The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 13 B
“I can’t adult today,” “adulting is hard.” To adult, is a verb meaning to behave like a grown-up. But what does that mean? What does it look like?
It depends, because the goalposts have been very fluid forever. Seventy years ago, the goal would be marriage right after college, or right after getting a good union job, either of which helped give a reliable lifetime of employment. Work in the community you grew up in, buy a house, put down roots. That was “adulting.”
Over time, that’s changed. Deregulation and company executives moving manufacturing overseas eliminated many union jobs, and over time college became an “essential” for employment. I recall when I was a teenager twenty five years ago we were told to get a degree, regardless of what it was – and it didn’t matter if we took out student loans to pay for it. Sure, states had stopped supporting public colleges and universities, but we were told that there’d be plenty of good jobs to pay off those loans.
But… that didn’t quite happen, either. Wages have been stagnant for decades. Employers are reticent about increasing pay for loyal employees (because cutting labor costs looks really nice on reports for executives and investors) and so people have to job-hop to try to get more pay. Your company won’t pay you extra, but you can hop to a competitor and get a pay increase. But, that also means being ready to move to that new job. Unless, of course, it’s a job you can do from home. But then in that case, people have been selling homes in expensive housing markets and buying up homes here in Idaho so they can work for their company in another state but enjoy our formerly lower-cost way of living.
Oh, and make sure to pay back those student loans to the private companies who collect on them. Loan forgiveness is only for troubled corporations, you know. Student loans cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy; only disability and death are reliable ways of loan forgiveness, since even public service options have been mired in loan servicer bureaucracy.
And 25 years ago we were told that tech was the future. Get a degree in computers. It’ll always be safe. Until what is marketed as “artificial intelligence” became popular … now computers might not need as many computer programmers … at least so the executives think. (Isn’t it funny that corporate executives never advocate for changes that would put them and their million-dollar salaries on the line?)
So, to be an adult by standards seventy, sixty, fifty years ago is infinitely more challenging now. It’s a guessing game of how to get there and to have stability – to own a house, to have stable jobs (since most every household needs to be a two-income household now), to start a family. All that uncertainty, all that disruption is, frankly, toxic to our brains.
Children do not do well with uncertainty and disruption. Children need consistency, safety, security, and confidence in their future. Children who grow up without those, children who grow up with uncertainty, fear, inconsistency, and danger take all those adverse experiences with them into adulthood. Those experiences affect them long, long into adulthood.
In a way, they get stuck in that part of their childhood. For a kid who grew up in an abusive household, every footstep and every even slightly raised voice could signify danger; their brain will take that into their adulthood. For someone who is raised in an environment without adequate food or housing, those fears will be embedded deep in their brains as they grow into an adult. Our brains, as children and as adults, will not flourish in an environment of fear.
Now, imagine what all of that fear and uncertainty have been doing to minds of children and adults for generations. Seventy years ago, in 1954, the fear was that one day the Soviet Union and the United States would launch missiles at each other and that would be the end of civilization. Fifty years ago, in 1974, the fear was that America was coming apart at the seams as Nixon resigned after Watergate, as the economic shock of the oil crisis reverberates, and as the hard work of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements continue to meet entrenched racism and sexism. Thirty years ago, in 1994, it seems like we should have peace – the Soviet Union had dissolved. But the tech revolution is beginning, and global free trade threatens the relative stability of the economic picture of the working classes. Twenty years ago, the US was engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against a shadowy enemy called “terrorism” and “fanaticism” with no clear plan for victory in sight. And in our modern day, gun violence always seems right around the corner.
What have decades – and to be honest, centuries – of fear done to our psyches? How can any of us really feel confident to adult in this bewildering world? We feel so alone and scared.
What do we do? We build community.
Fear pulls us apart. When we’re looking for threats, we’re not looking for friends. When we’re filled with fear and apprehension, we feel alone and helpless.
But community boosts us up. When we’re in community, we can support one another. We support those in need, and, just as important, we are supported in our needs, too. We give and receive. When we’re by ourselves, we might feel like scared children in a big scary world – but when we’re together, we know we’re not alone. Even if the world is scary, we can have courage. When we build community, we learn to make friends. Our fear is not the final word.
The letters of the New Testament keep returning to community. The Letter to the Ephesians talks about the different gifts within the community – we don’t have to have everything on our own because we have all these gifts together. We do not need to be afraid that we’re doomed because we’re not self-contained little bunkers that have everything we could possibly need. We are courageous and hopeful because we can share, we can give and receive. Prophets speak words of truth, pastors offer guidance, teachers give wisdom and knowledge, apostles and evangelists go and share the good news and welcome all to the body of Christ. We can depend on one another when we build up the community in the love of Christ.
The little things we can do make it happen. Offering to make coffee? That builds community. Offering to host a get-together? That builds community. Offering to lead a conversation or study on a topic near and dear to your heart? That builds community. Volunteering to check on the supplies in the kitchen and let the office know what we need? That builds community. Talking with people at coffee hour and bringing them into the conversation, whether they’ve been here for years or this is their first time? That builds community.
And as we build community in the name of Christ, we bring healing to one another and the world. Our scared inner children finally get to grow up in Christ, to be healed and encouraged to do what is right. When we build community in the name of Christ, each of us – and our wider community, and the community that we are building for the future – can mature and grow to “adult” and to thrive. Then we will get to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” Amen.