I was speaking with a friend recently about the strange times our generation has grown up in. He recollected that once an acquaintance asked him a question he’d never heard nor thought about before. He asked my friend if he ever wondered what it would be like to simply disappear – not die and go to Heaven or Hell but to just vanish – because he did.
It’s a heartbreaking question, and it reflects the spirit of the times. Many people feel lost, hurt, and so disconnected from others that they don’t necessarily wish death or self-harm, but instead to revert to the void – “the void from which the Creator had called him into this life.”1 This isn’t new to our time, but it is prevalent in it and affects both old and young alike. This despondent feeling has been especially exacerbated by the recent pandemic and all that has come with it.
People are isolated and looking for community. They have a spiritual vacancy in their heart, and they’re searching for meaning to fill it. Therefore, some delve into tantric yoga, practice the dark arts of Aleister Crowley, study the occult writings of Madame Blavatsky, join the Lodge of the Masons, or read the cards and the stars. Others pour their hearts into social and political activism, shunning the spiritual for what they perceive to be strictly material. Still, others are paralyzed by a familiar feeling of numbness and have given up their search, digging their heels into the soft sand of Nihilism, hoping to disappear like the man mentioned above. Yet all are in search of the Personal Absolute, and we Orthodox Christians must always be prepared to give the reason for the hope we have and to do so with gentleness and respect, as St. Peter says.2
What can we say to those broken-hearted who turn to the Orthodox Christian and ask why God would summon them from nothingness? I think we can respond well with the words of St. Philaret of Moscow to the poet Alexander Pushkin: “Not in vain and not by chance was life granted me by God…”3 And we can share what St. Sophrony said in We Shall See Him As He Is, “ ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him’ [1 Cor. 2:9]. And there is no end to our wonderment before Him. Oh, how He knows man! Only the One Who created us could have such knowledge of the possibilities of our nature.”4
We point all those who ask of us to that One who created us, our God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as important as sharing the faith is to pray for the struggling questioner. We do our part of sharing the gospel, but it is God who works on the hearts of man. May God have mercy on us all.
Notes:
- Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is, trans. Rosemary Edmunds (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2012), 30.
- 1 Peter 3:15
- http://logismoitouaaron.blogspot.com/2010/03/harp-of-seraphimst-philaret-pushkin.html
- Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is, trans. Rosemary Edmunds (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2012), 124.