Do you sometimes find yourself feeling anxious without an apparent explanation? Are there days when things are good in your personal world, but that world is somehow not enough?

I know the feeling.

Let’s consider a juxtaposition. An article on “favorite good news from this year” includes these headlines:

• “Heart attack deaths dropped by nearly 90 percent since 1970.”
• “US crime dropped across multiple categories in 2024 and 2025.”
• “The fight against colon cancer made progress.”
• “A groundbreaking therapy slowed Huntington’s disease for the first time.”

The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker similarly cites data showing that “global life expectancy, affluence, and literacy are at all-time highs, while extreme poverty and violent crime are at all-time lows.”

And yet . . .

According to Gallup, US mental health ratings have also fallen to an all-time low. “Rage rooms” are cropping up, offering a “cathartic release” for those coping with anger, frustration, and anxiety. The philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han writes that “every age has its signature afflictions” and identifies ours as “depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline personality disorder, and burnout syndrome.”

Why are so many people so unhappy amid such prosperity?

“The remedy for our broken world”

Dr. Han notes that our culture very rarely challenges our sense of identity, tolerating and even applauding whatever we choose to believe, think, and do. We are so free to be ourselves that nothing distinct from us draws us out of ourselves.

I would add that this tolerance-centered ethos ignores the simple fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Left to ourselves, with no external referent to guide us or empower us to be better, we have no hope but ourselves. But we long to be more than we are. So we escape into screens or AI chatbots or immerse ourselves in work or hobbies or relationships we hope will provide meaning we cannot find in ourselves.

But excessive screen time damages us physically, mentally, and emotionally. AI chatbots are increasingly linked to psychosis and implicated in promoting self-harm, supporting delusions, and spreading misinformation. And the people we encounter in work and hobbies and relationships are as finite and flawed as we are.

What are we to do?

The cultural scholar Ian Tuttle reports that Dr. Han “suggests the possibility of an Other who is, also, not other; something outside ourselves that also restores us to ourselves; something that transcends us and yet embraces us.” Dr. Tuttle concludes:

We might consider the possibility that the extraordinary confusions of our time will not—cannot be solved from within our time. We might consider the possibility that the remedy for our broken world will require a different kind of physician (his emphases).

“He the source, the ending he”

The second-century apologist Irenaeus wrote that Christ “became what we are so that we might become what he is.”

Jesus was as fully human as you and me: he entered our race, experienced our humanity, faced our temptations, felt our pain, and suffered our separation from God (Mark 15:34). In so doing, he was able to take our sin on himself and die the death that sin produces (Romans 5:12; 6:23).

And yet Jesus was and is as fully God as his Father. His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence shocked many who experienced his divinity firsthand. He stated bluntly, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

By virtue of his divine capacity, he is “able to save to the uttermost” those who trust in him (Hebrews 7:25). Accordingly, “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

Or as Irenaeus put it, to “become what he is.”

The living Lord Jesus is thus “outside ourselves,” yet he “also restores us to ourselves.” He “transcends us and yet embraces us.” He is the “different kind of physician” for which our hearts and our world long.

The Roman Christian poet Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (AD 348–413) proclaimed:

Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending he,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!

“Christian, remember your dignity”

Now we can trust him to do in us what he did for us.

Pope St. Leo the Great (c. 391–461) encouraged us:

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

St. Leo was right: Our Father has “delivered us from the domain of darkness” (Colossians 1:13). Our part is to “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7), to practice his presence in a lifestyle of prayer and praise (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18), and then to measure our success by our Christlikeness as “Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

In short, we are to love our Lord and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39). When we do, we become more like our Lord and draw our neighbor to our Father. In this sense, Francis Chan was wise to ask,

“Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?”

Do you?

Quote for the day:

“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live.” —Leonard Ravenhill

Our latest website resources:

• What are God’s New Year’s resolutions?
• 2025 recap: Most influential people, biggest stories, biggest flops, & spiritual highlights
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

 

Denison Forum