In December 2024, Luigi Mangione murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and Lily Phillips’ slept with 100 men in a single day. At first glance, these events seem unrelated—one driven by populist rage, the other by the collapse of traditional sexual ethics. But together, they gesture toward the wrath and wretchedness of late modernity. We live in a cultural moment captivated by the urge to destroy and lost to the despair of living in the ruins. Luigi embodies the impulse to tear down; Lily, the disillusionment of living in the wreckage.
Like Luigi and Lily, I’m part of Gen Z—a generation wrestling with the frustration of a fractured world and the desperate search for meaning in its aftermath. I’ve seen peers celebrate Luigi as a hero, striking back against a corrupt system, while others hailed Lily’s actions as a triumph of sexual liberation. As a Gen Z Christian, these stories weigh heavily, prodding me with a profoundly personal apologetic question: How do I engage faithfully with this wrecked, unlivable wasteland?
Luigi Mangione and the Spirit of Destruction
When Luigi Mangione killed Brian Thompson, it didn’t just shock the world; it split it. Some saw him as a folk hero, a vigilante striking back against a healthcare system prioritizing profit over people. Others condemned him outright. Yet the cheers following the attack revealed something deeper than the condemnation: we simmer with populist rage.
This isn’t novel. We’ve all seen populist anger become a defining feature of our era: from January 6 to viral school board confrontations to attempted (and actual) assassinations. While these moments arise from different ideological commitments, they share a common thread: the belief that destruction—whether symbolic or literal—is the only way to be heard.
Mangione’s story is emblematic of this mood. To those cheering Mangione, Brian Thompson wasn’t a human; he was a CEO—a representation of everything wrong with a healthcare system they viewed as corrupt and unfixable. This sense of frustration has galvanized support for Mangione, with money raised for his legal defense and his actions being praised online as a necessary rebellion. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania even took to her TikTok to hail Luigi as “the icon we all need and deserve.”
If Luigi is the icon, then destruction is the sacrament–a participation in the divine spirit of destruction, a faith built on the belief that tearing down oppressive structures is the only road to justice. But destruction alone is a dangerous road. It often leaves behind wreckage for the following generations – for people like Lily Phillips.
Lily Phillips and the Spirit of Despair
While Luigi’s story represents the desire to destroy, Lily Phillips’ story reveals the consequences of living in the ruins. The OnlyFans model gained attention for her challenge to sleep with 100 men in a single day, presenting it as a celebration of sexual freedom. Yet by the end of her YouTube video, Phillips broke down in tears, describing feelings of disassociation and unfulfillment. Several days later, she announced her intention to sleep with 1,000 men in 24 hours.
Lily’s tears aren’t just personal; they are generational. She embodies the despair of a culture that has stripped sex of its meaning, leaving my generation to sort through the rubble. Gen Z has inherited a world left hollow by the “Luigis” of the sexual revolution — a world where traditional values, dismissed as irredeemable, have been dismantled in the name of progress. But in their place, we were given nothing.
And so, like Lily, we grasp for meaning in the emptiness. For her, it’s sex—but not sex as connection or intimacy, not sex as something sacred or transformative. Instead, it’s sex as a transaction, as a spectacle, as a desperate attempt to matter in a culture that treats people as disposable. She calls it liberation, but her body and emotions tell a different story.
This is the world Gen Z inhabits—a wasteland where intimacy has been replaced by performance and connection by clicks and views. If the Christian sexual ethic once felt like the prison walls of Alcatraz, our escape to a postmodern ethos of “do whatever feels right” has led us to freedom more akin to drowning in the Pacific—freed, yet gasping for something real. And Lily’s decision to push further, to double down on what has already left her broken, is not an act of empowerment; it’s the reaction of someone so lost and confused that they don’t know where else to turn.
Her story is a devastating reminder of what happens when a generation is raised in the aftermath of destruction. The "Luigis" of the past tore down what they saw as oppressive, but they didn’t think about what would come next. Now, in the ruins of those old structures, we are left with questions they never bothered to ask: What is sex for? What does it mean to be known? What is a girl worth?
Lily’s despair is not hers alone. It belongs to all of us who live in the ruins of sex, searching for meaning in a culture that can’t provide it. Her story isn’t just about the consequences of tearing down boundaries—it’s a stark warning to my generation. We are living proof that you cannot destroy without rebuilding, that the rubble of progress is no place to live.
Jesus and the Spirit of Renewal
As Christians in the age of Luigi Mangione and Lily Phillips, we are called to a different response. In an age defined by tearing down, we must build.
Mangione was a Zealot. And of course, Jesus had space for Zealots in his entourage, but they needed to lay down the sword. The gospel calls us to something more radical: use our strength not to destroy the strong but to serve the weak. Jesus, though vocal about the injustices of Rome and religious elites, didn’t focus on tearing them down. Instead, he built a social body, a kingdom that would outlast them: a community of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed that would stand long after the empires fell.
And to the Lily Phillipses of his day, the prodigal daughters enslaved to the despair of promiscuity, Jesus offered new life out of death. He didn’t just condemn the brokenness around them; he invited them into something better—a vision of life marked by restoration, purpose, and hope. He met people where they were, whether in shame, sorrow, or sin, and pointed them to a new way of being, one anchored in love and dignity. His way wasn’t simply a rejection of the world’s chaos; it was an invitation to help rebuild it, to join in the work of renewal that reflected the beauty of God’s design.
As late modernity grows less livable, nothing has changed. Luigi expressed no remorse for his actions and remains defiant: his violence was justified. Meanwhile, Lily announced plans to escalate her challenge, aiming to sleep with 1,000 men in a single day. If anything, their stories suggest that the cycles of destruction and despair are deepening, with no end in sight.
This makes the church’s mission even more urgent. As the embodiment of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, the church must reflect this mission today. The church is uniquely positioned to be a place for both the Luigi’s and Lily’s of my generation. For those like Luigi, who are driven by anger and a longing for justice, the church can offer a way to channel that passion into restoration rather than destruction—a call to protect the vulnerable and build systems of care. For those like Lily, who live in the ruins of what has been torn down, the church can offer a vision of meaning, connection, and love—a place where dignity is restored and freedom is tethered to purpose.
Luigi’s story reminds us of the need to prevent destruction, to build in the face of failing systems before they collapse entirely. Lily’s story calls us to rebuild in the aftermath, to bring truth and love into places where destruction has already left its mark. Together, they reveal the spirit of our age—destruction and despair—but also the opportunity for something greater. In this cultural moment, even as the world shows little sign of turning away from its destructive path, the church has the opportunity to be a sign of life: a place that offers justice without destruction and meaning without despair. This is the way of Christ, who transforms ruin into restoration and calls us to build for his Kingdom that heals rather than harms.
