Why Finding Purpose in God’s Wisdom Beats Performative Activism
At a point in college, I felt alone.
I mean, I knew people. I even had a girlfriend.
But then my roommate, who was my brother, dropped out.
After that, I seemed to go from alone to lonely in the blink of an eye.
I began to question my purpose in school and life. Why was I there?
My Performative Activism Journey
Around that same time, a dude staying in my dorm knocked on my door one day. I’d seen him around but didn’t know him “know him” then.
I opened the door, and he made a pitch.
He was recruiting members for a new student organization.
If you knew me before my brother left, this type of solicitation would have been met with a swift, loud, buzzer-sounding rejection.
Instead, Jon caught me in a moment of weakness.
He talked about the benefits of building a resume through community service and even posed the obligatory “ethnic” upsell of helping “our people.”
I Messed Up
Looking back, I laugh at my half-baked attempt to have meaning in my life and feel purposeful.
Yeah, I joined the organization with reservations, of course. I was never the one to be comfortable in social groups.
The experience was just what I expected—a lot of hype with minimal substance.
I don’t feel that bad, though, because I did learn some things that have informed my political outlook today.
My experience in that organization is analogous to government bureaucracy at any level.
There was a lot of talking, promises, and social events, but the actual action that helped people was not on the front burner.
A Momentary Fad, That’s What It is
So am I surprised when I see a lot of young kids “fighting the power” all across the country in the name of whatever social justice cause of the day?
Not one bit. A United Way group survey found that over half(51%) of Gen Zers were active in rallies or protests. From my experience, at least half of those are just going along to be social or fit in, not because they truly understand the cause.
I would put myself in that category back in the day.
And that’s why I don’t take nonviolent protests very seriously. (Although I am a hawk for squashing violent mobs with a passion.)
The Moral of This Story is…
If you’re young, odds are, you’ll grab at anything that feels meaningful—even if it’s just rockin’ a hashtag.
We no longer live in the eras where day-to-day life was a struggle to put food on the table at the end of the day. This means the existential purpose that drove man for daily survival across centuries is no longer a thing.
But we still have that drive for a more profound sense of purpose to satisfy. And we should. We were designed as such, as in Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He also puts eternity in their mind.”
Many interpret this phrase as God placing a longing or sense of something greater—possibly purpose or meaning—within humans.
Why Does this Matter?
Because wasting hoards of time in performative activism like I did leads nowhere. Yes, my wasted energy wasn’t at random protests here and there like you see these days.
I actually had to spend a couple of years navigating organizational bureaucracy to learn “this was going nowhere.”
So, my advice, first and foremost, is to let God’s wisdom define your life’s real purpose. The world doesn’t need more performative noise.
It needs more people to effect “real” change.
What Real Change Looks Like
What kickstarts real change in a society is a few people becoming wiser and making gradual improvements. Then, the movement slowly grows.
Think about cigarette smoking. When I was a kid, it was still prevalent. These days, it has gradually faded into the sunset.
In some cases, what’s going on now is mayhem and destruction for its own sake. The Tesla-related vandalism is a good example. In my opinion, it is all to fill an individual’s internal void that only real purpose can fill.
Real Purpose Lies in God’s Wisdom
For me, real purpose manifested when I understood that I couldn’t live my life trying to be a fake “hero” so that I could feel good momentarily.
The world needs more people living for things greater than their fulfillment. It requires more people following God’s master plan and striving for gradual, slow, substantive change—WITHIN THEMSELVES!
I can honestly say that this formula has done one of the most incredible things for my family and society at large—it has formulated a decent, well-adjusted, generally wise, intact group of people who are a credit to God’s ultimate purpose.
And that’s the kind of activism that will positively change societies and God’s world in the long run.
