> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://mereorthodoxy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Cultivating a Well-Ordered Anthropology in a Dehumanizing World - URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/cultivating-a-well-ordered-anthropology-in-a-dehumanizing-world/ - Published: 2026-09-11T11:00:34.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-11T11:00:34.000Z - Description: We’re today’s Roman emperors, declaring ourselves gods. It’s going about as well for us as it did for folks like Nero. - Author: Mere Orthodoxy - Tags: Nadya Williams, Book Reviews, Journal, Summer 2026, Family, Sexuality **Freya India.** [***GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything***](https://www.amazon.com/GIRLS%C2%AE-Generation-Z-Commodification-Everything/dp/1250442222?ref=mereorthodoxy.com)**. Henry Holt and Co., 2026\. $29.99\. 384 pp.** **Jen Wilkin.** [***Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World***](https://www.crossway.org/books/dust-to-dust-tpb/?ref=mereorthodoxy.com)**. Crossway, 2026\. $16.99\. 208 pp.** The blessed gods alone live forever, ever youthful and unchanging. Everyone in the ancient world knew it. And yet, since time immemorial, people have been on an unrelenting quest to eternal life. The Mesopotamian epic hero and king Gilgamesh traveled beyond the bounds of the known world, conversed with the barmaid at the edge of the universe, and communed with the man who managed to survive the flood and gained the gift of eternal life. But Gilgamesh himself failed in his quest—then died. Greek epic heroes fought for eternal fame, settling for it as the next best thing, since bodily immortality wasn’t on offer. And Roman emperors declared themselves living gods in wishful name-it-claim-it thinking that, in due time, always proved false. Each one of these self-made gods died. But, myths declared, select mortals did find eternal life. The results, however, were not typical—nor they were quite so good at the end. When the Greek goddess of dawn, Eos, fell in love with a mortal prince, Tithonus, she begged Zeus for the gift of eternal life for her beloved. Zeus granted her request. Except, it turns out, it was no blessing. The foolish Eos forgot to ask for eternal youth for Tithonus alongside eternal life. And so, eternal life didn’t help him as he aged along the same timeline as normal mortals do, shriveling, shrinking, declining physically and mentally, until he became just a cricket—nothing but a faint chirping sound devoid of recognizable humanity. Eos quickly fell out of love. We may laugh at tales like this one, but secular modernity puts its own twist on them. Consider the tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, whose Instagram account has 2.4 million followers and boldly declares: “We may be the first generation who won’t die.” His own personal motto is, in fact, “Don’t Die,” and he has been spending $2 million per year on treatments and procedures to make this goal possible. Johnson will turn 50 next year, but he works hard daily to maintain the appearance and health of an 18-year-old. How? It is a delicate science: > When Johnson first wakes up before 5am, he weighs himself on a high-tech scale that looks not just at his weight, but his body fat and hydration level. Then he measures his body temperature—through the ear, thankfully… He takes 54 pills alongside a drink he calls the ‘green giant' containing creatine, cocoa flavanols and collagen peptides, and wears a cap on his head that pumps red light into his scalp to stimulate hair growth—because no man wants to go bald in his old age. He then exercises, undergoing a 25-step process that includes 10 minutes of backward sleds, Nordics, reverse Nordics and ‘IsoTib ankle rotations’ to try and increase his diaphragm strength. Then he eats breakfast, ‘which is a few pounds of vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, garlic and ginger,’ he explains, all of which are chosen for their health-boosting benefits. While this list sounds intense, it is less bizarre than some of the other treatments Johnson has used experimentally. At one point he tried regular blood and plasma transfusions from his teenage son before abandoning the practice, because he couldn’t see measurable benefits—unlike the obviously measurable benefits of eating pounds of broccoli with garlic and ginger for breakfast. The Romans joked that mushrooms were the food of the gods (after poisoned mushrooms led to the death—and prompt deification—of the emperor Claudius). Reading about Johnson’s routine, it is clear that broccoli is the food of this modern self-made god. Something else is clear from these stories, ancient and modern: Anthropology (our thoughts and beliefs about people) and theology (our thoughts and beliefs about the divine) are intertwined. A pagan theology results in a pagan anthropology—the desire to make oneself into a god by any means possible. A theology that recognizes God’s power over all his creations, including the human beings God had created in his own image (Gen. 1:27), results in an anthropology that emphasizes human finitude and utter dependence on God in all seasons of life. We have not created ourselves, and this is good news. Two new books show the implications of poor theology and anthropology for the very young (Gen-Z) and those a bit older respectively. Writer Freya India analyzes the horrific physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual toll that social media has taken on Gen-Z women, effectively stripping them of their personhood and making them into products to optimize with the aid of yet more products. Meanwhile seasoned Bible teacher Jen Wilkin considers our society’s firmly baked-in anti-aging attitudes and presents a response: phases of life are part of God’s plan for our lives; they are a blessing, not a curse. There is nothing new under the sun. Still, technological advances present ever more creative ways of dehumanizing God’s image-bearers—not for our good, and definitely not for God’s glory. \*\*\* It is 8:00pm on a school night in 1999, and I’m on the family computer in that little nook under the stairs in our old rental, doing homework while also logged into AOL Instant Messenger. It is the only way I have of communicating with friends outside of school, aside from just calling a friend’s landline, which is rather awkward and inconvenient—my phone use is strictly monitored and limited. Besides, perhaps it isn’t so much a phone conversation that you want at that moment. You just need to feel a little less alone in suffering through this biology lab report due in the morning. Of course, teens being teens, Instant Messenger was also how some really inappropriate gossip got passed around, but to not be in the know would have led to an embarrassment of its own in school the next day. Information is power, historians affirm, analyzing past empires and civilizations entire. Every teenager can confirm this simply from experience. But the problem with gossip chains is that sometimes you’re just an observer, but other times, you’re at the center of it, and consequences can be emotionally devastating, amplifying insecurities that are already outsized. There is no question about it. Adolescence is not easy, as bodies change fast (I recall habitually bumping into corners, as my legs and arms were in the morning somehow longer than they were the night before), hormones surge, emotions overflow, and wisdom is lacking to make sense of it all. Girls have always felt these changes particularly abruptly or at least in ways different from the typical adolescent boy. And adults around adolescents habitually have felt ill-equipped to help, even while noticing that a crisis is afoot. Indeed, in 1994, as I entered my own teenage years, psychologist Mary Pipher wrote *Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls* to try and make sense of the problems she saw in her patients: “Many girls come into therapy with serious, even life-threatening problems, such as anorexia or the desire to kill or physically hurt themselves. Others have problems less dangerous but still more puzzling, such as school refusal, underachievement, moodiness or constant discord with their parents. Many are the victims of sexual violence.” Pipher asked outright in her introduction: “Why are so many girls in therapy in the 1990s?” Why, she wondered, were the adolescent girls she was treating so much more troubled than she recalled in her own girlhood in the 1960s? Clearly her questions resonated with many readers. The book spent three years on the New York Times bestseller list, selling 1.5 million copies along the way. The answer, Pipher concludes, is the overly sexualized “girl-poisoning culture” into which adolescent girls found themselves thrust, and from which they could not escape whole. Music, movies, television, and other media all encouraged that culture—in turn destroying girls’ emotional well-being and fostering toxic behaviors to match. Freya India was not yet born when Pipher wrote her book. Still, India’s new book, *GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything*, does for Generation Z what Pipher attempted to do for Generation X and millennial girls: try to make sense of the anxieties so readily visible all around. What is happening? What about this crisis is old—and what is utterly new and unprecedented? Last but not least, what can we do about it? \*\*\* “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare said. We’re doing one better (or worse) as a society of late: all the world’s a lab. Specifically, when it comes to Gen-Z girls, the past two decades have been a disastrous lab experiment with human subjects. India describes the experiment and its horrific results based on her own experience as a Gen-Z British woman and from additional evidence of interviews and social media. “My basic argument is simple,” she says. “Modern digital technology amplified the age-old anxieties adolescent girls have always felt. Throughout history, girls and young women have always worried about their appearance, their emotions, their social status, their friendships and families, their romantic relationships, and their futures… The problem, though, is more sinister than that. Not only does the modern world magnify these age-old anxieties, it ruthlessly exploits and profits from them.” India describes, for instance, the rise of Snapchat and Instagram filters for girls’ faces. At first tools were available for girls to modify or filter their faces online with playful tools, creating illusions or temporary avatars of themselves. But pressures kept rising to look ever better, ever younger, ever more like the celebrities and influencers whose videos of doing makeup or getting ready for the day regularly get 15 million or more views. Next came the products for sale—injectables, fillers, makeup, and much, much more: “beauty influencers were getting rich and famous. Girls moved on from watching relatable young women reviewing affordable beauty products to influencers casually vlogging their lip filler appointments and cosmetic surgeries, sometimes as sponsored ads.” These pressures amplified mental health crises, such as eating disorders, to which teenage girls have already been much too prone (as Pipher argued in 1994). But the new mental health crisis, fostered by the many hours Gen-Z girls have been spending online, is only fueled further by online tools that promise to diagnose and medicate girls—all for a price. Online AI therapists are available day or night—for a hefty fee, of course. But more than that, the real problem that goes untreated is “social contagion”—behaviors that spread like the plague among peer groups. Many of the mental health issues Gen-Z girls are battling are the direct result of digitally facilitated social contagion, India argues. These include suicidal ideation and the epidemic of gender dysphoria. Worst of all, the reliance on online tools to solve these problems, caused by endless scrolling and swiping to begin with, only leaves girls more disconnected and detached from other people—lacking real friendships and relationships not only in the crucial teenage years but well into adulthood. In response, not only AI therapists but also AI friends and romantic partners, also available for sale and rising in popularity, promise to step into the breach, ensuring that one could live an entire life without hazarding any interactions with other enfleshed beings. Today’s crisis relies on the same insecurities and longings of girls that the 1990’s “girl-poisoning culture” fostered. Yet it is unprecedented in its technological progress—its ability to deliver the familiar toxins to girls’ brains 24/7, all via tiny rectangular devices in their hands and pockets. Yet the real crisis, when we peer beneath all the superficial layers, is always spiritual. The therapeutic nature of online AI tools only emphasizes this further: “while this therapeutic culture mimics prayer, confession, and even answers our biggest existential questions, one thing is missing: Who is God? In this religion, *we* are the gods.” We’re today’s Roman emperors, declaring ourselves gods. It’s going about as well for us as it did for folks like Nero. So what is the solution? India suggests the restoration of relationships, friendships, connections with other people in the flesh: “An important thing to do, I think, is to defy this cultural message to emotionally detach, this lie that it is liberating to be alone. Not because every young woman should follow the same traditional path, but because it is a tragedy—an outrage, actually—that we have been convinced that human connection is an inconvenience, that other people are obstacles.” The digital media world treats persons as machines, dehumanizing them and remaking them as products to be molded for profit. In response, we must remember (as the Sunday School cliché goes) “who we are and whose we are.” We are God’s image-bearers, created for his joy, pleasure, and glory. We need to live our lives in accordance with this truth—a reality that has repercussions not only for how we interact with the digital world but also for how we think about aging. \*\*\* Another way to summarize the phenomenon India describes, this utter dehumanization of girls through online media tools that make persons into products, is that it is a story. The media world has been attempting (and all too often succeeding) to sell a particular life story to Gen-Z girls. It is a poisonous story of self-creation, self-making and remaking. People are story-tellers—just as God is. Not coincidentally, God gave us his Word, the Bible, in the shape of beautiful and powerful stories. But there is one important distinction between the stories people come up with of their own accord and imagination, and the story that the Bible presents: not all of the stories people tell are true. All the stories in the Bible are. Beyond the realm of social media, another area of our world that is filled with false stories is aging. In her new book *Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World*, Jen Wilkin confronts these false stories, puts them side-by-side with the biblical vision, and reminds us what it means to be a human being, precious in God’s sight and created in his image in all phases of our lives, from birth to dust. “The stories we believe about God, ourselves, and the world shape our feelings and govern the way we live,” she reminds, stating a truth equally applicable to India’s observations about the ravages of social media on girls. The problem is, our society glorifies youth and deeply fears aging and old age, so it tells false narratives about age—exemplified by such sayings as “age is just a number.” Many products exist to hide aging or slow it down—from milder and less visible plastic surgery procedures (the OB-GYN office I went to for the first part of my second pregnancy had walls plastered with Botox ads) to more extreme measures of the sort Bryan Johnson lives by. For Johnson, the goal is to perpetually maintain an epigenetic age of 18\. Anything over it is a failure. There are ramifications, though, to such false narratives. They destroy our relationships with others, and they deny a basic fact of what it means to be human, limited and finite: We will all grow old and die. True, as Christ promised, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26), but until then, this is our lot and denying it through false narratives will not negate their outcome. So what does the Bible say about personhood at every stage of life? To help answer this question, Wilkin structures the book as an extended chiasmus (or chiasm). Bible readers may have heard of a basic chiastic structure—when the narrative proceeds by structuring the two halves of a poem or a story to mirror each other. Consider how you might narrate a walk down the block and then back again. This basic chiasm has an ABBA structure, with just two elements that are mirrored from the first half of the story to the second. But elaborate extended chiasms are common in ancient literature, with elements that mirror each other across an entire book scroll, such as the ABCDEDCBA structure of Book 3 of Homer’s *Iliad*. We talk about the importance of beginnings and endings in stories—and they certainly matter for ancient literature as well. But the key in lengthy chiastic narratives is to recognize the importance of the middle—for to it the first half of the narrative points, and from it the second half proceeds. In the case of Book 3 of the *Iliad*, that crucial middle features the duel between Menelaus and Paris, Helen’s respective husband and kidnapper-lover. The duel is important, as it could potentially just end the war. But the mirroring elements on either side of the middle are no less significant either and heighten the drama of the duel. The same is true for the drama of our lives. Our entire life, from birth to old age, Wilkin argues, can be structured as an extended chiasm. First, our birth and our death mirror each other, as both involve a labor followed by first breath and final breath respectively. Then our early years of life and the final years of life generally involve complete dependence on others for basic needs. Next, the years of adolescence with their increasing independence mirror “senior adulthood” with its decreasing independence. In the final pairing, our early adulthood and “late midlife” are both defined by caregiving—of children in the first case and of aging parents in the second. Finally, in that important middle spot of the chiasm, to which and from which the other mirroring pairs proceed, we find midlife—age forty to fifty-five. “If you have ever hiked to a mountain peak, you know the sensation of looking back toward the way you came with clearer perspective. And you know the sensation of looking at the return path and getting a sense of the distance and the effort it will require. Midlife is like that, an opportunity for taking stock… Midlife is simultaneously a liminal space and a point of no return.” It took turning forty for me to gain an interest in my family history and my past as an immigrant twice over. Only when I turned forty did I understand how incredibly difficult it must have been for my parents to emigrate from the country where they had spent their entire lives up to that point. And now, in my own midlife, I begin looking ahead at what lies on the downward path of this mountain peak. It is easy for us to treasure cute babies and to accept their utter dependence on us for all their needs, including in the middle of the night. It is more difficult to treasure old age—whether ours or that of those we love, as they grow as needy as babies over time. But all of these life stages are gifts from God. We are persons, beloved of God, at each point in life’s arc, Wilkin reminds her readers. These reminders are necessary. Because of our culture’s devaluing of old age and idolization of youth, we fail to see not only how God sees older men and women, but also how invaluable the Bible considers their role in the local church. Older men and women are called to teach those younger than them (Titus 2), but in our churches today, pastors barely out of college are not unheard of. Those serving in youth ministry, in particular, are sometimes barely older than the teens they are called to disciple. What kind of story are we telling in the process about different life stages in our churches? On and on life goes, if we are blessed to live a long one. The chiastic pairing of the respective stages on either end of midlife reminds us that all of them matter, all of them a gift to us and to those around us, if only we use our time here to serve. “Bodies age, people develop,” Wilkin repeats as a mantra throughout her book. God shaped the first man out of dust, and to dust we will all return. But also, God has numbered all our days, so along with the Psalmist, Wilkin encourages us to cling to this truth: “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). We are not gods. We’re not even emperors. And we are certainly not God. But we are his workmanship, a true masterpiece (Eph. 2:10), children of dust though we are. God created us for a relationship with him, for however long our life span on this earth will last. More importantly, we know that we will spend eternity with him. And until then, perhaps broccoli in moderation won’t hurt either.