I see more and more women around me saying they don't need a man. Not even father and brothers in their life. And I see many of them choose to remain single with kids or just single. And I wonder we were taught to have a family and companionship in the church. But things are going completely changed in todays time.
Do you think family system is dying?
I think this is by design. So much of the way society is changing is about isolating people from what would normally be a support network. Whether it's breaking apart families or social support networks, every which way we turn there's something else making it harder for people to come together in ways that increase solidarity. Families get broken up - as you say there are more and more women who don't think they need a man in their life (which of course means kids growing up without male role models), and in the meantime more and more young men end up unemployed doing little more than wasting away their lives gaming in their parents' basement (cliche I know, but it seems to be a growing trend). Then so many jobs have people on shifts that they find out about at short notice, and of course if you don't know what hours you'll be working next week it's impossible to plan a social life, so you end up socially isolated.
Not to worry, there's an app for that. You too can log onto social media and see everybody else's highly polished lives, while comparing it to the reality of your own life. Your life, warts and all, compared to the carefully edited version of everybody else's life. No wonder people get depressed, but of course there's an app for that too. Just buy these things and your life will be wonderful again. Except that it won't, but by then they have your money so they don't care.
Even churches are shifting to adopt this. No need to come together and support each other - that's far too much like work, far too much like getting hands dirty. Just log in and watch the service live streamed to your tablet. No need to do the ugly messy work of helping people who are struggling, just touch the screen and consume, consume, consume. If you have a need, just post it to an anonymous site and trust that people will pray for you. It's so much cleaner than being real, being vulnerable, in front of the people you see face to face every week. It's safer too - if someone does break your confidence then instead of being a real person with a real name and a real face, you're just another faceless moniker and it's hard to see how it matters if a larger group gets to find out that "sparkleboy993" is struggling with something a bit embarrassing.
To be clear, ministering to people who are physically unable to attend a church because of illness, disability etc is one thing. To provide endless options so people don't have to make any commitment at all to the church other than rolling over in bed and tapping their screen to start the live stream seems like a huge step backwards to me.
