22 The Hunger for Real: No Perfume Can Fix a Plastic Tree
You can spray citrus air freshener on a plastic tree, but it will never bear fruit.
Likewise:
- a perfect worship set
- flawless production
- passionate sermons
- lights and smoke and lasers and big bass
- emotional crescendos
- trendy graphics
can never produce:
- repentance
- holiness
- spiritual power
- brotherhood
- priesthood
- Zoe-life
Gen Z wants fruit, not fragrance.
They want, and maybe we all want?
- real transformation
- real confession
- real holiness
- real courage
- real love
- real shared life, as Jesus said in three out of four Gospels, a version of “100 mothers, brothers, sisters, lands, possessions, and Zoe Life, for all who truly Believe, who Let Go.” Not 100 third cousins you see on “holidays”
- real spiritual authority
- real faith
- real Jesus
They don’t want the scent of life.
They want the substance of life.
This is why so many Gen Z teens and young adults walk away from attendance-church but remain spiritually hungry.
They’re not walking away from Jesus.
They’re walking from the imitation ecosystem that cannot sustain, excite, or Change the human soul.
You cannot fix a plastic tree.
It must be uprooted and replaced with a living one.
Jesus didn’t perfume the fig tree.
He cursed it.
Gen Z feels the same way.