Why Gen Z Feels Empty

The primary cause of the gaping hole of emptiness and despair that is so prevalent in my generation boils down to the pursuit of everything but a purposeful relationship with God. We pursue our ever-changing whims, which take the form of new friends, career, video games, and college in order to find something that will fill us up. 

In my experience, this will not get you very far. At least, not if you don’t want to live a restless life in which you are trapped in a perpetual state of discontentment as you search for the next thing that might fill your existence with a fleeting sensation of purpose. To be blunt, if following your heart is your primary life philosophy, then you are in for a world of hurt. The problem with the heart is it tends to get bored of wherever it leads you, and pretty soon you’re packing up camp and following it all over again to someplace new so you can repeat the process!

As it turns out, the Bible points this truth out too, and it even offers the antidote. There is an excellent book in the Bible called Ecclesiastes, my personal favorite Old Testament book, which contains the best instructions for living a full life I’ve ever heard. The book was shown to me by a man named John who was kind enough to disciple me during a particularly depressing time in my teen years, and I would not be where I am in my faith had he not shared with me the wisdom from this book. This makes sense—Ecclesiastes was authored by King Solomon, who the Bible tells us was the wisest man to ever live. 

The general premise of this book is the futility of trying to maintain a meaningful and satisfying life apart from relationship with our Creator. To read Ecclesiastes is to learn how shallow any other pursuit truly is and understand the reason for today’s widespread problem of emptiness. Solomon’s opening musings are fittingly bleak: “Meaningless! Meaningless . . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). 

He goes on, using poetically beautiful language, to discuss how quickly time passes, how quickly one generation comes to take the place of another: “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever . . . . The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course . . . . All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again” (1:4, 6-7). This imagery shows us that despite all the great works of man—despite the passion raging through mankind to form a legacy, to make its mark on the world, and despite the desires and aspirations that obsessively occupy its focus, time, and energy…it’s all so temporary. What is near and dear to our hearts in the here and now will dissipate like morning fog in the midday sun a few generations from now. Maybe even less time than that.

 In the long run, the bulk of human pursuit is inconsequential. 

Let’s explore some specific examples of this from the text. Each of the subsections below will start with a passage from Ecclesiastes followed by an analysis unpacking what was read. 

Example 1: You Won’t Find Fulfillment in Your Career

Ecclesiastes 1:3-7

What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.

The first two lines of this passage can be challenging, especially for the career go-getters of the world. But it’s the truth. There’s an old platitude that when you’re on your deathbed, you’re never going to wish you had worked more hours. I suspect this is true for most people.

I think back to my time as a career-focused teen, placing my entire identity in my aspirations of being a writer. Making career the center of who I was drained me of everything. It sent me into a depressive state. No wonder. A career is a temporary stop in the train ride leading to eternity. Careers in it of themselves do not have eternal value (now some of the things you do in your career can have eternal value, such as shining the love of Jesus Christ into another person’s life or introducing someone to God’s goodness, but a career by itself does not). Only serving God has that lasting impact. Only using the unique gifting with which He designed you to lead others to Him does. Only making the most of your relationships at home, at work, and at play—only those things last forever. 

Example 2: You Won’t Find Fulfillment in Your Indulgences

Ecclesiastes 1:7-8

 All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.

You’re probably getting the sense of futility and weariness Solomon was going for when he wrote this now, aren’t you? I mean, he even goes out and says “all things are wearisome, more than one can say.” More than one can express with words or articulate in thought, every pastime, every worldly longing, every fleeting urge is overdone, rehashed trite. Wow. He’s not holding back.

The part of the passage that sticks out to me the most, though, is in the final portion of verse eight: “the eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” How astonishingly true is that? It is human nature to never be satisfied, to never have enough. I think of New York City’s Time Square, an incredibly iconic location in America. It’s a lovely, exciting place, packed with noise and color along with the whole gamut of races and ethnicities all jostling past each other. Those aren’t the only characteristics of Time Square, though. Plastered throughout its space are billboards and electronic signs, advertising just about any kind of thing imaginable. Everywhere you look, you see something telling you to buy, buy, buy—a consumerist message exclaiming that you need more, sowing discontentment. 

As it turns out, this is an effective way to drum up business. This message of buy, buy, buy interacts well with our nature of always wanting more, more, more. We are perpetually searching for something to satisfy us, something that will finally fill us up . . . and when we get that thing for which we have been passionately working, we enjoy it for a season and then are once again in the market for the next big life-changer. 

Living for fleeting pleasures, desires, career aspirations, romantic relationships, and other things of that nature simply doesn’t work. It’s like a bag of potato chips. You walk past a crinkly, golden bag and tell yourself just one handful will do the trick. Then, after you have finished munching away, what do you do? You stick your hand in the bag and grab a second fist of deep-fried, sodium-infested, thinly cut potato slices. Then you do it again. And again. And . . . again. Pretty soon, the bag is empty, but even if you walk away satisfied in the moment, you know you’ll be craving junk again tomorrow—or an hour from now. 

When it comes to living a purposeful and fulfilled life, living for God triumphs over living for the things of this world any day. Sometimes, living for Him even means you’re going to endure difficulty and trials you otherwise wouldn’t have had to undergo. In fact, you probably will experience suffering for the sake of Christ at some point in your relationship with God. But those hard seasons are a billion times more meaningful than the cheap comforts and pleasures living for yourself affords you. If something is truly meaningful, then you should be willing to suffer for it. Sometimes suffering brings meaning. 

Example 3: You Won’t Find Fulfillment in Your Accomplishments

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them.

I am a fan of the actor Ben Stiller, and I have seen a good chunk of his movies only on the basis of him starring in them (Nicolas Cage is the only other actor I will do that for). It is for this reason I have seen one of his more obscure films called Brad’s Status, which is one of my favorites. Stiller plays the title character in this movie, a middle-aged man who has been blessed with a lot: a house, a wife who loves him, a college-aged kid with lots of potential, food on the table, and a career working for a non-profit he dreamed up in his youth. However, he finds himself incredibly dissatisfied with his existence. 

As he reaches the midway point of life, he realizes he has not achieved all that he wished he would twenty years ago, and as he scrolls through the social media pages of his four college friends with whom he no longer keeps in touch, he perceives that his peers have achieved so much more than he has. One of them is a successful film director, living a lavish and debauched life in Hollywood partying with other celebrities. Another is a business mogul who stands proud at the top of the corporate world. Another still is a famous talking head on political television, while the fourth one became so successful in the programming and software-development scene that he has already retired. 

Stiller’s character spends the duration of the film wrestling with his feelings of discontentment and inadequacy, feeling like a failure and wishing his life had amounted to more. He thinks that if only he had accomplished bigger, more grandiose things—if only he had made an obvious impact on the world, then life could be happy. This is why he is utterly surprised when, later in the film, he finds out his friends’ lives of accomplishment and success are not all they are cracked up to be. Most of his friends still wrestle with sorrow and disappointment, and the one that does not clearly lives an empty and malevolent life. In every case, their achievement has not made them eternally happy. 

This example pairs well with Solomon’s insight when he writes “no one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.” If your goal is status and significance in the eyes of your peers, then it is a worthless goal. Most of the time, you will not attain it, as fame is something reserved for an exclusive few, and you will have expended much energy chasing something you’ll never have. However, even if you do obtain your time in the sun, and the public adoration you have always dreamed of is showered upon you every day, that is not going to be enough to fill you up. When tragedy strikes, that will not keep you grounded. When you experience a bout of depression, it won’t be enough to sustain you.

And then…someday, your fame will be gone. The world will forget. People will be impressed for a while, and then they will move on to the next person, demonstrating to you how hollow of a pursuit fame really was. Even if that recognition you crave lasts a lifetime, then what will happen? Again, I point to the words of Solomon, who says it better than I can: “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” George W. Bush was the leader of the free world from 2001 to 2009. How often does he cross your mind now? 

The only person Whose approval you should be seeking is God’s. The only fame you should seek to spread is the fame of Jesus Christ. That is the only lasting impact you can make on the world. Everything else is vanity.

Now, at this point, you may be asking why I am using all this ink to talk about Ecclesiastes. It’s depressing, you may say. It’s not uplifting. It’s discouraging. Well, you would not be the first person to read Solomon’s writing and say they do not like it very much. Often, people read Ecclesiastes, and upon finishing it, they do not walk away thinking about how wise this king was. They walk away thinking someone needs to rent him a copy of It’s a Wonderful Life and prescribe him some antidepressants. 

But I think Ecclesiastes is a book of immense hope. I first came upon it in a time of complete darkness. I was beyond unhappy. I was not even sure if I wanted to keep on living. When that wonderful man named John took the time to read this book with me, it filled me with a sense of purpose stronger than anything I had ever felt. 

I read what Solomon had to say, about how meaningless it is to live for your job, to live for worldly accomplishments, to live for the pleasures of this life, to live for others’ approval, to live for my own approval even, and it was like a suffocating burden I had been carrying was lifted from my shoulders. Thank God that stuff isn’t all there is to life. I’d spent most of my life living for them, and they left me empty. They left me wanting to die . . . because if that stuff wasn’t filling me up, then what else could possibly keep me going? 

Thank God for purpose and meaning. They come from Him. 

Allow me a brief tangent to provide an illustration. When I was a child, I enjoyed watching the British television show called Doctor Who. I lived and breathed this program, and I could talk about it to anyone who was unfortunate enough to be nearby for hours. I was an avid fan, but as the years have passed, I can no longer remember most of Doctor Who’s major plot-points and characters. With that said, there is one line from it that I will probably carry with me for the rest of my life. It’s simple, short, sad, and it rings true. Regarding the existence of living beings in relation to the eternal vastness of time and space, the main character, the eponymous Doctor, says this: “It all just disappears, doesn’t it? Everything you are, like—breath…on a mirror.” 

Breath on a mirror. That’s what our lives on this earth are like. One wipe of a sleeve and it’s gone. 

That’s a powerful image of what Solomon is talking about in the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes. That is why he writes ”I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Take it from him, too! He’s a good source. Solomon had every worldly thing anyone could ever want; if anything was of interest to him, he had every resource available to pursue it with gusto. He had riches beyond measure: picture the top billionaire of today and then think much bigger. The man had hundreds of gorgeous lovers. Former NBA superstar Wilt Chamberlain claims to have slept with ten thousand women, a figure that is certainly exaggerated, but who knows, maybe Solomon came close to that number. If he was ever feeling a bit peckish, I’ve no doubt he had an array of choice delicacies to tantalize his taste buds.

Basically, if anyone had the opportunity to “live it up,” it was King Solomon. And after an extended time period in which he attempted to do just that, he did not walk away with life-sustaining joy and contentment. On the contrary, he felt as if he had gained nothing of lasting value. Consider what he has to say after completing numerous creative projects, partaking in countless romantic encounters, and enjoying a lifetime of wealth: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun.”

I don’t know why that last sentence gives me chills. It’s so simple yet so poignant. A life apart from God is a life of constant striving—striving for something more that always feels just around the corner, but each corner turned only reveals that more to be just out of reach. If you do not have a serving and loving relationship with God, and you’re struggling with the feeling that you do not have a purpose no matter what you do, this is the reason why. The scripture we are discussing confirms this universal truth, with Solomon writing that satisfaction in life’s toil can only come from God Himself. He writes that it is impossible to find true joy in life without God, and the individual who serves Him will receive “wisdom, knowledge, and happiness.”

Sure, you might find a job or a boyfriend/girlfriend or something like that to fill you for a while…but take note that the filling is fleeting. The novelty will wear off. When it does, what will you have left? An empty, bored, anxious, depressed person? It doesn’t have to be that way. 

Practical Application

This does not mean you must sell all your possessions, abandon all your interests and hobbies, and begin a new life at an isolated wooded monastery in which you pray for twelve hours a day. I think that would be soul-suckingly awful, and unfortunately it’s what a lot of us picture when we hear that we should “live for God.” On the contrary, in choosing to live for God, you will see the potential of your passions and your gifting fully realized as you use them to serve Him, making an eternal impact on His Kingdom. 

I’ll give you an example. I know a woman named Dawn who loves working with children and thoroughly enjoys teaching. These are her passions, and she’s incredibly skilled at both. Now, she could take these attributes and utilize them to obtain a teaching position at a local elementary school, and I’m certain she would excel at that. However, that is not where God called her, at least for right now. She currently uses her gifting to serve as the Family Ministry Director at our church, and we are infinitely fortunate God has placed her there. It is here she spiritually nurtures the kids in our congregation by teaching them God’s Word, builds a relationship with them through which she may model the love of Jesus Christ, and fosters a lifelong love and desire for God in the hearts of future generations. Talk about meaning. Talk about purpose! What she is doing has eternal significance. What a fulfilling life! As she enjoys and glorifies God in her personal life-sustaining relationship with Him, she uses her talents to bring others into the same abundance that brings her so much joy. 

That, of course, is an example of someone answering God’s call to vocational ministry, but you by no means have to be employed by a church in order to live for Him. That is not at all what I am saying. If this were the case, churches would be stuffed full of staff members and incur an enormous weekly payroll no amount of tithing could support. God has uniquely, lovingly designed you for your specific life circumstances to minister to the people He has placed in your life in a way that nobody else can. This is because of the distinct skills and personality traits He has given you. Is becoming a college professor a huge passion of yours? Perhaps God is calling you to show your students the warm hope and stability that comes from having a relationship with Jesus. Do you enjoy working with your hands in a warehouse? Maybe God is leading you to form relationships with your coworkers so you can show them the peace that passes understanding that comes from God. 

I want to close this post with another invitation to accept the free gift of Jesus–and if you are a believer who uses the content of this post to engage in a conversation about purpose and meaning with a member of my generation, I would call you to close with something like this as well.

If you want to live a life of purpose too abundant for me to describe with words on a page, and you have not yet accepted Christ as your savior but would like to, I encourage you to do that now. All it takes is a repentant heart, submissive from the knowledge that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and because of that sin, there is now an uncrossable rift between yourself and Him. Nothing you do can get you to the other side to be with Him—not paying your taxes on time, not helping old ladies across the street, not swearing less…nothing. 

Romans 6:23 tells us the wages of sin is death, but fortunately for us, it does not stop there. It also says the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. This is because Christ came down from glory to dwell among us on earth, completely human and completely man. He lived a perfect, sinless life and died a torturous death on the cross to atone for the sins of mankind. He died for the very people that spat upon Him, beat Him, and crucified Him. He died for you, and you need only accept His gift of salvation and begin a relationship with God. 

If that sounds like something you want to do, then pray something like the following example. You can even pray it word for word if you want: “Lord, I know I’m a sinner and can’t have a relationship with you on my own. I know Jesus Christ died for my sins, and I want to ask Him to be my savior. I want to follow you, now.” 

Invite Jesus into your life, and then watch Him transform it. After praying, find a Christian in your life you trust and ask them to guide you as you begin your walk with the Lord. Ask them to help you discover the goodness of God’s Word. Pray and ask God what He would have you do. Enjoy the bliss that comes from having your past wiped clean and a divine purpose placed in your life. This doesn’t mean all your problems will magically go away, but it does mean you now have sufficient purpose with which you may weather the storms of this life.