Where There Is No Vision: Reflections on Our Restless Age

 

More thoughts from an old man witnessing a culture lose its way

Introduction

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” - Proverbs 29:18
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” - Ecclesiastes 1:2

I keep returning in my prayers to two voices from Scripture that speak directly to our time. The wise man in Proverbs warns that "where there is no vision, the people perish." The Preacher in Ecclesiastes laments that "all is vanity;" our projects, our achievements, our carefully constructed meanings dissolve like vapor.

These two truths haunt me as I watch our culture flail about, desperately seeking something to believe in now that the Christian story has been largely abandoned. We are a people starving for a vision giving meaning, yet everything we grasp turns to dust in our hands.

The Restless Substitutes

In my lifetime, I've watched secular society try to fill the God-shaped hole with various substitutes. Each promise what only the Gospel can deliver: lasting meaning, unshakeable hope, a reason to get up in the morning that survives life's inevitable disappointments.

Politics as Religion. I've seen politics become the new salvation. People invest their deepest hopes in electoral outcomes, treat policy disagreements as battles between good and evil, and speak of politicians as either messiahs or demons. The intensity is religious, but the foundation is sand.

Every election cycle, I watch good people convince themselves that the right candidate, the right policies, will finally set things right. Then disappointment sets in. The promised transformation doesn't come. The “other side” wins sometimes. Even when "our side" wins, human nature remains unchanged. Politics, it turns out, cannot bear the weight of ultimate meaning.

Progress as Gospel. For decades, I watched people place their faith in inevitable progress. Science would solve our problems. Education would eliminate ignorance. Medicine would cure all our ills.   Technology would connect us in ways that would heal division and create understanding.

Instead, our devices have made us lonelier. Our knowledge has made us more certain of our own righteousness and less tolerant of disagreement. Social media has turned discourse into performance and disagreement into warfare. The gospel of progress has delivered connection without communion; information without wisdom.

Identity as Creed. More recently, I've watched identity become the new creed. Who you are, your race, your sexuality, your gender, your tribe, has become more important than what you do or what you believe. Groups demand allegiance with religious intensity. Questioning the orthodoxy brings swift excommunication from communities.

But identity without transcendence becomes a prison. It reduces the human person to categories. It makes every interaction a power struggle. It turns difference into a threat rather than a gift.

Augustine saw this clearly centuries ago in his City of God. When the earthly city seeks ultimate loyalty, it cannot help but disappoint. What we see in our politics today is the same dynamic he described. Communities that promise transcendent meaning but deliver only temporal power, leaving their adherents restless and angry when the promises prove hollow.

Why the Substitutes Fail

The tragedy isn't that these pursuits are evil. Politics, progress, and identity all contain genuine goods. The tragedy is that they cannot carry the weight we place on them.

I think of the Preacher's words: "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind." He's not saying these things are worthless, but that they are not ultimate. When we treat them as ultimate, we set ourselves up for heartbreak.

This helps me understand why our cultural debates feel so intense, so personal, so apocalyptic. When politics becomes religion, policy disagreements feel like battles for the soul of humanity. When progress becomes gospel, setbacks feel like cosmic failures. When identity becomes creed, criticism feels like an existential attack.

The Restless Heart

I see this restlessness everywhere. In the endless scroll of social media, in the frantic pace of our culture, in the way we consume relationships and experiences like we consume products. Always hoping the next thing will finally satisfy.

Augustine understood this restlessness centuries ago: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Every substitute for God inherits this restlessness. It cannot provide what the human heart ultimately seeks.

What I've Learned About Vision

At my age, I've had time to watch several grand visions rise and fall. I've seen utopian promises collapse and idealistic movements turn bitter. I've witnessed the gap between human aspiration and human achievement play out across decades of social change. And now I'm watching the crumbling of the West's secular civil religion; our sacralisation of liberal-pluralistic democracy.

But I've also seen something else. The quiet persistence of people who have found their vision in something beyond just the human. They face the same disappointments, the same failures, the same mortality we all face. But they don't collapse when their earthly projects fail because their hope is anchored elsewhere.

They understand what the Preacher meant when he concluded: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Not a system to master, but a relationship to cherish. Not a problem to solve, but a mystery to live within.

The Church's Opportunity

This creates an extraordinary opportunity for the Church, though it's not the opportunity many Catholics think it is.

Our culture's exhaustion with failed substitutes doesn't mean people are ready to return to institutional Christianity. The Church's reputation has been damaged by its grave moral failures, its cozy relationships with worldly power, and its own tendency to treat politics as religion.

But it does mean people are increasingly open to authentic witness. They're hungry for communities that offer genuine transcendence rather than just better politics. They're searching for meaning that can survive disappointment, hope that can endure suffering, and love that can embrace enemies.

The early Church conquered no empire and controlled no government. It simply lived the Gospel until others couldn't ignore it. Christians cared for plague victims when others fled. They included the excluded. They forgave the unforgivable. Their vision was so compelling, so different from the alternatives, that it gradually transformed civilisation.

Joseph Ratzinger once suggested that the future of Christianity might lie not in cultural dominance but in a smaller, purified Church whose witness shines more clearly in the darkness. Rod Dreher has spoken of a "Benedict Option," a strategic withdrawal from political battles to build resilient communities of faith. Both voices point to the same truth. The Church's power is not in influence but in fidelity.

Living Between Vision and Vanity

I find myself these days living consciously between the vision of Proverbs and the vanity of Ecclesiastes. I still work for good things - justice, beauty, truth, human flourishing. But I hold them lightly, knowing they are not ultimate.

This isn't cynicism. It's freedom. When you know that only God's kingdom endures, you can work for penultimate goods without being crushed when they fail. You can engage in politics without making it your religion. You can appreciate progress without making it your gospel. You can acknowledge identity without making it your creed.

This is what I think the Church can offer our restless age. A vision that doesn't promise what it cannot deliver, and a hope that survives when earthly hopes collapse.

Closing Reflection

Sometimes I imagine what our culture might look like if Christians lived this vision consistently. Not perfectly, we're still fallen creatures. But authentically. What if we were known for our peace in anxious times, our generosity to enemies, our refusal to treat politics as ultimate?

What if we built communities where people could find the belonging they seek without the tribal warfare? Where they grapple with meaning without having to choose between naive faith and cynical despair.

The Preacher was right. Everything under the sun is vanity. But he was also a man of faith, and faith opens us to what is above the sun. The eternal love that gives meaning to our temporary struggles. The kingdom that does not fade. The vision that truly sustains a people.

We are pilgrims, and our task is not to build the perfect society but to point toward the eternal city. Not to solve the restlessness of the human heart, but to witness to the One who can satisfy it.

That may be enough. In fact, it may be everything.

And so I turn, as pilgrims always have, to the wisdom of those who walked before us, to see how the Church has wrestled with these same questions.

Theological Postscript: The Wisdom of the Ages

The reflections above draw their roots from a long tradition of Catholic wisdom on human nature and society.

The Gospel Foundation. Jesus understood that his followers would live in tension with the surrounding culture. He called them to be "salt of the earth" and "light of the world" (Matthew 5:13-16), preserving goodness and providing guidance through presence, not absence. Yet he also warned them: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first" (John 15:18). Christians are called to engage the world while maintaining different priorities: "You cannot serve both God and money" (Matthew 6:24).

Saint Paul developed this tension further, instructing believers: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2). The Greek word he uses, metamorphoo, means fundamental transformation from within. This isn't withdrawal from the world, but inner renewal. A turning to God. The result should be visible: "the fruit of the Spirit" characterised by love, joy, peace, and patience (Galatians 5:22-23), standing in contrast to worldly values.

This biblical framework helps explain why secular substitutes for transcendence ultimately fail. They ask human projects to bear weight that only the divine relationship can sustain.

Augustine's Restless Heart. Saint Augustine understood something fundamental about human beings that helps explain our current moment [1]. Writing in his Confessions, he observed that "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." This isn't just beautiful poetry. It's anthropology. Human beings are designed for transcendence. Trying to satisfy that longing with politics, progress, or identity inevitably ends in disappointment.

Augustine developed this insight further in The City of God [2]. He argued that earthly cities become idolatrous when they seek ultimate meaning apart from the heavenly city. Political communities that attempt to provide transcendent meaning inevitably reveal their inadequacy when confronted with humanity's deepest longings."

Vatican II's Framework. The Second Vatican Council provided tools for understanding why secular substitutes for transcendence prove fragile. Gaudium et Spes insists that "without the Creator the creature vanishes" and that human dignity finds its full meaning only "in the mystery of the incarnate Word." The Council wasn't rejecting modern achievements but showing where they fit in the larger picture - as good things that point beyond themselves to something greater [3].

Recent papal teaching has applied these insights to contemporary challenges:

John Paul II diagnosed the spiritual emptiness he saw in both communist and consumer societies. In Centesimus Annus, he argued that authentic human development requires recognising the transcendent dimension of every person [4]. His Fides et Ratio showed how human reason itself points toward transcendent truth [5].

Benedict XVI deepened this analysis, focusing particularly on the relationship between earthly hope and eternal hope [6]. In Spe Salvi, he warned that earthly projects become destructive when we invest them with ultimate significance. They find their proper meaning when understood as expressions of deeper hope. His Caritas in Veritate, demonstrated how authentic development requires both truth and love, neither of which can be grounded in purely secular frameworks [7].

Pope Francis has emphasised witness over conquest. In Evangelii Gaudium, he wrote that "The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open." This represents evangelisation that trusts in the Gospel's own attractiveness rather than cultural or political force [8].

These voices converge on key insights: Human restlessness for transcendent meaning cannot be satisfied by earthly goods, however noble. When we treat earthly projects as ultimate, they become idols that inevitably disappoint us.

Here Augustine's restless heart meets the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. A people without vision lose their way, and earthly visions alone dissolve into vanity. Catholic tradition shows how these biblical insights find their resolution in Christ, in whom restlessness finds peace and vision finds fulfilment.

The Church's response should be neither withdrawal from the world nor triumphalist conquest of it. She must be an authentic witness to the transcendent dimension of human existence. This witness becomes most compelling when the Church embraces its pilgrim status rather than seeking worldly dominance.

A Final Word. Our age's crisis of meaning isn't sociological. It's theological. We're witnessing what happens when human communities try to build on foundations that cannot bear the weight of human longing for the infinite.

Catholic tradition affirms both the wisdom of Proverbs, that people perish without a divine vision, and the realism of Ecclesiastes, that earthly visions prove to be vain. When divine guidance is neglected, spiritual and moral chaos result. Only when grounded in Christ do we find a vision that endures and a hope that embraces both human limitation and human destiny.

For me, these voices confirm what I have learned in my own faltering way. That only in Christ is there a vision that endures and rest for the restless heart. And so I walk on as a pilgrim, between vision and vanity, trusting that this restless heart finds its home not in politics, progress, or identity, but in the One who alone can give rest.

"O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1).

Footnotes

1. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. I. I.   
2. Augustine, The City of God, Bk.19. 24.
3. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), (1965), 22. ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html
4. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), (1991), 24. 
5. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason), (1998), 1.   
6. Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (On Christian Hope), (2007), 22–25 
7. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), (2009), 1. 
8. Francis, Evangeli Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), (2013), 47.