Recently I was reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (the backstory of Middle Earth) and Andrew Robert’s The Storm of War (a history of World War II). One story is set in the beauty of an exquisite and enchanted world, with glorious beings and tales of mystery and wonder. The other story is set in the industrialized and mechanized and brutal and violent modern world. The contrast between the glory and beauty of the one world and the horrors and devastations of the other could not have been greater, especially because I read one book right after the other!

Noticing this contrast made me long for a world more like Middle Earth, and less like this one. Obviously Middle Earth had its fair share of evil and suffering, thanks to the insurgency of Melkor (the glorious being who, out of pride, fell from glory and became the master of Sauron). But it was nonetheless a world (at least originally) that mirrored the world we read about in Genesis 1 and 2. It was the kind of world we were made for, literally.

Of course, it only took two chapters of Scripture until the whole world went to pot. The seductions and lies of the Evil One turned our hearts against God and one another. Now instead of walking in peaceful unity with God and one another, there is enmity and suspicion and envy everywhere. As one writer said (writing in 1994!), the modern world we live in is “a violent, greedy, rootless, cynical and hopeless society and we don’t know what’s to become of it all.” Agreeing with this assessment, J. I. Packer said that when he returned to Britain to visit, he experienced “apprehensive apathy everywhere.”

What an assessment! “Apprehensive apathy” is not the way any generation or culture wants to be described. But I think it holds true for us here and now in the Western world. “Apprehensive” because of the overwhelming anxiety among us. Many have grown up with rampant moral confusion and unstable familial structures, tragedies leading us to be, not just cautious, but terrified of what may happen next.

“Apathy” because of the overwhelming lack of care and concern among us. The tragedies of our lives and families and culture and world lead many to develop hearts that feel nothing for the sorrows of the world, or the sorrows of their own lives. Or lead many others to throw their hands up in a sort of despair that leads to nihilistic and self-centered living, “eat and drink for tomorrow we die!”

I suspect “apprehensive apathy” is a silent struggle for many. But many may struggle with this disposition and not even realize it. Many people, including many Christians, do not know what they feel or why they feel it. Instead of probing for these feelings of apprehension and apathy, feelings of fear and emptiness, we prefer to put our heads down and give ourselves to our work or our technologies or our addictions or our religion. We do this because it is easier in the short run to ignore the storm inside us. But ignorance does not calm the storm.

Our Christian worldview teaches us that we are embodied souls, meaning that we are souls and bodies. Not one or the other. Not fifty percent body and fifty percent soul. We are a soul that lives in a body. This is the distinctly Christian understanding of human anthropology.

One application of this doctrine is that the things happening inside us affect things on the outside. In other words, immaterial realities effect material realties because we are not just soul or body, but soul and body. Or, as many theologians prefer, “embodied souls.” To say it another way, things that trouble our hearts and minds often affect our bodies. You cannot disconnect the two because they cannot be disconnected.

If this is true, then it helps explain why things like heart disease are so rampant in our culture. Of course, genetics have their role to play. But so do stress and anxiety. If there are things inside of us not being dealt with, it will affect what is happening on the outside of us. “Apprehensive apathy” may be one reason so many of us (including me) struggle with things like sleep or shallow breathing or racing thoughts or overeating or obsessive behaviors or nervousness or anger that we cannot understand. In this fallen world, sin stains our hearts and breaks our bodies.

The good news is that God sent his Son to restore everything that is broken in this world. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has undone the curse of sin and stormed the citadel of Satan so that he can usher in a new world, the kingdom of God. And in his kingdom there is no apprehension or apathy, only perfect and unending peace and purpose.

And the other bit of good news is that those who are in Christ can experience the life of the next world in this world, in his church. In the church, we “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). In the church, as we practice vulnerability with one another and share our honest thoughts and feelings and experiences and hopes and dreams and fears, we find that we can be fully known and fully loved at the same time, just as we are in Christ.

In the church, through friendships that go beneath the surface, we experience the love of Jesus. And his love truly changes us and sets us free from “apprehensive apathy,” or whatever else is enslaving our hearts. Stop right now and ask the Lord to provide friendships for you like this in the church and then consider who you can begin to build this sort of friendship with.

As we build these kinds of friendships in the counterculture of our local church, we will begin to see rays of the glory of the next world while we traverse through the horrors and darkness of this one.

Happy to Be Traveling With You,

John