I saw Haley Heynderickx this evening at Space in Evanston, IL. She was (once) an obscure, modern folk artist. Then, a song of hers went viral on TikTok. (So, my son tells me.) The crowd this evening was young, even for this trendy venue on Chicago’s ever hip north shore.
Existential angst (or dread, depending on your flavor of melancholy) is the thread that runs through her work. She is a siren for the spirit of this age. Her chords strike true with my son, who turned me on to her, and with my daughter, who accompanied us to the show.
I was young once also, and the existential angst of my youth drove me on a quest that led me to the threshold of Jesus, the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world. A different generation, now, leans into a similar ages old myopia.
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” …. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
Ecclesiastes 1:2
This words may have accompanied a more ancient tune played on a lyre from a more distant youth, but the melody sounds the same.
Existential first visited me one night when I was too young to have a vocabulary for the experience. We watched old home movies from a projector in our living room. Younger ghosts of my parents and grandparents played on the grainy screen in washed out black and white.
I remember it like a dream sequence. The images and feelings of the past are equally washed out in my mind now, but the poignance and clarity of the dread that I felt is clear.
This was, I believe, the first time I became aware of the unforgiving and unrelenting passage of time. This was the first time, perhaps, that I stared the inevitability of death in the face, and the eyes of death stared back, penetrating into my soul.
The next sequence in this dream is now (and always has been) more palpable and imminent than those grainy home movies. Later that night, I found myself detached …. floating in a yawning chasm of outer space …. utterly alone and disconnected.
I don’t know to this day whether I had a dream when I fell asleep that night or whether it came to me in a ghastly vision. It doesn’t matter. If claustrophobia can be felt in an endless void, the experience would be close to what I felt. Angst and dread have nothing on the feelings I had that night.
I say this to frame my thoughts as I recall the song with which Haley Heynderickx closed out the evening: the Untitled God Song.
I have been writing now for about twelve years on this blog. I started it because I am a professional writer (of sorts), and I wanted to use the talents God gave me for something bigger than me.
I became a Christian in college, and that conversion diverted me from any career path I might have wandered down. I should emphasize the wandering, because I wasn’t very career-minded to begin with. I was a truth seeker, and I still am.
I thought I would go into “ministry”. That’s all I really wanted to do, but I wasn’t on a track for ministry. It was a very secular college with very traditionally secular guidance to provide. I was a crazy Christian convert who was reading the Bible and believing it.
I became a student leader of the campus InterVarsity group. We had virtually no oversight. That group of fledgling college students, like myself, was my discipleship group
I was certain about one thing: that God existed, and He had changed me. I didn’t know much of anything else.
I gravitated toward a local independent, Charismatic church about 40 minutes away. I would go to church there many Sundays, but I was a college student preoccupied with the things college students did. I mentored with the head pastor for a short time, but not long enough to make much of a difference.
I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.
These words Paul spoke to the Corinthians heavily influenced me: The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18); and God makes foolishness the wisdom of the age. (1 Cor. 1:20-21) I thought I didn’t need a seminary. In truth, I was afraid that a seminary would try to conform me by the wisdom of the age.
I should have paid more attention to what Paul said to the Corinthians: Greeks look for (worldly wisdom), but the Jews demand signs. (I Cor. 1:22) I wanted signs. It turns out that Paul was right. Worldly wisdom and demanding signs are both misguided paths.
I went off to the East Coast chasing after a church, the legend of which I heard from the man who become my best friend in college. Maybe the best friend I have ever had. A true brother in the Lord, Jesus.
We encouraged each other in that season of our lives. We both had become Christians after leading wild, existentially-angst-filled lives in our youth. We came to the kingdom of God with baggage (who doesn’t?), but we knew that Jesus had the words of life, and we were all in.
I packed my bags for a summer counseling job in a Christian camp on the south side of Like Winnipesaukee like Abraham leaving behind his homeland for the promised land. I didn’t believe I was ever coming back. Only God knew my intentions at the time.
After camp ended and I helped to close it up for the next camping season, I moved a half hour north into the last communal house left over from the Jesus People movement that swept this tourist area in the late 60’s and early 70’s. That movement of the Holy Spirit caught a bunch of migrant hippies in its current and deposited them downstream from wherever they thought they were wandering into Christian communal living.
Those communes were a legend I only heard snippets about when I arrived, but the communal spirit was still in the air. I loved it. I embraced that communal spirit for the next 40 months, and I plugged into the life of that church.
I grew up as person and as a young Christian during that time in many ways. The church was edgy. It was brash. It tried to be authentic. It dared to think big, and I ate it up. But, it wouldn’t last. (It disintegrated and splintered into many fragments not long after we left it.)
I still wanted to be in ministry, though I had no vision. I thought it would just happen. I had heard that a man’s gift makes room for itself. (I think that is in a Proverb somewhere.) But it wasn’t happening for me. I was also young and impatient and impetuous.
I had always longed for love and intimacy. I was a romantic dreamer. I was heavily influenced by Disney stories of life lived happily ever after, but I knew nothing of the promise those stories offered. I still don’t.
I married on a whim, encouraged by “a word spoken over me” that I didn’t understand, but I acted anyway. That determination to act was pivotal.
Just over 40 years have past. I have been married, now, for 39 years. It would be 40 years in November, but my wife left me almost two years ago, and I don’t think we are going to make it to 40.
I am not sure exactly where I am going here today, other than the need I feel to keep things real. I don’t usually focus so much on myself, but I have gotten used to writing to work out the thoughts in my head, and today those thoughts involve trying to make some sense of my life.
Photo credit to Carolyn Weber: author, speaker and professor
Carolyn Weber has always been an academic, but she is no longer an atheist. She has a B.A. Hon. from Huron College at Western University, Canada and a M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, England. She has taught at faculty at Oxford University, Seattle University, University of San Francisco, Westmont College, Brescia University College and Heritage College and Seminary, and she was the first female dean of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.
My inspiration today comes from an interview of Carolyn Weber by Jana Harman on the Side B Stories podcast. You can listen to the hour long interview in episode 4, Finding God at Oxford – Carolyn Weber’s story. She turned her personal story into a book, “Surprised by Oxford”, which is being made into a screenplay staring Phyllis Logan from DowntonAbbey and Mark Williams from the Harry Potter movies.
In the interview, Carolyn Weber shared that she was drawn to the romantic writers of the 17th and 18th centuries in her college years because they wrote about infinite longing. Carolyn long recognized a similar longing in her own life, and they romantic writers resonated with that longing in her.
Carolyn was raised in a non-religious home. She had no experience with religion, and she was not familiar with the detail of Christianity or the Bible.
She recalls that she knew nothing of the Bible until she read the Bible for the first time in a college class. As an undergraduate literature major, her first impressions of the Bible included included recognition of how well the story of the Bible holds together in intricate detail, though it was written over many centuries by almost four dozen different writers.
These elements of Carolyn Weber’s story remind me of my own story. I was raised in a religious home. We were Catholic, and we went to church every Sunday, but I had never read the Bible. I knew next to nothing about the Bible before college, and church seemed to have no relevance for me.
I was also an English Literature major. I also read the Bible for the first time in a college class. I wasn’t particularly drawn to the romantic writers, but I did notice the theme of longing, and it intrigued me. (You can read my story here.) Our first impressions of the Bible were also very similar.
I recognize that my resonance with Carolyn Weber’s story may not translate to every reader (and maybe not to any reader). A statement she made in telling her story, however, may. She said, “God speaks to us in our love languages.”
I can identify with that, perhaps, because my “love language” seems to be so similar to hers. The same things that spoke to her, spoke also to me. I will explain below, but I invite you to consider as you read (or go back to listen to her story) what your love language is and how God has spoken intimately to you in your love language.
Stephen Meyer describes the existential angst he experienced in his early teens in an interview with Sean McDowell that is embedded in its entirety at end of this article. Meyer majored in physics and geology, but he accumulated a minor in philosophy on his way to an undergraduate degree. His interest in philosophy was driven by the existential angst he felt as a young man.
Stephen would become a geophysicist and college professor. Then he would go on to obtain a Masters n Philosophy and a Ph.D in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge.
Meyer explained that he wanted to be popular and good at sports, like most teenager’s, but that wasn’t going well for him. A couple of nights before a planned ski trip with his father, some “weird questions” started “popping” into his mind, like: “What’s it going to matter in a hundred years?”
He was initially troubled by those questions, but anticipation for the ski trip distracted him for the time being. On the skiing trip, however, he broke his leg badly.
He woke up from an operation with a full leg cast. Several days in the hospital and limitations on his mobility stirred his active teenage brain to dwell on the questions that haunted him before the trip.
While he was in the hospital, his father brought him a book on the history of baseball. As he read the book, he began to notice the stories all ended the same way. The great prospects were scouted. They came up to the majors with budding promise. They had a fantastic career. They accumulated records, and they retired….
…. and, “Then what?”, He wondered.
In his 14-year old mind, baseball was the greatest thing a person could do. Now, he wondered, “In a hundred years, would anyone remember those accomplishments?”
The mundane routines of his life – getting up in the morning, taking the bus to school, coming home, doing his homework and chores, and getting up in the morning to do it all again – led him to fear “that nothing I was doing was going to amount to anything”.
The routine of hobbling to the mailbox each day to get the newspaper to read the baseball box scores added to the existential weight. As days went by, he became conscious of the dates on the newspapers. Each day a new date, one after the other, with each one passing into memory.
Snap your finger one moment, he realized, and the next moment you are remembering the moment you snapped your finger. Each moment is passing even as you dwell on the moment, and then it is gone. An endless reminder of his finitude.
He became aware of the ephemeral nature of time, and began to wonder, “What is it that is the same all the time and is the basis for binding all these passing sense impressions together?”
This question led to the conclusion, “Unless there is something that doesn’t change, everything that is constantly changing has no lasting reality, let alone meaning.”
He had no reason to believe there was an answer to this angst. There was no reason to believe there was anything that was always the same, that there was anything that was unchanging. There was nothing evident to him to anchor the ever changing world of his experience to anything solid.
This reminds me of an early realization in my own life. I was maybe around 5-7 years old, when we watched a reel of home movies of my father and grandparents and me as a younger child. This was, perhaps, my first self-conscious awareness of the passage of time.
I don’t know if I dreamt this, or imagined it, or whether it was a “vision”, but what I recall was real. I still remember it, though the immediacy of the feelings that went with it have faded. I experienced the sensation of floating in the unimaginably vast emptiness and expanse of space – alone – not connected to anyone or anything.
The feeling that accompanied the dream was utter and terrifying emptiness and disconnectedness. Words don’t do it justice. I imagine now that the Yawning, gnawing feeling utterly terrifying feeling I had is similar to what Meyer experienced as he wrestled with the questions whirling in his young mind.
Meyer realized one day, when he had a strong urge to ask his parents, that his parents could offer him no better solution. He realized there was no sense even asking. They were finite creatures like him. They could not provide salve for what bothered him.
Stephen Meyer remembers looking at his windowsill in his leg cast and staring at the pattern in the wood. He wondered, “How do I know that what I am seeing is really there and not just something that is going on in my brain?”
In his next thought he wondered, “Is this what it means to be insane?” Then arose the fear that led to a new fear that the questions meant there was something wrong with him. Meyer speculates that a psychologist might have diagnosed him with anxiety leading to a panic attack.
In college, though, Meyer was able to find some clarity and context for his experience in the study of existentialism: “Without an infinite reference point, nothing finite has any ultimate meaning or value.” (Paraphrasing John Paul Sartre). Meyer realized, “That was what was bothering me!”
Everything is in flux from our human vantage point. Everything is passing, passing, passing….. Nothing has any lasting meaning or value from the position of a finite being. The anxiety he felt was a “metaphysical anxiety”.
Stephen Meyer’s journey is somewhat similar to mine, except for the details. This journey is also common to human experience, and it has ancient roots. Anyone who has spent any time reading Ecclesiastes knows what I am talking about.
Donald Trump with Jerry Falwell, Jr. at Liberty University in Virginia
I just read Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? By staff writer for the Atlantic, Derek Thompson. I find The Atlantic to be full of insightful articles, even when I don’t wholeheartedly agree with them. This article is no exception.
Thompson recalls those enlightened 19th century pundits who predicted the death of God and advances in “scientific discovery and modernity” that would lead to widespread atheism. Thompson is a skeptic, himself. While Europe has largely gone the way the pundits predicted, The United States has resisted that prognostication – at least until recently.
Thompson blames “America’s unique synthesis of wealth and worship” and “stubbornly pious Americans” for the United States not going with the flow of the Enlightenment ascent of man from the superstitious dark ages into the light of science and reason.
While the rest of the western world has been drifting away from religious affiliation, and religion altogether, the United States seemed impervious to those forces working on the rest of the western world – until recently. Things began to change in the United States in the 1990’s, and that trend continues.
The article borrows heavily from Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at the University of Notre Dame, for figures and figurings of the reasons why. The shift is clear, though, and the statistics bear it out, that religious affiliation and interest in religion in the United States is waning and going the way of the rest of the western world.
“According to Smith, America’s nonreligious lurch has mostly been the result of three historical events: the association of the Republican Party with the Christian right, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11.” Smith goes on to provide some explanation for how these “events” have triggered the change. He says,
“The marriage between the religious and political right …. disgusted liberal Democrats, especially those with weak connections to the Church. It also shocked the conscience of moderates, who preferred a wide berth between their faith and their politics.”
Thompson’s article got me thinking. He is right about the trend away from religion in the United States. We don’t need data to tell us that. The “nones” are increasing while the committed believers are decreasing. That these observations come from “outside the camp” doesn’t make them false.
Thompson’s explanations for the reasons why this is may be more of a mixed bag. He (naturally) views the changes through a naturalistic lens. He may be right about some of the cause and effect, but he (naturally) isn’t likely to see the more spiritual side of those things.
I “grew up” spiritually during the mid to late 80’s when the marriage between religion and the political right was consummated. I fell out of step with it, and lost track of it, when I went to law school in 1988. Apparently the honeymoon went well.
I count myself (even today) as an evangelical (though I search for a different label). My spiritual upbringing included the experience of the courting of the religious right of the Republican Party. (Or was it the other way around?)
Law school, however, challenged even my most sacrosanct connections, and the cares and concerns of fatherhood and providing for a growing family distracted me from other relationships. It was all I could do to hold onto God during this time, and the truth is that He mostly held onto me.
Perhaps, that was a blessing in disguise, as I didn’t grow into the religio-politico affiliation that seems to characterize a large segment of the evangelical church today. I am a more distant observer of that relationship today, so I think I have some objectivity left.
I agree (partially) with Thompson’s assessment that the congruence of the religious right and the political right changed the political landscape. It also changed the religious landscape. Perhaps, more than we might care to acknowledge.
Navigating by Faith 