Beauty Will Save The World
The heavy task of Gen-Alpha and the call for the rest of us to cheer them on
I’m writing this post during a time when just last week:
Iran attacks Pakistan and Pakistan retaliates, killing 9 people (amid the genocide in Gaza).
The war between Hamas and Israel enters its fourth month, where many are calling this a genocide and not a war (with over 30,000 Palestinians dead, mainly women, children, and the elderly).
The war in Ukraine and Russia rages on, with the future for Ukraine looking bleak.
World War 3 anyone?
Human slavery is at an all-time high, such as places like the Congo, where human slave labor is being used in cobalt mines to fuel the surge in battery development for tech devices all around the world.
In the U.S. we’re well underway in the presidential election year, and it’s nothing I or millions of other Americans are really looking forward to, due to the ugliness we’ll see in the debates, and in the situation of having to pick between the “lesser of two evils”.
There is so much more happening around the world and none of this chaos seems like it’s going to end.
My hunch is the inevitability of human greed for money and power will win and innocent people will be the payment. This future, if actualized, must be met with a counter-force.
An affront to death, destruction, and chaos, is beauty, art, and peace. This is on the menu for Gen-Alpha to create.
If you didn’t know, Gen-Alpha is projected to be the most creative generation to ever exist. Unfortunately, most people writing about this prediction simply relegate this generation of youth to the areas of advertisement and marketing.
But there is a more profound purpose for Gen-Alpha I see, than making a few additional bucks for corporations and organizations.
Gen-Alpha’s innate drive to create will be the mechanism that saves the world from the ugliness we see on the daily. Not because they are fueling the capitalistic markets across the world, therefore bringing global salvation through a flourishing global economy. But because the beauty they create through beautiful pieces of art will cut through the bleak and ugly reality which will settle in as the norm.
The art they create can be an oasis in the dry desert of chaos.
Recently, I’ve been using this phrase, “return to the Garden of Eden”. It’s a short-form phrase of what I believe the Gospel is and leads us toward - a moment in history when humanity and God will be in perfect community once again, just as it was in the Garden. It’s the telos of humanity and the cosmos, with the New Heavens and the New Earth coming in full radiance (Revelation 21). Echoing the beauty, peace, and order found in the opening and closing pages of the Bible, we as created beings are tasked to create beautiful things, while in the in-between of the Garden of Eden and the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Gen-Alpha has the tall order to create beauty, art, and peace. In doing so, they can live out the heart of Jesus when He prayed, “on earth as it is in heaven”. Because what better remedy is there for the offspring of sin (death, destruction, division, and disorder) than the Kingdom of Heaven and all of her glory? I can find none.
Beauty and art will be the means by which glimpses of heaven will be seen, experienced, and felt on earth, unraveling the chaos of the times.
If you’re reading this, more than likely, you are not part of Gen-Alpha. So what does this mean for you?
It means you have a job.
And to the farthest extent, perhaps even a moral obligation to help foster growth in the creativity among the current generation of youth or at least help create spaces for this to happen.
People say, “the youth are the future”. I say it too, because I believe it; and it’s not just a pithy saying. It’s a phrase that establishes one’s perspective to cultivate a healthy generation in the present, so in the future, humanity can flourish.
Pour out your time, energy, efforts, and resources in this up-and-coming generation. Their effect and force in our space and time in history will be more significant than what most people may believe right now. Far from being a simple generation of “iPad kids”, in a sense, they will be the generation the world will need in the years to come. Your involvement now, matters.
Whether you are Gen-Alpha or not, as the world seems darker each day, may the beautiful things we create - whether it be art, friendships, families, children, words, and spaces - remind us of what once was in the Garden and what will one day come in full radiance with Christ Jesus, our King and friend. So keep creating beautiful things, because beauty will ultimately save the world.