The system is rigged. That’s how it feels, anyway, when you’re Gen Z and you keep hearing older people say, “Just work hard and it will all pay off,” while everything around you screams the opposite. You grow up watching people with money and connections glide ahead, while your friends juggle school, jobs, and side hustles just to afford rent or gas. You’re told you can be anything, but the price tag on “anything” gets higher every year.
Growing Up in a Loaded Game
From the time you’re a kid, the pressure starts. Get good grades, take the advanced classes, play sports, join clubs, serve in the community, build a resume, pick a college, choose a major that’s “practical” but also “fulfilling.” You’re making decisions at 16 or 17 that can shape your whole financial future, often without really understanding what debt means or how long it will follow you.
Then you graduate into a world where “entry‑level” jobs want three years of experience, internships are unpaid or underpaid, and housing costs look like phone numbers. You hear, “We did it, so can you,” and something in you pushes back: “You didn’t start with this level of tuition, this housing market, this job insecurity.” It’s not that older generations never struggled; it’s that the starting line has moved, and pretending it hasn’t just makes you feel more alone.
Underneath the frustration is a deep question: “If I do everything they told me to do, will it really matter? Or is the outcome already decided by who my parents are, what zip code I live in, and whether I got lucky?”
When Institutions Break Trust
It’s not just about money. It’s about trust. You watch scandal after scandal break in government, churches, schools, and big companies—leaders saying all the right words about integrity and values while covering up abuse or protecting their own reputations. You see people with power skate by with a carefully crafted apology while ordinary people get crushed by consequences.
Every time an institution fails to protect the vulnerable or refuses to own its sin, it confirms the feeling that the rules are flexible for some and iron‑clad for others. If you’re young, powerless, or on the outside, you learn quickly: the system is really good at protecting itself. It feels like there’s one game on the surface—fairness, process, justice—and another game underneath—connections, image, spin.
For a Christian, this creates a deep tension. You’re told God loves justice, that the church is the family of God, that leaders should be servants. Then you see leaders lie, churches cover up, and victims silenced. It’s not hard to see why so many in Gen Z say, “I’m not walking back into that building.” The hurt feels personal, and the hypocrisy stings.
The Internet: Exposing and Exhausting
Then there’s social media. In some ways, it helps you see reality more clearly. People record and share what used to stay hidden—corruption, brutality, racism, abuse, spiritual manipulation. Stories that would once have been buried can go viral, and that can be a real mercy for victims.
But that constant stream of brokenness comes with a cost. Your brain gets trained to expect bad news. If you care at all about justice, you end up living with emotional whiplash: you scroll, you’re outraged, you feel guilty for not doing more, and you feel helpless because you can’t fix any of it. Caring starts to hurt. Not caring feels wrong. So you bounce between the two.
It’s easy, in that environment, to buy the line, “Everything is broken and nothing will change.” Some people respond by throwing themselves into constant activism and burning out. Others go the opposite way—tuning out, numbing themselves with entertainment, or drifting into dark, fatalistic spaces that preach a “black‑pill” kind of despair: “The game is rigged, and there’s no point trying.”
Love, Sex, and a Rigged Relationship Script
Relationships feel rigged too. Dating apps treat people like products: swipe, match, chat, ghost, repeat. Pornography shapes expectations before many people ever have a real‑life relationship, teaching them to see bodies as objects and intimacy as a performance. Online “relationship gurus” give conflicting advice: some tell guys that women are the enemy, others tell girls that men are all dangerous and disposable.
You’re supposed to find real love and lasting commitment in a culture that doesn’t know what commitment is and often mocks it when it sees it. You want something solid—a relationship where you’re not being used, tested, or compared to someone on a screen. But the scripts you’re handed feel shallow and disposable. So you either play along and feel empty, or you step back and feel lonely.
From a Christian perspective, this is especially confusing. You hear that God designed sex and marriage for your good, that He calls men and women to honor one another. But you also see Christian marriages fall apart and church people treat purity as a performance instead of a posture of the heart. It’s easy to conclude that even God’s design has been swallowed up by a rigged system.
A Christian Confession: Yes, It’s Rigged
Here’s the strange twist: if you’re a Christian, you actually have to admit that, in a sense, the system really is rigged. Scripture says the world is fallen. Sin bends everything—hearts, families, institutions, economies, politics, even churches. Nothing in this world is perfectly neutral. Power tends to protect itself. People tend to use one another. Creation itself groans under the weight of all this.
So your frustration is not a sign that you’re overly dramatic; it’s a sign you’re awake. You’re reacting to something that really is wrong. The Bible doesn’t tell you, “Relax, everything’s fine.” It tells you, “You’re right to see that things are broken—and here’s why, and here’s what God is doing about it.”
That matters, because it keeps you from two dangerous lies. One lie says, “Stop complaining and just play the game. Don’t think about justice; just look out for yourself.” The other says, “Burn it all down. Nothing matters. Hope is for suckers.” The gospel refuses both.
Living Honestly in a Crooked World
From a Christian perspective, the goal is not to pretend the system is fair, and it’s not to surrender to despair. It’s to learn how to live honestly in a crooked world without letting it own you.
That looks small and unimpressive most of the time. It’s choosing to tell the truth even when lying would be easier. It’s keeping your word when everyone else flakes. It’s protecting vulnerable people instead of exploiting them. It’s refusing to use people sexually, even when the culture tells you that’s normal. It’s doing your work with integrity when no one is watching.
Those choices can feel pointless. They do not always “pay off.” Sometimes you lose opportunities because of them. That’s where faith comes in. You trust that God sees every act of hidden faithfulness. You trust that He will bring every deed into judgment, that nothing done in His name is wasted—even if the system never rewards you for it.
You also learn to lament. Christians don’t have to slap a smiley face on injustice. You can pray like the psalmists: “How long, O Lord?” You can grieve over corrupt leaders, broken churches, and unfair systems without losing your grip on hope. Lament is not complaining into a void; it is bringing your pain to a God who hears, remembers, and acts.
The System Isn’t Ultimate
In the end, this is the key: the system may be rigged, but it is not ultimate. Governments, corporations, school boards, courts, universities, even churches in their earthly structures—they all rise and fall. They all get judged. They are not the final word on your life.
Jesus stepped into a rigged system Himself. He faced an unjust trial, corrupt religious leaders, a cynical governor, and a mob easily manipulated by those in power. The most innocent man who ever lived was condemned so that guilty people could be forgiven. In other words, He let the system do its worst to Him so that it would never have the final say over you.
If you’re Gen Z, that matters. It means your life is not defined by your GPA, your income, your follower count, or whether you manage to beat the odds. It means your worth is not on the auction block. It means you can work for good, speak truth, love people, and pursue justice without carrying the impossible burden of fixing the world on your own shoulders.
Maybe the system is rigged. But it isn’t God. It isn’t forever. And it isn’t strong enough to cancel what Jesus has done or what He promises to do. In a world that keeps telling you the game is already decided, that might be the most freeing truth you could ever hear.