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 we know that only
God's kingdom endures, we can work for penultimate goods without being crushed
when they fail. WE can engage in politics without making it our religion. We can appreciate progress without making it our gospel. We can acknowledge
identity without making it our 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
- Augustine, Confessions, Bk. I. I.
- Augustine, The City of God, Bk.19.
24.
- 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
- John
Paul II, Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), (1991), 24.
- John
Paul II, Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and
Reason), (1998), 1.
- Benedict
XVI, Spe Salvi (On Christian Hope), (2007), 22–25
- Benedict
XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), (2009), 1.
- Francis, Evangeli Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), (2013), 47.
Jack is correct. The age's crisis is, indeed, theological, not sociological. I don't have as many years -- I suspect -- as Jack, but I do have enough to have witnessed the (apparent) collapse of one major ideology, and to have basked in the (temporary) joy that followed, and I say this to the young: If you're under forty, you cannot have known what that joy meant because you would not have lived in the frozen and divided world that preceded it. When the collapse happened, we were stunned. It was, to us, an actual miracle. Before it, we really had believed that history had ended and nothing now could ever change again. How wrong was that, and how could we actually have experienced the joy that followed when the change happened, had we not been frozen in our thinking before?
ReplyDeleteThe difference between the theological and the political is the level at which it happens. The political tries to change societies, but the theological knows better. You can only change the individual, and then only with the grace of God accepted. I didn't really have any understanding of this before I met my Mrs Bell. Funny thing is that she was not in the least religious, her mindset always tilting to the political and sociological. Brought up in the Scottish Episcopalian Church, she refused confirmation when she was a teen and was, for years, politically active. Until she met me, that is.
A cradle Catholic myself, I had strayed away from the Church for many years, but like so many of us, I had always just assumed I would just go back "some day." When we met, we just connected on a personal level like neither of us had ever connected with anyone else. Don't ask for explanations; sometimes it just happens like that. Both of us just went with it, and in my case, I now believe that by so doing, I was accepting the grace of God because the "some day" became "today." Before we married, I returned to confession and have tried to hold to the teaching of the Church ever since. The weird thing is, she totally respected my (by secular standards) "odd" practices, like getting up early on Sunday mornings to drive for forty minutes to a Latin Mass just because I liked Latin Mass. Like making sacrifice on Fridays. Like going to Mass on weekdays where a feast of obligation falls, and all the rest of it. And she respected it in a way which, I think, no "lukewarm" cradle Catholic could. She never pushed me about it, never undermined me, always supported me and always acknowledged Christendom as her cultural inheritance too, even if she had her doubts.
From time to time, I would try to gently encourage her to think about joining the Church (and yes, it was gentle encouragement; from the start, I had taken a policy decision that IF I could convince her, it would be by example, not haranguing.) She would always accompany me on high feasts like Easter and Christmas, and often to shrines and monasteries, and she always questioned me about the sermon when I came back from Mass and discussed it with me for maybe an hour or so. I liked to flatter myself that, bit by bit, I could bring her in.
Of course, it WAS flattery. 11 months ago, she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Although the medics thought she might have a couple of years, in the end, she went down very fast, within a week of her last treatment. From the start, she took it like the Scot she was. I swear that through all of it, she did not shed a single tear, did not show one scintilla of self-pity and was concerned only with how I would manage without her. She certainly took it better than I did. When the consultant gave the terminal diagnoses, I was the one who broke down and she was the one giving the comforting embrace.
DeleteIn the following months, I was with her thought the chemo, watching her get weaker and sicker, and was almost in a daze, just doing whatever was needed in the moment to comfort her. I stuck to my policy of not haranguing, and instead took to lighting candles and praying in the church across the road from the hospital, sometimes having long talks in confession with the priest on duty. One day, she asked me about my faith and what exactly I believed about the nature of God. I told her I thought that all He wanted was for a person to make the first move, take the first step, and he would handle the rest. To ask for His grace.
I thought, "this is it -- she's going to convert." Of course, being the tough-minded Scot she was, she still had one "up yours, Bell" waiting for me. She went and joined the Church of Ireland. "I'm no having that papal infallibility nonsense," she told me, in no uncertain terms, and I knew better than to argue. A few days later, we got a visit at our home from the Anglican bishop ("he's no a bishop, he's an ARCHbishop") who confirmed her there and then in the garden, with me as witness. I think, sitting in the summer sunshine afterwards, sipping tea and nibbling biscuits, she was happier than I'd seen her in years. Maybe ever. She'd taken the first step.
When the last day came, they moved her to intensive care, and that care really was intensive. One nurse full time looking after her alone, waiting with me and my cousin, who had come to support me and who was her friend too. She was lucid all the way, chatting to me and my cousin like it was an ordinary day, knowing exactly what was happening. And even then, still not one tear, one fear or one ounce of self-pity. Please believe me when I tell you this, because I am not exaggerating for effect, and not engaging in Irish hyperbole. I have never seen courage like it in my life. It was phenomenal. At the last, when the nurse asked if she wanted to see a clergyman, she still had enough strength to emphasise she wanted the Church of Ireland rector, not the Tim. She lost consciousness shortly after he arrived and prayed with her, and she passed a few hours later. That was two months ago.
We live in a world of global power, where people think they can solve everything with science and mass politics. But I don't think that's how God works. We have forgotten the personal. If either of us had been told when we were teenagers who we would be marrying and how we would affect each other, we'd have said you were crazy. By any analysis, we should not have been a couple. There was an age discrepancy, a massive social class divergence, a nationality distinction and a religious divide. Yet, somehow, it worked. It worked because, in our own individual ways, we invited God into the marriage. Me by open devotion, her by accepting, respecting and enquiring about my faith. If we hadn't met, I have no doubt I'd still be waiting to come back to the Church "some day," and I like to think the Church of Ireland got a new member because she met me. Miracles happen every day. We just don't recognize them.
Sorry, Jack. That second comment from "Anonymous" is me, continuing on an overly long reflection that was too big to post as a oner.
DeleteJoe, you and your wife are in my prayers.
DeleteI have no words ....
God Bless you.
I'm so very sorry to learn of your loss, it sounds unimaginably heartbreaking to go through what you did. May God grant you his peace and comfort, and to your wife eternal rest and light perpetual.
DeleteThank you for this very moving response Bell. I am so sorry for your loss. I know how devastated you must feel...There is a lot to think about in your post. I will add my few cents worth when I give these posts more consideration. just a thought...I dont think people realise that a Pope only speaks ex cathedra every hundred years or so....maybe not even that. I think non Catholics think the Pope is infallible all of the time. This is not true. A Pope is human and capable of all degree of sin. Thus the reason it is important to elect a very holy saintly and good person. I am a cradle Catholic also and lapsed for many years ...never thought about it too much until I married a person of non Christian faith who socialised and lived almost exclusively in that religious realm. Twas then I realised how I thought differently and became aware and never realised before how inherently Catholic I was My then husband was very entrenched in his religious identity and I made no attempt to convert him even though there were opportunities to do so because I believed it would be morally wrong of me under the circumstances Even though I was not practising Catholicism at that time I was in no way coerced to convert because somehow or other it was thought that I was too strong a Christian identity and they probably knew it was out of the question anyway. Many wives convert because it makes life easier socially.My ex husband took me to visit the Vatican ( his idea not mine...was never on my bucket list) From that experience I realised that there are those who are truly devoted to their faith and identity but still respectful of those of other faiths. I do remember from that visit when were there he said to me " Do you think there might be something to all of this?" I was truly shocked.
ReplyDeleteBell, I'm so sorry that you and your wife have had to face this ordeal.
ReplyDeleteThe Scots can be very stubborn. I'll pray that God really makes his presence known to you in the months ahead.
Very sorry to hear of your loss, Mr Bell. You have been missed here. Thank you for sharing this with us. May God be with you and yours.
ReplyDeleteGadjo.
We are meaning-seeking creatures. When we reject the spiritual, we search for answers in the material: as the Absurdists believed, life has no intrinsic meaning, it's up to each individual to make their own meaning. This may work for a while, but deep down it's unsatisfying because it's a charade.
ReplyDeleteNo problem can be solved from within the same system that created it. Chasing money, feelings, identity groups, political messiahs - all things, which may have some good uses, fall short, because they are all part of the same system. The five skandhas are empty. Only the transcendent can heal the imminent (and then you discover that transcendent was imminent all along).
These substitutes for God may be spiritually empty, but they aren't spiritually neutral. There are spiritual forces, which I think the churches continually underestimate, that will inhabit these movements and use them for evil. The last few weeks (if not longer) are prime evidence of that.