We’re Facing a Crisis of Meaning. Here’s Why

A Collective Personal Void

In contemporary culture, a profound loss of meaning pervades our collective experience, driven by the erosion of traditional frameworks such as religion, community, and shared narratives. These structures once provided a more coherent sense of purpose, anchoring individuals in a larger cosmic or social order. Human beings are stability-seeking creatures, even if we tell ourselves otherwise. In all actuality, there is no unhappier person than a person constantly raging against the status quo. “A rebel without a cause” is the embodiment of futility.

Today, those long-cherished guardrails have been supplanted by a hyper-individualistic, consumer-driven ethos that prioritizes instant gratification over enduring significance. The rise of digital media amplifies this, flooding us with endless content—whether memes, trending controversies, or sound bites—that drowns out depth with noise. We’re left chasing fleeting dopamine hits instead of grappling with life’s bigger questions. Consider it the tyranny of the present tense. We are the first generation offered enough distractions to prolong or evade the existential questions that racked prior generations. In 1946, C. S. Lewis warned of endless distractions and the overwhelming disorder that comes from knowing more than we were ever meant to know. According to Lewis, access to too much information can lead to a dizzying overload.

It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know.)

A great many people . . . do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song, and the frosty sunrise.¹

Prodigal Culture

Andrew T. Walker

Examining 10 personal, social, and existential crises affecting men and women today, Andrew T. Walker explains why the Christian moral tradition is the remedy to social decline.

Lewis’s warning is prescient, considering it was written nearly eighty years ago. Given the amount of information we digest, he could have been predicting our society’s technological stupor. Indeed, it seems that omniscience is something humans are uniquely unsuited for.

Distraction, gratification, and titillation are our society’s currency. So much so that having nothing to do is almost impossible in modern American culture. The idea that we would sit with our thoughts and just be still seems not only foreign but very uncomfortable, if we are honest. Busyness is rampant, removing opportunities for reflection and rest. Think about the standard reply when we’re asked how we’re doing: “Oh, good—just busy.” When did that become the default answer? Why is our response grounded in our activity instead of our actual state of being? One reason is the superficial nature of our relationships, which is often driven by a reluctance to confront ourselves and our own mortality.

This void manifests itself in our obsession with productivity and self-betterment, as if meaning can be engineered through apps or quantified in productivity seminars or self-improvement manifestos. Yet, the more we optimize through “self-care” routines, the emptier we feel—disconnected from history, nature, and each other. Art and entertainment, too, reflect this; where once they provoked or inspired, now they are often vacuous, pandering, or shocking to gain attention. Even our language, when stripped to emojis and acronyms, struggles to convey complexity. Vapid streaming platforms bombard us with endless offerings. Decadence is what defines our age. Decadence affords us the ability to dabble in life without searching for answers.

The loss of a deep social compact that fosters social agreement isn’t total, I’ll grant. Pockets of resistance persist in local traditions, renewed interest in intentional living, or quiet acts of solitude. But suppose we refuse to reckon with our culture. In that case, we will drift further into a shallow, transactional existence—chasing meaning in a conveyor belt of trivialities, rushing from one gadget or fixation to the next, hoping each new thing will finally deliver what we’re looking for. What are some of the most pronounced sources of our cultural angst? Several answers could be offered, but I will propose a few.

The Loss of Transcendence

Though it is hard to prove my thesis, I am convinced that the secularization of society has led to its superficiality and penchant for despair and anxiety. The rejection or downplaying of the transcendent necessarily averts our attention to the here and now. We try to extract as much meaning as possible from the moment, rather than engaging in prolonged considerations of meaning, morality, and our ultimate fate. We are clinically averse to considerations of eternity, because such considerations force us to reckon with our finitude. If a cosmic dirt nap awaits us, where we all become unconscious stardust, it is no surprise that a functional nihilism erodes human happiness. The absence of God has spawned an array of highly volatile ideologies that only leave their adherents perpetually angry.

When transcendence is lost, the soul flattens. Without a reference point beyond our experience—beyond the self—we are left to live in the tyranny of the present tense. The present moment, once held in tension with eternity, becomes either an idol or an abyss. On the one hand, we see a frantic obsession with the immediate. Life is a performance for an audience that quickly forgets. On the other hand, paradoxically, this same fixation on the now breeds meaninglessness. If there is no eternal truth or divine horizon, all things fade. What once was sacred and eternal becomes sentimental and fleeting. What once was purposeful becomes performative.

The loss of transcendence disconnects us from the author of time and, thus, from any narrative that can give time meaning. We are left with isolated moments strung together by nothing more than our own fragile will. In such a world, suffering becomes unbearable; the true, good, and beautiful become arbitrary; and love becomes a transaction. But when we reclaim transcendence—when Christ reorients our gaze beyond the temporal—we discover that even the smallest and most mundane moments can shimmer with eternal significance. Time is no longer our master, reminding us of our coming demise, but a servant of God’s redemptive story.

The Breakdown of Community and Relationships

We now live amid a “loneliness epidemic,” despite our mobility and connectivity. Technology is proving unable to fill the void of embodied relationships. Consider also how mobility allows us to leave home and family, often cutting us off from access to intergenerational wisdom we need to know what to expect from life. Connections to the past are, at the same time, connections to the future. Still, with a rise in childlessness and living further away from our roots, we deprive ourselves of the relational capital that is meant to help us find our bearings in the world.

Isolation—from one another, from previous generations, and from God—contradicts our design. True community provides a shared narrative—a sense of belonging within something larger than us. When this fabric tears, people wander through life without a clear context for who they are or why they matter.

The Idolization of Self and the Pursuit of Pleasure

The idolization of self and the relentless pursuit of pleasure are defining marks of our age, rooted in the ideology of radical individualism. The phrase “If it feels good, do it” is a statement not of liberation but of bondage to impulse. People become untethered from objective truth and communal identity when the self is elevated as the highest authority. Though it promises empowerment and freedom, this self-worship often leaves the soul spiritually barren. Disconnected from God and others, the individual becomes isolated, anxious, and burdened by the weight of self-made meaning.

In such a vacuum, hedonism and consumerism rush in as substitutes for real fulfillment. They offer quick gratification and the illusion of satisfaction but only deepen the ache within. The constant chase for pleasure masks wounds that go unhealed—loneliness, guilt, and fear. Rather than confronting suffering with courage or faith, many seek escape through addictions: drugs, alcohol, pornography, and overstimulation through entertainment. These are not solutions but counterfeit comforts that ultimately enslave.

True healing cannot come from turning inward or numbing pain. It requires a reorientation toward the divine, the sacrificial, and the eternal. Until people look beyond themselves—toward God, truth, and others—they will remain trapped in a cycle of indulgence and despair, chasing satisfaction but never finding rest.

The Erosion of Purpose and the Crisis of Work

The erosion of purpose in modern society has contributed to a growing crisis in the workplace. Once viewed as a calling—an avenue through which individuals participated in the good of the community and responded to a more profound sense of vocation—work today is increasingly reduced to a means of survival. This shift has stripped labor of its transcendent value, leaving many disengaged and disillusioned.

The rise of dead-end jobs, fueled by automation, artificial intelligence, globalization, and the devaluation of labor, has further eroded the dignity of work. The “gig economy” offers short-term financial benefits but lacks the stability of more traditional employment. Many people now spend their lives performing tasks that feel disconnected from any larger purpose and offer little lasting impact. This breeds frustration and alienation, particularly among younger generations seeking meaning beyond a paycheck.

Vocational instability, chronic unemployment, and underemployment exacerbate the problem. As jobs become more precarious and social safety nets fray, individuals face material hardship and existential despair. Without meaningful work, people struggle to establish an identity or to envision a hopeful future or to gain the perspective that their work contributes to the better functioning of society. The result is a cultural malaise—an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and aimlessness—that reflects not just an economic failure but a spiritual one. We have lost our sense of why we work.

The Inadequacy of Secular Solutions

This decline is not accidental. Secular modernity has severed individuals from the sources of meaning that previous generations took for granted: faith, family, and a predictable moral order. In their place, it has offered hyper-individualism, consumerism, and an unmoored sense of selfhood. Without shared moral foundations or a transcendent order, society devolves into what are the enemies of civilization: isolated individuals pursuing fleeting pleasures while the bonds of social life wither away.

The Christian Red Pill

The deadening spirit of angst we see among our neighbors and fellow citizens should force us to consider how we may respond. Two possible responses may be called the “red pill” and the “blue pill,” a distinction borrowed from The Matrix. The red pill is the choice to see reality as it is, not as it is packaged. The blue pill, by contrast, is the choice to remain lulled by illusion. It is the decision to accept comfort over clarity, to keep believing the varnished fictions that pass for reality.

Taking the red pill means reckoning with yourself, reality, and God. Knowing that you will not be on this earth forever, you need to deal with the fact that someday everything you did will be over, and everything you accumulated will be passed on to someone else. All your striving to eliminate every barrier to your freedom or desires will give way to descendants who, within two generations, will forget your name.

Someday, you will die. Maybe tomorrow or in fifty-seven years. This should sadden you.

You must own this. You need to own this. Now. Earthly life is not forever.

But what do you do with this reality? Do you retreat to the comforts of blue-pill life? Do you return to the monotony of just waiting for the weekend? Do you go back to trying to extract as much temporary meaning out of the moment as you can? Because at the end of your life, all that will be viewed as fleeting. You will breathe your last breath, and if Christianity is true, you will be judged by God. You must awaken from your slumber and count your days (Ps. 90:12).

The red pill is the truly defiant option, in this sense: To take it means you are going to reckon with the coming end of your life and resolve to take control of your life as a creature made by God and for God. You will abandon the futility of living secularism’s carpe diem (seize the day) and choose instead to live coram Deo (before the face of God)—that is, under his authority and care in all circumstances.

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Rom. 14:7–9)

Coram Deo is the place where you can make sense of who you are, what you will do right now, and what your future self will look like. Coram Deo is the antidote to secularism’s emptiness, barbarism’s brutality, and nihilism’s futility. Coram Deo gives every moment of life purpose. Coram Deo gives you a reason to get out of bed, a reason to love your spouse, a reason to commit to your children. In all these things, the echoes of divine origin and purpose find their placement and fulfillment.

Notes:

To Dom Bede Griffiths OSB (W):” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 2, Books, Broadcasts, and the War: 1931–1949, ed. Walter Hooper (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 747–48.

This article is adapted from Prodigal Culture: A People in Ruins and the Way Back Home by Andrew T. Walker.

Andrew T. Walker (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology. He is a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He resides with his wife and three daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.

Podcast: Why You Can’t Stop Looking at Your Phone (Samuel James)

September 04, 2023

Samuel James sets forth a distinctly Christian theology of technology, one that is profoundly realistic about its power, both for good and evil.

Podcast: How to Talk with Your Kids about Sexuality, Screen Time, and Hostility at School (Andrew and Christian Walker)

August 12, 2024

Andrew and Christian Walker reflect on the importance of proactively talking with our kids about important topics even when it feels difficult or awkward.