of that wheel, the hub where all the spokes meet. The spokes He created and influences would go out from His heart. Each of us represents one of many, many spokes. He designed us to serve and glorify Him. Therefore, spokes representing believers radiate outward but also point back to God.
    When talking about how intertwined teens have become with their technology, Randy Thomas, our online content and social media manager, offered this wise word:
    Being connected meets a core spiritual need to connect with a force greater than themselves and they believe the Internet is the fount of all truth. Searching the Internet for personal answers, direction, and worth has increasingly supplanted seekingGod’s input through prayer. The high priests are the technology, which facilitates transactions with a power greater than themselves. They don’t get ideas from acknowledged leaders or chief proponents who represented those ideas, as people would have done in Bible times or many of us did in our youth. Rather, they’re being led by and taught by their technology to believe that a way to transcend the everyday machinations of life is to simply login.
    Clearly, a main reason to know our teens’ worldview is that it heavily influences what they understand about God and how they’ll relate to Him. And we desperately need to understand our own worldview because our prescription influences how we parent our children and who we hope they will become. They’re watching us and listening. We must take our role modeling seriously.
    Many of our young people are wearing glasses with the prescription “It’s all about me” or “I am the center of my own universe.” Many of our teens may understand God as someone who meets their needs and keeps them happy. They don’t wonder about humanity’s relationship to God because it’s God’s relationship with them
personally
that matters. God serves them; they don’t serve God. The idea that God is His own Person, with His own ideas that won’t always agree with theirs, is a completely foreign thought. They are blinded enough by the glare of their screens to not be able to see through His prescription. (Noticethat I use the phrase
many of our teens
. I’m very grateful for every Christian teen who knows, loves, serves, and glorifies God with his or her worldview!)
    As I ponder and pray for this generation particularly and for all of us as well, Marshall McLuhan’s words from his 1964 book
Understanding Media
come to mind: “Societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media men use to communicate than by the content of the communication.” 3 More than fifty years later, his words are still ringing true.
    The I-am-the-center-of-my-own-universe lie is so influential and controlling that I call it an “umbrella worldview lie.” Teens believe the other lies partly because they first think they are the center of their own