Query:

I find that I don’t really care anymore.  I’ve fallen into the now dominant ethos of modernity, which is apathy, which expresses as nihilism in younger generations.

I don’t doubt that this malaise has existed in the past -- the nineties are described as having suffered the same thing -- but conditions seem to have been so much better back then.  You had the ability to raise a family, and to belong to a nation, and there existed such a thing as “the future.”  Today the future seems like just more of the same.

Modern cultural Christians like myself are not the same as Christians of past eras.  We are not humble and pious, and generally just don’t think the same way that older generations thought.

Did anyone ever possess knowledge and wisdom?

 

Reply:

Thanks for writing.  You say you don’t care any more, but plainly you still care that you don’t care, or you wouldn’t have written.

Things seem to have been so much better in the past, you remark.  People had the ability to raise a family, they had a nation to belong to, and they had a future.  Let’s take these points one by one.

Why on earth should make you think you can’t have a family?  When my wife and I go to church, the pews are bursting with young families.  The families with the smallest children tend to sit in back, just in case they have to take the kids out, so about two thirds of the way through Holy Communion, all the mothers and fathers and small children come forward.  My wife and I call this delightful spectacle the “parade of babies.”  Of course there are difficulties today, but frankly they are nothing in comparison with what our ancestors had to deal with.  People continued to have families and rejoice in their children all through the Great Depression.

Why on earth should you think you can’t belong to a nation?  You can certainly be a citizen, wish your nation well, and take part in the activities which promote the common good.  But as as St. Paul teaches, our true commonwealth isn’t in this world anyway:  It is the Church, the household of God.  Now we are still in exile, but the Church Triumphant will be singing millions of years after every earthly kingdom has fallen to dust.

And why on earth should you think there isn’t a future?  I don’t think much of what secular people call optimism, but I have high regard for the spiritual virtue of hope, which is a very different thing.  Optimism says things will work out okay in this world, and sometimes, honestly, they don’t.  Hope says that the promises of Christ can be depended upon utterly.   Even our sorrows, sufferings, and loneliness in this life can be offered to be united with His suffering for us, so that we can be more fully conformed to him.  The sense that there isn’t any future is especially strong in our times because so many people are separated from God.  But nothing forces you to be a merely cultural Christian.  It’s a choice.  Faith, humility, and piety haven’t somehow ceased to be options.  Actually, there are strong signs of revival of faith among many young people like yourself, especially young men – a fact that has caught a lot of folk by surprise.

Only one thing matters:  Is the Christian faith true?  If Christ is really who He says He is, then the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

I hope I don’t presume, but since you’ve written several times over the last few years, allow me to speak very personally.  Back in the seventies, when I was a young man, far away from God, I fell into a listless depression.  After this had been going on for several years, my wife made one of the wisest remarks I have ever heard from anyone.  She simply said, “I think you’ve been depressed for long enough.”  All at once I realized that I had been.  I had chosen to wallow in my listlessness.  I didn’t have to make that choice.  That day I chose differently.  Of course the change was not complete, because the underlying causes of my depression remained:  I was still distant from God.  But as I later realized, staying apart from Him was a choice too.

I think you may be wallowing by choice in hopelessness, as I was then wallowing by choice in my depression.

There is nothing new about this choice, and it is not distinctive to our time.  The ancient Christians called it the sin of acedia or sloth:  The sadness of “settling” because we do not want our greatest good enough.

So choose differently.  Do you want to have a faith which is genuine rather than merely cultural?  Then ask God for it.  If you don’t really want it much, then ask Him to increase your desire for it.  Then begin doing all the things you would do if you did have a strong faith.  If you live as though you have no hope, then you will have no hope.  So pray.  Worship.  Practice Christian morality – not selectively, but all of it.  Seek strong Christian companions.  Date only women who would be strong Christian wives and mothers, and try to become the sort of man who would be a strong Christian husband and father – the kind who would be attractive to a woman like that.  Keep it up.  Commit yourself entirely.  Don’t worry about how you feel.  See what happens.  You may be surprised.

Faith in Christ does not mean not having any unfulfilled longing, because we don’t yet see Him face to face, “knowing as we are known.”  But this is a different kind of sadness than acedia.  It is the sadness of waiting, and it accompanied by joy because of hope.  Even in this life there are glimpses, flashes, foretastes of His glory; we can offer our sorrows to be united with what He suffered for us; and we live in confidence that one day our longing will be completely fullfilled.

You ask whether anyone has ever possessed knowledge and wisdom.  Yes.  Ask Him for that too.

“Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars.  She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.  She has sent out her maids to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is foolish, let him turn in here!’  To him who is without sense she says, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Leave foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”  (Proverbs 9.)