The Anxiety of Meaninglessness

Posted on 20. Jun, 2007 by frank in faith, family

I have a close friend who seems to be struggling with what Paul Tillich calls “the anxiety of meaninglessness.” He has been spiritually all over the map and took a step away from Christianity while we were striving to complete a degree in Bible together. Watching him take this journey away from his faith has been difficult. I do my best to continue to be a good friend with hopes that God will use our conversations and our relationship to speak to him. Last night I was reading The Courage To Be by Paul Tillich and I was given a glimpse of what my friend must feel.

“We use the term meaninglessness for the absolute threat of nonbeing to spiritual self affirmation, and the term emptiness for the relative threat to it. They are no more identical then are the threat of death and fate. But in the background of emptiness lies meaninglessness as death lies in the background of the vicissitudes of fate.
The anxiety of meaninglessness is the anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings.”

There are days that I have wept for him in my prayers. That morning when I read Tillich’s words was one of them.