How to Escape This Disenchanted Age of Despair
We live in a time of paradoxical realities. Never have we had more material blessings, more access to education and information, and easier lives. Yet, we also live under a societal malaise of despair. We are more anxious, depressed, and aimless than ever before. Never have we had so much and so little at the same time.[1]
This is the paradox of modern life. Our technological marvels range from the supercomputers in our pockets to all the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. Yet, such trifles cannot overcome our angst. The gospel of our age exhorts us to find our truest selves, yet we seem incapable of knowing the most basic truths about reality. Despite all the material wealth and focus on feeling good, we are miserable, as demonstrated by the increasing rates of deaths of despair. How did we get here? And, more importantly, how do we escape this age of despair?
The Path to Despair
The distress that marks modern life flows from the loss of truth, meaning, and enchantment. Truth has been relativized to individuals and societies; as such, many believe there is no universal truth in life. Rejecting universal truth necessarily entails the loss of meaning. If there is no ultimate truth, then nothing (including us) possesses inherent meaning or purpose. If there is no truth, then your life and mine are meaningless. Finally, if there is no eternal truth behind life, then everything becomes disenchanted. Life is reduced to only the natural and immanent frame. In a disenchanted world, a rock is just a rock, an accidental arrangement of atoms, and a human is just a slightly different collection of such atoms.
Two ideologies conspire to rob us of any lasting truth, meaning, and enchantment—secularism and naturalism. Secularism is the doctrine that banishes religion and God from the public parts of life. It radically divides life into two spheres—sacred and secular. In the sacred and private sphere of life, religion is allowed to exist (for now) as long as it remains private. The secular area of life is public, binding, and rooted in reason and science. In this framework, the two spheres must remain radically separate. Thus, much of life is reduced to the immanent frame—what is right before you—and has no greater meaning or purpose in life. In secularism, most of life is devoid of God and religion and is robbed of any greater meaning.
Likewise, naturalism robs us of truth, meaning, and enchantment. If the universe is natural and nothing supernatural exists, then everything is reduced to the impersonal, blind, and natural forces of Darwinism. In such a world, there is no foundation for why humans can know the truth more than a dog or even an earthworm. Moreover, the universe came about through time plus chance. Everything that exists is nothing more than a cosmic accident destined to expire into meaningless nothingness. Humans are not special, and life has no meaning. With no truth and no meaning, life loses all enchantment. Older generations viewed the universe as full of meaning, with either the providence of God or the actions of spirits behind every event. Now everything is reduced to a cosmic accident and natural cause and effect. Why do the plants in your garden grow? Even the Christian is more likely to point to nutrients, sunlight, and water instead of the provision and care of God in sustaining and creating life. Naturalism is disenchantment, as life is only a series of meaningless and impersonal forces. Such a life is as bland as it is uninspiring. Secularism and naturalism provide no foundation for meaning and inevitably lead to cultural despair.
Detours from Meaning
As far as worldviews go, naturalism, secularism, and all their friends are objectively ugly. Their bankruptcy becomes clearer by the day as more and more people search for a new way of life. A way to rebel against the overlords of meaninglessness. Humans are meaning-makers; we yearn for significance, for our lives to matter. God has hardwired this into our hearts, though we often struggle to see beyond our noses.
In this search for a reenchanted and meaningful life, there are three common detours people take. Paths that promise some way to reclaim a meaningful life. Yet, for various reasons, each of these three paths leads us back to the same dead end.
First, there is the detour of the self through existentialism. This view embraces the same foundation of nihilistic naturalism. Life is indeed a cosmic and purposeless accident. But this view stresses that you can create meaning for yourself. Existence precedes meaning; that is, you exist before you have meaning. Thus, all meaning is created by us. Existentialism is an irrational leap of faith in response to the void created by secularism and naturalism. No one wants to live without meaning, so create some for yourself. Find your truest self, define it for yourself, then express it. This is the good life. This is nothing more than a distraction.
By embracing the disenchanted world of naturalism and secularism, this view tacitly admits there is no real meaning in life, as it relativizes all meaning to the individual. In short, if meaning is created by us, then it also dies with us. Self-made meaning doesn’t actually mean anything and is just as destined for extinction as everything else that exists in an impersonal and accidental universe.
Second, some try to escape our modern despair through vice, fantasy, or entertainment. It is no secret that many addictions spring from a desire to escape one’s life and its struggles. That temporary high numbs our despair, but it fails to offer a way out. Others escape by distracting themselves with endless trifles like social media, music, and movies. It is easy to ignore deep thinking when we are obsessed with TikToks, retweets, and keeping up with the Kardashians. It is easy to embrace the shallowness of modern life as we go from one viral moment to the next.
Some seek meaning by identifying with different fantasy worlds. Consider the phenomenon of adults dressing up to identify with their favorite fantasy world—Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc. Many a fan wishes our world were more like a galaxy far, far away. Why? What do these worlds have that modern life doesn’t? Simple—they offer an enchanted world where every event is full of meaning, there is a grand story, and deeper truths and realities beyond what meets the eye. In short, Middle-earth, Hogwarts, and Tatooine are enchanted and meaningful worlds that soothe the deep ache in our modern souls. In a sense, these fairy tales are more true than the myths of modernism.
Third, the final detour people travel is seeking a former golden age. Often this includes trying to return to the forms and concepts of medieval times, before the rise of the Enlightenment, naturalism, and secularism. We see this in the desire of some to retrieve the works of medieval thinkers like Aquinas, or an unhealthy focus on pagan thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, etc. In the religious realm, people seek meaning by fleeing to the higher church forms of Anglo-Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism. The mysticism that marks these traditions seems otherworldly. It gives them an air of rootedness, enchantment, beauty, and eternal truth. Instead of dressing up in a Jedi cloak and wielding a lightsaber, others put on clergy robes and vestments in an act of defiance against the hollowness of modern life. In the end, this appears to be another attempt at escapism.
Scripture warns of idolizing past eras as some sort of silver bullet that will cure our present ills (Eccl. 7:10). As appealing as medieval spirituality appears, students of history know that our present ills did not appear out of nothing. The dualistic framework of secular/sacred is but the logical result of the dualisms of Aquinas’s nature/grace and Plato’s forms/ideals.[2] To fundamentally divide life invites meaninglessness into parts, and eventually, all of life. Embracing medieval dualism in hopes of returning to meaning displays a towering ignorance of the consequences of ideas. All forms of dualism will invariably lead us back to our modern, disenchanted despair.
The Way Back
If turning inward, escaping through diversions, or returning to medieval spirituality won’t restore meaning, what will? It is the ideas of the Reformation that provide the best answer. The Reformers rebelled against Catholic spirituality in many ways. They cast out the division between nature and grace, the spiritual and the physical, and in its place, they sought a unified vision of life.
For example, in place of the medieval division of work between holy orders and secular work, Luther asserted that all righteous occupations serve God—even the shoemaker. In place of the clergy/laity division came the priesthood of all believers. Calvin declared that the whole cosmos was the theater of God’s glory. The Reformation initially rejected the dualism of Catholic thought and sought to replace it with a unified worldview. Nancy Pearcy explains:
One of the driving motives of the Reformers was to overcome this medieval dualism and to recover the unity of life and knowledge under the authority of God’s Word. . . . The Reformers sought a return to a unified field of knowledge, where divine revelation is the light illuminating all areas of study.[3]
The solution is not to return to the very dualisms that led to our disenchanted modernism, no matter the forms they take or the robes their priests wear. Rather, what is needed is a unified view of life under the authority of Scripture and the lordship of Christ. Life has meaning precisely because God created everything, owns everything, and is redeeming all things through Christ.
This is the message of the gospel—Christ is Lord over everything seen and unseen, and by the blood of his cross, he is uniting everything in heaven and on earth (Col. 1:15–20). Whether it is the so-called secular parts of life or not, none of it is free from God’s authority mediated through Christ and revealed in his Word. The way back to meaning, enchantment, and truth is none other than a full repentance marked by rejecting all forms of dualism. One that rejects all attempts to divide life up into secular and sacred, nature and grace, or forms and ideals.
The solution is to see the world as created and sustained by God, fallen and cursed by sin, and as being presently redeemed by Christ. He reigns over absolutely everything. This vision, which many in the Reformation tradition have forgotten, must be renewed and reclaimed with fresh urgency—Christ is Lord and Savior of all. Precisely because he made all things, holds all things together, and is redeeming all things, this whole cosmos is dripping with meaning. A world radically unified under Christ is the only way to escape the despair of life in the secular age. It is the universal lordship of Christ or utter meaninglessness.
[1] David Wells makes this observation in God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-Love of God Reorients Our World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 22–25.
[2] Nancy R. Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, Study Guide Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).
[3] Pearcey, Total Truth, 80–81.
