Living in the Dark Ages

How the “Age of Technology” has lowered our standards as Christians.

By Wait&Hope

Florida 

I
’m sitting in the back of the classroom in my 10th grade Honors English class, trying to stay awake as the teacher is going over a survey of English literature.  He is now covering the Dark Ages, a time notorious for mass ignorance.  He then makes a comment that I will never forget.  “I can argue that your generation is living in a Dark Age,” he says.  A storm of protests arises, and a heated debate ensues.

I, myself, couldn’t help thinking, “How in the world are we living in the Dark Ages? We have smart phones that can update us on the other side of the world with the click of a button!”  As the class settles again, my teacher explains himself; he argues that our generation has lost a sense of culture that had existed for thousands of years- love of good literature, appreciation of the arts, and the use of proper language.

Now fast forward to about five years.  I look over at my bookshelf, and notice a drastic change in my collection.  My shelves are now occupied by Austen, Dickens, Dumas, and Alcott, because I had decided that I didn’t want to be stuck in the “Dark Ages.”  I resolved to begin reading literature, and I realized that I had been missing out on great reading all my life.  There is such beauty in these authors’ language that has been lost with the advent of emails and txt msgs, bc imo, txts cant rticul8 good eng w/o b-ing long:(, and we are all about “short and to-the-point,” aren’t we?

That’s why Twilight was so popular;  a cute romance with a supernatural twist,  minimal “descriptions,” no “big words,” and a fast-paced plot.  It certainly wasn’t a bestseller because it was any sort of literary masterpiece.

And of course, any lustful thought or action was described in detail, because that’s how to sell a book.  Many of us, unfortunately, followed the crowd, and have the entire saga sitting on our bookshelf.  Have we ever stopped to think about the true implications made in these novels, and other modern works (shout out to “Fifty Shades”)?  Or have we waved our hands and retorted “It’s just a story!”

I argue that it’s not about it being “just a story.”  It’s about the standard that we as Christians agree to live in because we don’t want to reach for anything higher.  I mean, Jane Austen’s novels are all about romance, but at least you won’t shift in your seat in discomfort when an intimate scene is described.

We, as Christians, are the children of the King—that makes us Princes and Princesses, in case you didn’t know.  So if we are meant to dine in a palace, why do we settle for some fast-food McDonalds?