A JOMO LENT [T, 3-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Theology of An Old Man—A JOMO LENT [T, 3-4-24]

 

Tomorrow is the first day of Lent. I think I’ll do a JOMO Lent this year.

That surprises me a little, because I’ve always been a FOMO sort of guy. FOMO is the Fear Of Missing Out.

In our time, however, FOMO actually makes us miss out by taking us into a world that does not exist.

FOMO is why people stare at their screens all day, so they don’t miss out. They walk across streets in traffic, down stairs in the dark, into walls of concrete…all because of FOMO. They put on mismatched socks and backward shirts. FOMO. They stick potato salad in their eye and carrots up their nostrils. FOMO. They give the cat a bath and put the baby outside. FOMO.

But why? What might they miss out on? Nothing real.

That kind of FOMO actually makes us miss out on what is important. It is the opposite of inclusion. It IS missing out. We have FOMO because we want to be included. We fear missing out on inclusion. But you can’t be included on a screen.

We think we can. That’s why we take so many selfies. It still doesn’t work. Our screen-obsession FOMO is actually what causes our epidemic of loneliness. We are included in a false world, and so we miss out on being part of the real world. Our FOMO of missing out on the false world is so great that that we forget about the JOMO which is part of the real world.

JOMO is the Joy Of Missing Out, missing out on the false world. When we start missing out on the false world of the wizard behind the screen, as Dorothy and her friends did in The Wizard of Oz, we begin to know the joy of the real world.

Traditionally, Christians “give up something for Lent,” as a reminder of the sacrifice of Christ. I’m going to give up FOMO. I’ll have a JOMO Lent.

John Robert McFarland