Reclaiming the Lost Life: Overcoming Emptiness and Self-Defeating Lifestyles

Fifteen years ago I preached my first sermon and directed my first worship service while training for the ministry. After I had finished with the announcement portion of the service, I asked the congregation if there were any other announcements that needed to be mentioned. A brief pause ensued and then an older gentleman, Fred, stood up, balancing himself with his cane in one hand while holding on to the pew with the other. I remember to this day nearly everything he said.
Fred remarked, "I'm grateful to be alive. I should be dead. If I wasn't taken to the emergency room by my girlfriend sitting next to me, I assure you I'd be dead. You see, my wife is driving me crazy! She's the reason I drank so much and almost died of alcohol poisoning!" He continued to offer commentary on his wife and was quite expressive to say the least. After Fred finished speaking and sat down, there was a curious silence—it was my turn to speak. I applauded the lifesaving efforts of his girlfriend and expressed thankfulness that he was still alive. My inside voice was asking lots of questions, however.
The Fred types are the target audience of this book. Lots of Christians are living lives that are spinning out of control. Every Sunday, believers attend worship services and celebrate Christ, but for many, there is a part of them that is entirely left untouched by the conversion process. That the deepest, most hurting, and actively destructive part of one’s life remains injured speaks volumes. But volumes of what?
The hypothesis of this book is that all people experience emptiness, a condition which overlaps with loneliness, agitation, irritation, void, hopeless-confusion, or apathy. As emptiness increases so does one's desire to disconnect from it. People disconnect from emptiness by engaging in a variety of compulsive high risk intense behaviors and/or engage in dehumanizing relationships which all serve a purpose: to distract from the ugliness of their internal pain. The solution for humanity's internal wound is to come under the containing presence of Christ, which is not a shore to sail to and arrive at, but a star to affix our eyes on, giving us direction throughout our journey.

Our Internal Drive

What do you think when you hear about the pastor of a megachurch arrested for having sexual relations with a minor from his youth group? Or the teenager that cuts on herself when she's not starving, binge eating, or purging herself? Why do we eat when we're not hungry and drink in excess when Jesus is everything we need? Domestic violence and dehumanizing marriages are in all our churches, and with believers that clearly know the Lord. Why is this?
Many people will explain away the tension within us by resorting to a type of default: we’re all sinners and no one is perfect. That answers sounds humble and even a little paulish, but such a view suggests that we have to lower our expectations and settle. Is the greatest story ever told irrelevant to where we’re most estranged and damaged? Is it just a story then? Are people too much of a mess for even God to restore? I have met many people that sincerely believe they are beyond help, but nothing more could be further from the truth.
The hurtful behaviors that people engage in, as described above, are driven by the need to disconnect from an internal condition of pain and wretchedness, and this happens with little regard to consequences. There are two writers on Christian spirituality that, separated by 300 years, offer commentary on how we look to anything and everything to fill the void that God Himself wants to fill. Blaise Pascal describes emptiness as the infinite abyss and the futility of trying to find happiness with food, sex, violence, or anything else besides God. He writes:

“… He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest.”

The infinite abyss is our appetite for meaning, purpose, and connection. It’s a psychological-spiritual space where we lack integration—we’re all emotionally and spiritually out of balance, seeking relief where we have an appetite for the Divine. Seeking relief for our emptiness.
Another writer on Christian spirituality but from modern times, Henri Nouwen, replaces ‘emptiness’ with the term ‘loneliness.’ He says:

“As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy. We become the passive victims of a world asking for our idolizing attention…

It’s a problem when we respond to emptiness by directing ourselves away from God to any number of things, behaviors, or people. For many believers, Christianity is primarily about articles of belief and strategizing to escape eternal torment. They are heading to heaven but living in torment, split between what they believe about salvation and a faith response that doesn’t touch them at their most injured part of their life. The result: a faith that saves the sinner from hell, but does not remove hell from the sinner.
Living with internal pain such as emptiness, anxiety, worry, agitation, irritability, leads to a disturbed lifestyle where people made in the image of God end up living subhuman lives.