“Is that all there is?”
Each verse in Peggy Lee’s 1969 song describes a life event, such as going to the circus or falling in love. Such things seemed so grand at first, but they all left something missing—something elusive that didn’t fulfill its promise of enduring satisfaction. Each verse leads to the same chorus:
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends,
Then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball,
If that’s all there is.
Look around. What first felt like a summer of discontent has turned into decades. The dawn of a new century made many of us think hope was just around the corner. Instead, the average suicide rate rose by 35 percent.
The reason? Hopelessness.
(Another) Age of Discontent
We’re the most advanced civilization in the history of the world. Did you know the chief mode of transportation 2,000 years ago was the same as 200 years ago? But we’ve catapulted from horseback to rocket ship in a mere two centuries. We have more information and greater technology at our fingertips than ever before. And what’s the result? We’re sick, scared, emotionally drained, and jumping from broken relationship to broken relationship in a society coming apart at the seams.
We’re still in need of hope, purpose, moral guidance, and the fulfillment of justice (starting with agreement on what in the world that is). If there’s one thing that unites people on both sides of society’s ever-widening polarization, it’s this: we’re all discontent. Something is amiss. We still have holes in our souls, and we can’t seem to fill them. We still long for something more.
We still have holes in our souls, and we can’t seem to fill them.
There are clues in our culture. Hopelessness is the theme of Green Day’s 2004 song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” where Billy Joe belts out, “I walk alone / My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me.” Keep listening and you’ll hear this line repeated: “Sometimes, I wish someone out there will find me / ’Til then, I walk alone.”
Hopelessness is also the theme of Harry Styles’s 2017 song “Sign of the Times,” where life is little more than feeling stuck and dodging bullets. “Just stop your crying,” says Styles, “it’s a sign of the times.” Keep listening and you’ll hear the longing: “We gotta get away from here. . . . We can meet again somewhere / Somewhere far away from here.”
Hope. Contentment. Peace. We all yearn for these things. Youthfulness doesn’t last, money doesn’t heal all wounds, and technological advancements often make the problem worse. Every day—in our lives or in the news—we come face to face with the harshness of reality, the brutality of injustice, and that nagging question that won’t go away: Is this all there is?
Thankfully, the answer is no.
Meaning from the Messiah
What an opportunity we have to tell our neighbors that Jesus Christ provides the answer to the deepest longings of their hearts. Just consider one well-known sentence from his lips: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
Packed into this short statement are four remarkable claims at the heart of our deepest longings—each providing a practical way to present the hope of Jesus to our neighbors.
1. In a world of fading dreams and plastic people, we long for something real.
To satisfy our longing, Jesus says, “I am.”
Have you ever wondered, Why is there something rather than nothing? Every major science textbook will tell you the universe had a beginning. But a beginning cries out for an explanation. Music, poetry, and beauty in art and nature remind us we’re far more than a random collection of atoms.
C. S. Lewis observed that we’re hungry and there’s such a thing as food; we’re thirsty and there’s such a thing as water. Though the universe can provide for those and other needs, we also long for something transcendent. This source of all truth, beauty, and goodness is what believers call “God.” Why would we think there’s nothing to such a longing? Jesus declares we can see the personal side of God in his own words and life.
2. In a world of atrocities and injustice, we long for fairness.
To satisfy our longing, Jesus says, “I am the way.”
Consider the Nazi trials after the Holocaust. Every one of the war criminals obeyed the law of their land. So what law did they violate? Prosecuting attorney Robert Jackson appealed to a higher law that wasn’t bound to any place or time but transcended them all. This only works if we affirm an objective moral law that applies across the board.
We’ve now entered into a new era where most people have a clearly defined moral code—and expect everyone else to get on board with it. But on what basis can people who are accidents, in a world without inherent meaning, tell others what they must (or mustn’t) do? You need something above everyone, to whom everyone is accountable. You need a God for that. The God we see in Jesus proclaims he’s that test of justice, that standard of righteousness.
3. In a world of fairy tales and lies, we long for truth.
To satisfy our longing, Jesus says, “I am the truth.”
Without truth, everything is reducible to power games and manipulation. There are no inalienable rights—only competing claims. But beyond the heated rhetoric, we long to believe what’s right and true.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Suppose you’re happily married and I hand you an envelope. “In this envelope,” I say, “is absolute, 100 percent proof of whether your spouse has ever cheated on you.” Not knowing of any unfaithfulness has been a major component in your happiness. Would you open the envelope? Most people, I imagine, would say yes. We long to know the truth.
Thankfully, Jesus never majors in power games or manipulation or myth. What we find in him is “capital T” Truth.
4. In a world of glamorizing, senseless activities, we long for meaning.
To satisfy our longing, Jesus says, “I am the life.”
Bertrand Russell, one of the most important philosophers and atheists of the last century, admitted life is purposeless and devoid of meaning. We can only begin to make sense of our life, he argued, when it’s built on “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” But we don’t want to live that way. Historian Rodney Stark reports that 75 percent of people worldwide think sometimes or often about the meaning or purpose of life.
What an opportunity we have to tell our neighbors that Jesus Christ provides the answer to the deepest longings of their hearts.
Even more to the point, we can’t live without meaning. A Holocaust-surviving psychiatrist noted that what allows us to survive—even in the most barren circumstances—is whether we can locate meaning in all aspects of our experience. Meaning gives us cause to continue living. And Jesus Christ invites us to discover meaning in him.
The God I see in Christ is the foundation of reality, the source of meaning, the root of justice, the ground of objectivity, and the definition of truth. But Christianity insists the source of these things isn’t some cold, impersonal abstraction in the sky—he’s a living, loving God who meets us in the person of Jesus Christ. A God who became one of us, lived among us, died for us, and rose to provide a way to ultimate happiness grounded in real, genuine, meaningful truth.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
