But this little word is more than just a section on an app.
Status seeking and Gen Z
According to a superb recent post by Eddie LaRow on the blog Mere Orthodoxy, STATUS is the reason why Gen Z is consumed with being 'online'.
He describes the pursuit of status in various ways throughout the article, such as it being a 'quest for recognition'; 'hope of getting likes and views'; 'the desire [for] the approval and applause of others'; a 'hunt for attention'; as 'fame'; 'identity'; and 'social capital'.
He takes the reader on a journey through history and acknowledges that this seeking of status is nothing new... from Adam and Eve, to Jesus' disciples each wanting to be the greatest, to people seeking material wealth in the 1960s as a sign of status and the current desire for social media presence.
LaRow gets so much so right, even to how since Adam and Eve we have sought status the wrong way, and that we need to call the younger generations to seek eternal status rather than earthly status.
Yet in this excellent article I believe there is a vital link that is overlooked, like its a blind spot just outside the normal field of vision. I'll come to that in a moment.
Status and Culture
'Status' is also the topic of a book mentioned in LaRow's article, called 'Status and Culture' written by David Marx in 2022. Marx explains how status and culture are so intertwined, you can't understand one without understanding the other. He shows how status contexts in our social hierarchies shape our lives. He says 'we all compete for status whether we like it or not'.
It's a reality that is part of all our lives, whether we realise it or not!
(...I have yet to read the entire book but I am eager to do so - the sample part on Amazon has whet my appetite!).
Early in the book he makes some interesting observations about status and says:
1. Status denotes a position within a social hierarchy based on respect and perceived importance
2. Every status position comes with specific rights and duties with the most desirable benefits accruing to those at the top
3. Status is bestowed by others
4. Our status position is always contextual based on how we are treated in a particular time and place
He goes on to also quote a sociologist by the name of Pitirim Sorokin, who is to have said: 'any organised social group is a stratified social body. there has not been and there does not exist any permanent social group that is 'flat' and in which all members are equal. (He hasn't realised that the church is called to be this 'flat' counter-cultural group in which all members are equal in status value in Christ's body even if they differ in role).
He also quotes another sociologist Cecilia L Ridgeway who apparently stated that hierarchies ''are a human invention to manage social situations' (human, yes, in the sense that as sinful human beings we developed societies that were outside of God's good initial plan and thus are managed in mis-placed ways with mis-placed senses of hierarchy).
He talks about the apparent human need to find security in knowing where they are in social position and that higher status is what we desire. He also links status to issues of 'esteem' and alludes to how gaining status being seen as the pathway to power and glory and to avoid and overcome the fear of status loss.
He makes many very astute and deeply thoughtful assessments and analyses, that are often missed, very helpful, useful and needful for the wider world to read.
The Missing Link
As I said, I haven't read David Marx's whole book, but what I noticed was even though the article and what I read of the book so far are extremely observant, perceptive and even analytically correct in what they say, they miss something extremely important. And its something I have noticed many other observers are missing.
And that is how they stop at status, and miss its deeper root of 'honour'.
In the part of the Marx book I was able to read online, he did mention that status is based on 'respect…' and the words 'honor' and 'shame' did briefly appear but didn't seem to be focussed on…although as I said I hadn't read the whole book yet, and I apologise in advance if that latter part of the book makes that clear connection to honour (although I see no entry in reference index at the end of the book of the word 'honor').
Both writers like many others get it right that we all desire status, they get it right that its not just a Gen Z issue, they get it right that it relates to hierarchy, they get it right that it relates to recognition, likes, fame, attention, approval, applause, identity, and social capital.
Marx goes looking for the reason for this hunger status in evolutionary thought and animal hierarchy. LaRow sees more clearly to realise that its evidence across humanity as something rooted in a mis-placed idolatrous way since Adam and Eve and need re-orienting in a 'kingdom of God' way.
Yet there wasn't that clear connection to the root issues of honour and shame. Honour and shame are not merely associated issues that lightly contribute to help us understand 'status', with presuming that 'status' is the main thing. Our desire for 'status' is entirely rooted in and fed by our desire for the main thing which is honour. I don't think this is splitting hairs, but is a 'so close yet so far' important issue.
Honour and Shame have slowly emerged in recent years in the areas of psychology and counselling with clear identification of the term 'shame' and other terms such as stigma or humiliation fairly easily associated with it.
From my observation, honour however doesn't get as clearly identified as a concept, nor as the opposite of shame. It tends to show up in words like 'dignity', 'respect', and of course 'status', but without clear connection to the 'umbrella' term or root issue, of honour.
But is this a big deal?
I think it is a big deal more than we realise, and it is a link that the Evil One would like us to overlook.
This 'missing link' to the fundamental dynamic of honour not only keeps us from better 'connecting the dots' and realising the root issue that needs to be addressed, but as Christians it then keeps us making the clear connection to the wider concept of honour throughout Scripture. We then are more vulnerable to miss the next connection that honour is basically just another word for glory.
LaRow makes no clear connection of status with honour and shame as a concept, or honour and shame scripturally. Marx of course makes no connection with Scripture and tries to seek to understand it through an evolutionary lens. Without making the correct honour connections, we see issues like status as less connected to the wider biblical reality of glory that fills our entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
Our status obsession is what another book by JR Vasser has rightly called 'Glory Hunger'. That book very clearly takes the reader to the source of the problem, not just socially, but spiritually, and clearly outlines God's answer. It's a book I highly recommend.
…to conclude
STATUS seeking is an issue infecting our world in plague proportions - a world desperate to find significance, security and satisfaction in earthly glory that will never satisfy at any level. A world that has no sense of ascribed honour as created by God, and unaware of ascribed honour offered to us in being made new creations in Christ, is seeking to find it via 'achieved' routes amidst social media.
Let us be bringers of God's good news of our honour as created by Him in His image, and of Christ's achieved honour for us for eternity, that reconiles us to God and brings freedom from the bondage of trying to achieve our own honour—that not only will never satisfy on earth, but will never be sufficient for access to honour for eternity.
The truth about true eternal honour is given to us to bring to the world to set people free from seeking empty earthly status.
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