Work with your hands.

There are three words from God in this passage, and they apply to this time as much as they did, if not more than in the time of Paul.

1. Do not act in lust We live, as did the early church, in a sexualized age. There is a lust for glamour, for beauty, for control and ruling over others, and for sexual desire. Paul tells us to be pure. He was not speaking to those who were continually and proud of their sexual sin -- and the Romans, from Cato to Nero were -- but to those of the church, and the warning is for us all: the world is filthy, and in it we can all too easily get stained.
2. Mind our own business Again, there is a temptation to gossip, to politic. The words spoken around the well were hurtful and damaging, but the words spoken on social media can be even more, because the rapidity of response leads to twitter rage and virtue signalling, and neither edify.
3. Get a trade Do not rely on inherited wealth, or patronage. Work with your hands, your skills. Do not be dependant on charity. The satisfaction of a honest day's work comes with a sense of tiredness, and if you are not regulated and managed by others there is less anxiety.

And God will give his righteous Godly Rest, and restoration.

I would add that the mental health promoters are trying to make apps which encourage people to decrease screen time, exercise, eat fruits and vegetables, and to sleep. For in this age too many young people spend all their time looking at laptops and phones, far too long, and from these they never get satisfaction.

Photo by NeONBRAND / Unsplash

1 Thessalonians 4:1-12

4 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. 2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. 8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

What the Thessalonians did, instead of gossiping (Social media is monetized gossip) and being dependant on their sponsor as clients, was that they loved each other. Not as this world thinks: we conflate desire with love. But they worked for each other, lived with each other, formed community. We do not.

In the past, people grew up in small towns or rural areas near small towns, knew most of the people in their neighborhoods, went to school, got jobs, and got married. They moved if they needed more land or saw opportunities in the gold fields, but most stayed put.
We know this because we can read about it in historical books.

One of the results was strong continuity of people in a particular place, and strong continuity of people allowed the development of those “civic associations” people are always going on about. Kids joined clubs at school, clubs at church, then transitioned into adult-aged clubs when they graduated. At every age, there were clubs, and clubs organized and ran events for the community.

Of course club membership was mediated by physical location–if you live in a town you will be in more clubs than if you live in the country and have to drive an hour to get there–but in general, life revolved around clubs (and church, which we can generously call another kind of club, with its own sub clubs.)

In such an environment, it is easy to see how someone could meet their sweetheart at 16, become a functioning member of society at 18, get a job, put a down payment on a house, get married by 20 or 22 and start having children.

Today, people go to college.

Forget your highschool sweetheart: you’re never going to see her again.

After college, people typically move again, because the job they’ve spent 4 years training for often isn’t in the same city as their college.

So forget all of your college friends: chances are you’ll never see any of them again, either.

Now you’re living in a strange city, full of strangers. You know no one. You are part of no clubs. No civic organizations. You feel no connection to anyone.

“Isn’t diversity great?” someone crows over kebabs, and you think “Hey, at least those Muslims over there have each other to talk to.” Soon you find yourself envying the Hispanics. They have a community. You have a bar.

People make do. They socialize after work. They reconnect with old friends on Facebook and discover that their old friends are smug and annoying because Facebook is a filter that turns people smug and annoying.

But you can’t repair all of the broken connections.
-- Evolutionist X

What we need to do is engineer communities. My beloved and I live in the city of her family (mine is the big city, without communities, but with many bars) and she does not want to move.

But this is a college town. Where we have churches, making communities. Let our brotherly love shine, and let us again find community and certainty in the quiet ways of fellowship.

And work with your hands. For the client/sponsor relationship of the ancients still exists, and still enslaves.