An Antidote to "Absurdity?"

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Back when I was studying philosophy, we briefly considered the writings of Albert Camus (1913-1960), a French Algerian novelist, essayist, playwright, and moral philosopher.

A leading voice of mid-20th-century humanism, Camus explored how to live meaningfully in an indifferent universe, earning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature for works that illuminated “the problems of the human conscience in our times.” He is probably the most famous writer on “the absurd,” arguing that while humans long for meaning, their inability to gain insight into the spiritual amounts to absurdity.

We’ll come back to that idea, but it seems that that view, reportedly common in the 1960s, hasn’t gone out of style even though its expressions may have changed.

Lack of Purpose

“A recent Harvard Graduate School of Education study showed that nearly 3 in 5 young adults feel a lack of purpose in their lives,” an article in Deseret News reports. “Half of that same group describe their mental health as being negatively impacted by ‘not knowing what to do with my life.’”

Many social scientists, including Robert Putnam, Jonathan Haidt, Jean Twenge and others have linked a rise in anxiety, depression and loneliness to the emergence of smartphones and social media, the article says.

“It is a painful irony that the most digitally connected generation in history is also the most socially isolated. But there is another concurrent trend that may be equally challenging to this generation in crisis — the rise of the religiously unaffiliated.

Francis Thompson
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“Social scientists have repeatedly demonstrated the moderating impact religious engagement has on loneliness, lack of purpose and emotional resilience. For example, an American Enterprise Institute survey found that millennials are dramatically more likely than baby boomers to feel lonely.”

For those of us who are religiously affiliated, this may all seem obvious. The apparent absence of God in one’s life is the ultimate downer. Could this lack of interest be a reflection of the fact that many of us religious people don’t offer much of a model for happiness or an incentive to become religious, let alone spiritual?

Lots of media reports nowadays, however, are saying there’s been an increase in young adults interested in religion, or at least a stop to the increasing numbers who, when asked about their religious affiliation, answer “none.” If true, this is a promising development, in my view, indicating that more young people are taking seriously the search for God. That is, after all, my goal in writing these blogs.

But based on my observation of contemporary society, I don’t think this anxiety, loneliness and lack of purpose is limited to the young. I know many older folks who demonstrate these traits along with indifference or even hostility toward religion. Many have been affected by a personal conflict with clergy (as if the clergy are “proprietors” of our faith) as well as with the impact of past revelations about clergy abuse of young people. Many religious people also drifted away from the practice of their faith during the pandemic and never returned.

The Hound of Heaven

How can a serious search for God ever be abandoned or diminished because of what others do or say or because of some extrinsic force? One thing that is certain is that God never stops trying to “find” us. I’m reminded of the famous poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven,” describing a God who pursues us with relentless love, like a hound tracking someone who keeps fleeing. The first lines are:

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.”

We can connect with this “Hound” through nature, through his/her presence in others, through communal worship, and through prayer. As it turns out, this God who persistently pursues us is the antidote to life's "absurdity."