The Joy a Depressed Gen Z Craves
“Being honest, my relationship with God brings me abundance regardless of whether or not I realize it. In many cases, I will talk to God when I’m frustrated with how something in my life feels in the moment, often times asking Him for some type of change. One thing that I don’t always realize is that His actions of change are definitely different than mine, which is why His relationship is the only supplement that could bring me pure joy. God has always known what is good, better, and best in my life, even when I’m blindsided by my own definition of what’s ‘good.’ The fact that God always has something better in store for me than I could have ever imagined is what provides joy and abundance in our relationship.”
- Gen-Zer Isabella, 18
Up to this point, I have been hammering home the point that meaning supersedes happiness in importance. I stand by that, but I must also submit to the fact that we all wish to be happy. And you know what? I think that is putting it lightly. We wish to be joyful. Elated. We wish to live in delight of something. Generation Z is just like everyone else in this regard, and in fact they terminally deconstruct in search of this very thing.
But as it turns out, having an unfaltering purpose in God that sustains them through both the good and the bad is the only path conducive to bringing lasting joy into their life. Purpose and joy are not synonymous, as they do exist independently of each other, but quite often pure joy tags along for the ride wherever purpose goes.
Now, when I say “joy,” you may be picturing something other than what I am describing. When we hear this word, we often picture it in its most stereotypical of depictions: jumping around, screaming excitedly, frollicking through a meadow, and popping champagne while confetti blows are pictures that come to mind. Even if your mind does not drift to images such as these, the word may still evoke thoughts of a warm, bubbly, happy-go-lucky sensation. That is not the kind of joy I am describing either.
These forms of joy pale in comparison to the holy joy about which I am talking. It is hard to assign a precisely worded definition to holy joy, as it is and does considerably more than one thing. I think the best way to describe it is this: holy joy consists of the cleansed state, hope, and worship in the life of the believer. This is the joy that my generation yearns for without knowing. For a more in-depth look at how wonderful it is, we will examine each of its elements closely.
Cleansed State
My generation carries with them a lot of emotional baggage. These come in many forms, not the least of which among them are guilt, shame, and regret. I believe a huge source of Gen Z’s self-hatred, self-harm, and depression stems from a mixture of these. The worst part is, we battled these thoughts while growing up in a culture that was rapidly moving away from the teaching of the redemption and forgiveness of Christ.
This meant, when our absolute worst moments kept replaying in our heads, and unadulterated shame crept up from the darkest recesses of our minds, we were left to deal with it on our own. All of us had our different methods of coping with it. Some turned to drugs or alcohol. Some smoked a whole bunch of weed. Some buried their emotions and mental focus in social media or video games.
These were not perfect defenses against the onslaught of guilt and shame, though. Sometimes they would slip through the cracks in our armor, and we would have to face them head-on, or so we thought. Our shame would whisper many things to us, including:
You shouldn’t have done what you did.
How could you do such a terrible thing?
That person you hurt will never be the same.
You’re such a bad person.
Why are you so evil?
This is just who you are. A wicked, broken girl.
I’m sure those sound familiar. We’ve all wrestled with these thoughts before…except most of us didn’t really wrestle with them. We have skirted the issues they raise up, stuck our heads in the sand, run the other way, and done everything we could to convince ourselves that we are good people. Yes, that was it– we told ourselves we were just good people who made some mistakes. But ultimately, we were virtuous at heart.
The reason those thoughts could never successfully be beaten, and trying to fight them only seemed to make them stronger, is that we fought them with lies and self-delusion.
Addressing shame and guilt by telling yourself you’re not a bad person doesn’t work if you are, in reality, a bad person. And apart from the saving grace of Jesus, we are all bad people. We are lost in our sin. Our hearts are set on rebelling against God continually. On some level, we understand this, and the lie only acts as a temporary salvant, if anything. There is only peace from this if one accepts the truth and calls upon Jesus to help them walk through it. Everyone in my generation would be emotionally better off if they did this.
Consider this. The believer is not cursed with carrying their sin with them in their day-to-day life. Their past is no longer upon them—but upon Jesus as He suffered on the cross. This, as you may imagine, is incredibly freeing, and indeed I would compare it to having a suffocatingly heavy burden lifted from your shoulders, giving you breathing room and mobility you did not realize you had. If this sounds too good to be true, it gets better: it is not as if or like your past mistakes have been washed away. Your past mistakes, your sins and your trespasses have been washed away, leaving you with a clean slate. A fresh “do-over” that never goes away for the rest of your life. There is no more condemnation in Christ. Imagine being able to wake up in the morning without the dark cloud of your past waiting to torment you. That is possible.
In this way, our sin-stained past is not overcome by lying about the reality of our sinful nature; it is overcome by accepting that no one is good and, because of that, humbly approaching the cross.
I can distinctly remember the existential horror of the year or so leading up to my decision to give my life to Jesus. I knew what I had spent my life doing. I knew most of my conscious decision-making had consisted of moral abominations and open rebellion against God. Each day, I would wake up, and a sense of dread would instantly envelop me as I felt the sins of the previous day—along with every day before that—begin eating away at me. I would try to push them down, but they stuck on me like a tattoo, and I would wish I had never woken up at all. I actually felt like my sins were wrapped around my body, like there was this dark shadow dripping with black tar constantly pulling at me with a hundred shadow-hands. I was constantly taking stock of my life—the sexual perversion, the lies, the self-serving arrogance, the selfishness—and when measured against the moral standard in my heart, I knew I was decisively guilty.
This harrowing experience led me to that fateful day in 2018 in which I was lying down, staring at my blank ceiling, absolutely tired of trying to fight the thoughts of guilt and shame swirling around in my head. I was tired of trying to convince my conscience I was just being too hard on myself—tired of trying to convince myself I wasn’t all that bad. I could fight that battle no longer.
I submitted to God that day, asking for peace and telling Him I needed to rely on Him for everything. That was when He lifted the smothering burden of my sin off of me, and…well, I will not spend many words trying to describe it because they will fall short. I will just say I felt free. I was free.
If you place your faith in Jesus, then when God, the just judge of the universe has you standing before Him, He will not see the sins of your life; He will see the perfect life Jesus lived that you (and everyone else) could not. Your past no longer has a hold over you. The grip of guilt is gone! It is as Paul says:
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone. The new is here!”
If you struggle with the mistakes of your past or perhaps even a current addiction or problem you cannot seem to shake off, and you are beginning to define yourself by your failure, please know you do not have to do that. Jesus Christ offers redemption and freedom, and He would love for you to take it.
Hope
There is an oft-misunderstood passage from the Old Testament book called Jeremiah. In this passage, the prophet after which the book is named is communicating the words of God to the Israelites.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
This is an incredibly famous passage of scripture. It’s the kind of verse Christian moms have framed and typed up in fancy calligraphy, or perhaps it is found on the coffee-stained mug of your local pastor. I may have even seen a fancy decal of this quote imprinted on the wall in big, bold letters above somebody’s couch.
It is not hard to see why everyone likes Jeremiah 29:11 so much. It is an encouraging statement, the blessings of which we hope will carry over from the ancient Israelites to us. God’s going to personally ensure we have a prosperous and abundant future? Sounds good! With any luck, God’s plans to prosper us will include a warm beach and an iced-filled bucket of cold ones. However, before you grab your beach towels, do some digging on the historical context of this passage.
God’s prophet Jeremiah is addressing this message to the Israelites as they find themselves exiled from their homeland by the wicked Babylonian empire. They are subjugated under pagan rule because they lived in constant disobedience to the Lord, refusing to follow His law and pursuing false gods. Furthermore, in the larger context of the passage, God is telling the Israelites that it’s still going to be seventy years before they get to return home, so instead of thinking deliverance is right around the corner, they need to settle down in this foreign land for a while. Read this passage again, this time with the verse appearing directly before it.
Jeremiah 29:10-11
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
This was the complete opposite of what the Jews wanted to hear, I’m sure. Instead of being instantly rescued from their difficult situation, they were going to have to endure for about three more generations.
With the larger context of this passage in mind, then, we can conclude it is not a guarantee that God’s children will only live through times of happiness and success, never experiencing suffering or hardship of any sort. That is an incorrect modern reading of this verse. Instead, it is a guarantee that no matter what horrific atrocity life throws at you, there is a hope you can look upon–a hope you can treasure in your heart–to help you persevere through life’s most violent storms. That hope is the hope of the Lord. It is the assurance that ultimately, He works all things out for the good of those who love Him. It is the hope that no matter what happens in the here and now, there is a glorious eternal inheritance waiting for all believers. If you place your faith in Jesus Christ, just see what you have to look forward to!
Revelation 21:1-7
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.
I’ve already mentioned that God’s master plan is to restore the brokenness of creation through Jesus Christ. What you just read is the culmination of that. This is the new heaven and new earth God will usher in when this world has passed away. It is a world without sin or suffering or pain, where God will physically dwell with His children. We will see Him face to face.
The new heaven and new earth are not going to consist of sitting on a cloud for all of eternity, strumming a tiny golden harp. Not even close. The real deal will be glorious. A newly restored, beautiful creation will be available for us to explore and rejoice in–perhaps even the majesty of the heavens will be opened up for us to travel as well.
We will have new and glorious bodies, just like the one Jesus had after His resurrection:
Philippians 3:20-21
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
When He rose from the dead, Jesus’ new body was like His old one, but it was better. It was still physical, showing that heaven is not going to ditch material matter for complete favor of the spectral and the ethereal (God made the physical world and He called it good). And yet, while Jesus’ new body was still physical, He could also walk through walls (John 20:19-20). It was unaffected by human ailments and afflictions just like ours will be (1 Cor 15:42-43). It was immortal just like ours will be (1 Cor 15:53-54).
I have only a hazy picture of what the new heaven and new earth is like, but so far I am enamored with what little I understand of its glory. I do know we will never get bored, never grow tired or weary–not even once throughout eternity. You know how I know? We will be dwelling with an almighty, infinitely wonderful God, and thus I know we can expect infinite wonder to fill our infinite days.
My description of the new heaven and new earth, of course, does not do any justice to the reality of what believers will one day experience; no words in any human language could begin to do so. But nonetheless, what a great message for members of my generation to take in, and what a powerful alternative to the message this world has been feeding them. If they are in Christ, they have something to look forward to that is greater than their careers, greater than their personal aspirations, greater than their romantic relationships, greater than their political party, greater than their past hurts, greater than their mental illness, and greater than themselves. They can have a treasure awaiting them that will neither rust away nor be stolen by thieves.
Now that is a hope you can cling to in order to make the good times more joyous and the bad times endurable.
Worship
As the third element of holy joy in the life of the believer, worship is the most broad and perhaps the most emotionally evocative.
In the mid 1600s, a coalition of Scottish, English, and Irish churches united to discuss key Christian beliefs. Their resulting doctrinal statement is referred to as the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and it endures in its beauty and relevance today. If one reads this statement, they will see that the first thing it attempts to address is the primary purpose of mankind. The statement they came up with, by drawing from the principles of scripture, reads as follows:
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”
I was first exposed to this in the Missionary Church’s Pastoral Leadership Institute course on Biblical Theology. From that class period onward, something about this creed has always stuck with me, something powerful in its elegant simplicity. It captures so perfectly the reason for our existence, and I also think it happens to encapsulate the essence of worship, which is so much more than just singing a song on Sunday morning (or singing any song at all). The life-changing worship available to Generation Z can best be summed up by the opportunity to glorify and enjoy God.
So what, then, does this look like in practice? At its core essence, it is relishing one’s God-given life, and subsequently relishing Him as the source of life’s virtues and blessings to such an extreme and thorough degree that it is difficult to put into words.
Glorifying and enjoying God starts with delighting in God’s goodness in the everyday. When you have entered into relationship with He who made you and knows you most intimately, and you have had the burden of your shame permanently lifted from you–the instant all that occurs–it’s like you put on a pair of spiritual sunglasses that color how you see and perceive everything around you. Except this new shade in which you see the world does not disconnect you from how reality truly is but rather leads you to a more profound one: the excessively incomprehensible awesomeness of the Lord suddenly screams out at you everywhere you look.
I’m talking about something more than the hope for eternity you receive and the gratitude that your sins are forgiven, although those are certainly part of it, or maybe they are the key that unlocks it. Life, in all of its dysfunction and minutia and silliness, becomes beautiful–and I mean beautiful in the realest sense of the word. You wake up some winter morning greeted by gray sunlight filtering through your curtains, so you look outside as snow flurries lightly down from a silver sky and your heart just swells with a gladness for your Creator–gladness for the ingenuity and beauty of His creation, but also gladness just for Him because somehow you know that what you are looking at outside is a reflection of Him. Then you walk into the kitchen that same morning and you see your wife standing at the counter making coffee, and she looks over at you as you walk in–just the simple curve of her lovely face and the deep wells of her eyes are enough to make you marvel at how lovingly crafted together she is by a Creator Who clearly takes a painstaking delight in beauty. It’s like her beauty connects you to His beauty, and you rejoice in Him for it.
I could go on, but I am failing to capture precisely what I have pictured in my head and stored in my heart, and I am not skilled enough of a writer to do any better than I have already done.
This is why I will look to the words of a writer whose skill surpasses my own. Author, essayist, and podcaster Andrew Klavan, one of the world’s greatest living artists, describes his experience with glorifying and enjoying God during his retelling of his testimony for the One For Israel Ministry YouTube channel. This is his depiction of waking up in the morning after beginning His relationship with God during the previous night.
“The next morning I woke up, and everything had changed. I was suddenly more alive. I suddenly saw everything more clearly….Everything was beautiful! Everything–I could see my wife’s face, I could see the coffee in the cup. I went out into London, one of the most beautiful cities on earth, and I could see the city, and it was all clear.”
It is this newfound spiritual revelry that fills you up and leads you to sing songs of praise on Sunday morning, or to adamantly thank God in your personal prayers, or to use the unique gifting and talents He has given you to serve Him and reflect His glory to others. It is because of this blessing, this ability to glorify and enjoy God, this ability to worship, that I am able to awake each morning, my heart bursting at the seams with abundance.
I desperately want this for you, too. Or the terminally deconstructing Gen Zer who is on your heart. Or the individual of any generation who is far from God and wandering aimlessly through life.
The holy joy of the believer–freedom from your past, hope for the eternity you will spend with God, and rejoicing worshipfully in God’s everyday goodness–is one of the best things that can ever happen to you.
To close things off, consider these words from a Gen Zer I interviewed. Because of her relationship with God, she begins each morning with that extra, undefinable spark of life that banishes dread and despair and fills her with a spiritual warmth.
“Knowing that God has my back above everything else gives me joy in my everyday life. I am able to wake up with a smile on my face, ready to face anything because I know that at the end of the day, He is always going to be there for me. It saddens me to see those around me who do not have a relationship with God, and it is even worse for me to watch them live such miserable lives, blaming nothing but God for the things that happen to them. I am thankful for my upbringing with Christ and every day, I aim to steer others [to the] faith that I have.”
- Gen-Zer Jaye, 20
