Many of us in the West live in a post-Christendom culture—a time and place that has moved “beyond” the era in which Christianity was culturally dominant, privileged, and somewhat the “assumed” faith of most people. Of course this isn’t true in every pocket of the United States—the American South, for example, still has many features of Christendom throughout—but it is true when one looks at America or Western culture as a whole.
Probably one of the best tools I’ve come across to help with ministry in a post-Christendom culture is The Gospel After Christendom, which is a collection of essays by writers associated with The Gospel Coalition, and edited by Collin Hansen, Ivan Mesa, and Skyler Flowers. I read the book almost a year ago now, around when it first released, and I have referenced it a number of times both in this newsletter and in my ministry work in the last year. I highly recommend this resource.
Is This All There Is?
In his essay for the book, Gavin Ortlund explores “the approach,” or how Christians are to address unbelief and demonstrate that it is an untenable way of living.
Perhaps the most striking part of Gavin’s essay, for me, is when he writes on the pervasive meaninglessness that is inescapable today. I see this especially in areas concerning younger people and how they see the world.
Gavin writes:
Unmoored from God, human life has become characterized by a sense of chaos and disintegration. Lacking a transcendent anchor, we become free to determine who and what we are, how and why to live.
Then, after writing about some popular existentialist thought (Camus, Sartre, etc.) within the “new atheism” movement, Gavin observes:
…the huge spike in anxiety and depression in recent years suggests that the concerns of these existentialist philosophers have not lost their relevance. And soberingly, to Camus’s point, suicide rates continue to rise.
I agree with everything Gavin is writing here—it’s hard not to, given the data that backs it all up—but every time I come face-to-face with the growing feelings of meaninglessness and hopelessness and Nihilism in all spheres of life, I just wonder, “Why? Why is anxiety and depression and all the rest increasing at such alarming rates?”
If you asked a room full of Christians who observe culture and trends like this, you’d have a diversity of answers, I think, but every time I hear about the continued rise of anxiety and depression and feelings of meaninglessness, I come back to the same answer.
I think that it’s the phones. More specifically, I think it’s that our phones and other various devices have put the world in our pockets. And now that we have the world, we recognize that it isn’t enough.
We have all manners of pleasure—however sinful or righteous—a touch away at any time. We have all of this, but yet we don’t have it. We can see every wonder of the world and yet not experience it.
And I think it has left many of us wondering, “Is this all there is?”
And that question, rather than leading many to wonder at what could be beyond—what kind of Creator could have orchestrated this celestial symphony—it has led many to say, “Yes, this must really be all there is. And man, it’s kinda a bummer. It may not even be worth living for.”
Culturally it’s like we’ve turned into the Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes, seeing all the world has to offer and recognizing none of it matters, without any hope of faith coming in behind it. This is part of why I love Ecclesiastes so much—I’m not sure there is a book of the Bible that so presciently addresses the constant heartache that people seem to feel, wondering if anything matters when you can see and hear anything you’ve ever wanted without ever actually experiencing it.
Everything Everywhere All of the Time
Bo Burnham’s 2021 comedy special Inside is, in my view, the most important cultural artifact to come out of the COVID pandemic, and I think it pretty much perfectly encapsulates the meaninglessness that plagues us, especially young people, today.
Of course you have the anxiety anthems “That Funny Feeling” and “All Eyes On Me,” which shed light on the matter at hand. But I think “Welcome To The Internet” is probably the most relevant to the point I’m making here.
Here’s a good bit of the lyrics explaining what I mean:
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the timeYou know, it wasn’t always like this
Not very long ago
Just before your time
Right before the towers fell, circa ‘99
This was catalogs
Travel blogs
A chat room or two
We set our sights and spent our nights
Waiting
For you, you, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad
You were barely two
And it did all the things
We designed it to doNow look at you, oh
Look at you, you, you
Unstoppable, watchable
Your time is now
Your inside’s out
Honey, how you grew
And if we stick together
Who knows what we’ll do
It was always the plan
To put the world in your hand
It wasn’t always like this. It doesn’t have to be like this.1 But it is.
We have the whole world in our hands, and a good percentage of us have never known life to be any different.
It leaves us wondering, “Is this all there is?”
The answer is, “No! There is so much more! This is but a tip of the iceberg of all that there is!”
But if isn’t available to us on our phones, will we even pay attention?2 Does it even matter? Does anything?
We weren’t made to see and hear anything we want any time we want, and it’s breaking us, making us ask questions whose answers may not be found in the places we’re willing to pay attention.
“Is this all there is?” is the question that just won’t go away. And I’m not sure we’re getting much better at answering it.
I think one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that we’ve sort of come to just accept the inevitability of the internet invading every corner of our lives. It doesn’t have to be inevitable! We can resist, even in small ways, for our own good and the good of those we love.
I’ve read plenty of stories recently about how movie production companies are writing scripts and producing the visuals to account for people paying attention only part of the time because they’re on their phones during the movie—repeating plot points over and over to make sure people grasp what’s going on as they scroll while watching.