When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 19th century, he observed that despite our prosperity, there was a “strange melancholy in the midst of abundance.” Fast forward to the 1990s. In the movie Fight Club, Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) captured his generation’s growing sense of discontent: We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. Skip ahead to today. Most Americans have luxuries that the prosperous in the 1800s couldn’t imagine and the movie gods of the 1990s only dreamed of: supercomputers in our pockets, AI to do our bidding, and entertainment always at the tip of our fingers. And yet amid this abundance, Tocqueville’s “strange melancholy” persists. Deaths of despair have reached alarmingly high levels. Loneliness has been declared a public health epidemic. Student mental health has never been worse. And, like Durden, many of us are regularly “pissed off.” Psychologist Richard Beck sums it up: The data is pretty clear. While America is the most affluent nation in the history of the world, our rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and addiction are all skyrocketing. We’re not doing well. We are a deeply unwell society. This all raises an urgent question: What’s the matter with us? We could blame many culprits. The rise of the smartphone, the media, or simply those “other” people. Yet in various ways, each of these is related to a deeper underlying problem. As Andrew Root points out, something deeper is worth a closer look: the way we’re pursuing happiness. Way of Disappointment In a million subtle ways, we’re told that personal fulfillment is something we can win. Happiness is something we can achieve . . . if we just put in the work. Whatever we think will make us happy, we can go after and get it. In a million subtle ways, we’re told that personal fulfillment is something we can win. Happiness is something we can achieve . . . if we just put in the work. An 18-year-old arrives at college and is handed 180 majors to choose from. But she’s internalized a message from our culture: “Don’t mess this up because your entire life—your happiness and your self-fulfillment—is on the line.” The pressure started long before this moment and will progress as she ages in our modern meritocracy. “You can be happy by way of marriage if you just find the perfect spouse.” “You can have the family, the career, the body of your dreams, if you just _____.” No pressure. But what happens if you fail? If you can’t rise through the ranks of our meritocracy? Either you’re a loser with no one to blame but yourself for not measuring up, or you’ll find someone, some group, some system to blame as the oppressor. If you can’t play the winner, then playing the victim at least helps deal with the guilt. Or what happens if you do achieve your dreams and finally get what you think you want—when you get the job of your dreams, find the right spouse, achieve all you set out to do—but you still have a gnawing sadness that won’t go away. Then what? As Westerners, we typically respond to these letdowns in one of two ways. We deal with the sorrow and the pressure of life by digging deeper, grinding even harder. We jump on the achievement treadmill. Move faster. Work harder. Fill up the schedule. Get people to like us. Prove to everybody that we’re somebody. Until we burn out. Or we cope by quitting. We fill our lives with diversions to mask our sadness and fear. We binge on Netflix. We attach our self-worth to a college football team. We shop, scroll, drink, or do whatever we can to escape the burden and the boredom of life. Sometimes we do both in the same day and call it “work-life balance.” Even the most skilled jugglers, those who manage to accomplish what looks like almost perfect equilibrium between diversions and achievement, still have their moments. Channeling the book of Ecclesiastes, the world’s top golfer Scottie Scheffler recently asked, “What’s the point?” Here’s the paradox: You can’t find true happiness by aiming for it. You can only discover true happiness by living a life worth living. We live in sad times because we don’t know who we are as humans and how to live worthily. The Psalter offers us another way to attend to life and answer the question “What’s the point?” Specifically, Psalm 8 is a gateway to the answer in the Psalms (and the rest of the Bible), inviting everyone to a new and life-giving way to live into our humanity. Way of Worship Psalm 8 begins, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens” (v. 1). The Psalms offer us a way of life centered around God. We’re called into the worship of the God whose name is in the earth and whose glory is above the heavens. Theologians describe this in-and-above dynamic as God’s immanence and transcendence. God is wholly different from us. His glory is far beyond anything we can compare it to—the most glorious mountains, the most beautiful flower, the most riveting story, the thrill of a first kiss. None of it compares to God’s glory. He’s so far beyond us, and yet as Augustine says, “God is closer to you than you are to yourself.” He’s with us now and always. He knows you better than you know yourself. God created, neither because he needed the world nor because he needed us. The triune God has never lacked, never been lonely. The Father, Son, and Spirit have always been in a perfect loving relationship. God’s love is unlike ours—it isn’t transactional. He doesn’t love out of lack. His love isn’t fragile. God is always radiating outward in joy. Creation was an unnecessary yet fitting expression of God’s overflowing love. Worshiping God releases us from the trap of self-focus. Getting caught up in worship frees us to live according to the logic of the universe. When I say worship, I mean the raw and beautiful diversity of worship we see throughout the Psalms: telling God about our sadness, confessing our sins, arguing with him, praising him for his goodness and majesty. Instead of navel-gazing our way through life, we’re pulled out of ourselves by worship so that we too begin radiating outward, reflecting our Creator and Father. Way of Infants In Psalm 8:2, we find a paradox that reflects a repeated biblical pattern: “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” Infants are helpless, needy, and vulnerable. In the real world, we’re told you win through personal strength, through force of personality, or by having the most followers. You don’t win through weakness. Verse 2 reflects the upside-down economy of God’s kingdom. Why was Israel chosen? Why did Samuel choose the youngest son, David, instead of his stronger older brothers? Whom must we be like to receive Jesus’s kingdom? Is it the resourceful, well-connected, rich, powerful young ruler? No. It’s the class of people whom everyone knew were vulnerable and dependent. “Truly, I say to you,” Jesus said, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15). This is the way of true wisdom. Or as the apostle Paul puts it, this is the way of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18–31). To be wise, we must confess our foolishness. To become strong, we must confess our weakness. We can’t achieve our way to the good life. Humble confession, rather than self-actualization, is the path to the life we’re all looking for. As C. S. Lewis merrily explains in The Great Divorce, “We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.” When it comes to our pursuits of happiness, Jesus turns our instincts on their head. To live, we must die. If we attempt to achieve happiness through self-fulfillment, we’ll spend our lives jockeying to stay in control by avoiding self-sacrifice and costly relationships. We’ll attempt to get everything and everyone to revolve around us. Yet the more we demand to be in the center, the more we’ll always be on the brink of losing control. The more we try to control our way to happiness, the more we’ll always be on the edge of frustration, anger, and despair when we experience life’s uncontrollability. We must die to trying to be the center. We must kill the quest to be our own God. Once we do that, we’re free to live. To live by the grain of the universe. To reflect our God. To live radiating outward in love. Way of True Meaning Friedrich Nietzsche famously observed that, with the death of God, intrinsic meaning died with him. Later 20th-century existentialists understood all too well the disturbing implications. As Jean-Paul Sartre confessed, it’s “extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.” The more we try to control our way to happiness, the more we’ll always be on the edge of frustration, anger, and despair when we experience life’s uncontrollability. The proposed solution? If we can’t find meaning outside ourselves, our only option is to look within. We must rise to the challenge and create a meaningful life for ourselves. Fast forward to today’s achievement society. Created meaning has become part and parcel with self-creation. A do-it-yourself attitude, along with a carefully curated identity, is the way to significance. If you’re going to validate your life, you must achieve it. If you’re going to live a meaningful life, it’s up to you to spin the webs of significance for yourself. Verses 3–4 of Psalm 8, however, counter this approach: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,     the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him,     and the son of man that you care for him? Some have estimated there are up to 2 trillion galaxies and 700 quintillion planets. And here we sit on this one little planet in this tiny corner of our galaxy. Who are we to think we could produce a life of any real significance? Who are you to think you could achieve something of lasting meaning? With a little thought about the grandeur of our cosmos, we discover quickly that what in theory sounded like an exhilarating DIY project turns out to be a renovation nightmare. Add to this the specter of suffering and death, and our designs for a meaningful life and the construction of our cosmic significance begin to crumble. But the good news is that you don’t have to bear the curse of trying to achieve your own meaning. If your significance depends on individual creation, it’s hard to avoid the despair of nihilism lurking in the background. Nihilism is the pesky voice whispering in the back of your mind before you fall asleep at night, None of your created meaning really matters. If you believe ultimate reality is impersonal, the first thing you need to do is actively suppress that belief. Because if you want a meaningful life, the thought of an impersonal and meaningless universe will quickly destroy the fragile webs of significance you’re trying to weave for yourself. Psalm 8 reminds us how fragile, small, and vulnerable we are. And yet, God is mindful of us. The God of the entire universe loves you. You matter. The scandal of God’s love is the news that feels too good to be true: God loves you, not because you’ve achieved something, nor because you’re useful. He loves you because he loves you. Way of Receiving The logic of verses 5–8 runs like this: We exist and are called in love. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings     and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;     you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen,     and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,     whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Just as we didn’t achieve our births or create the air we breathe, we don’t achieve our ultimate significance. God’s creation of and love for us is what bestows our value. We can’t earn or achieve that; we must receive it. This directly confronts our present cultural logic of merit that’s wreaking havoc on our lives and society. God’s grace throws a wrench into the machinery of late-modern achievement society. God’s grace throws a wrench into the machinery of late-modern achievement society. Our entrance into this world was a divine gift. Likewise, the only way out of the mess we’ve made is by receiving a gift we haven’t earned. As the apostle Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Your life, your talents, and salvation itself are undeserved gifts. Paul presses in on the implications of the gratuitous nature of God’s gifts: “If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” The implications of such radical grace make for a staggering reversal of the ethos of merit and reward. Divine grace subverts the notion that we’re fundamentally “earners” who frantically build résumés in hopes of winning public validation and the good life. God’s grace humbles us out of any sense of superiority. Our posture begins to shift from anxious achievers, competing against others to assemble a collection of status symbols, to jubilant children on Christmas morning, receiving extravagant gifts from loving parents. Such excessive and unmerited gifts ultimately lead us into the hands of the loving Giver. This is how Bobby Jamieson puts it in his recent book on Ecclesiastes: If you believe that life is good because life is a gift, and life is a gift because God gives it, and life is full of good things because the creator is constantly flinging gifts at your faster than you can catch them, then any meaning you discover is catching up with the meaning that God has already built in. Any goodness you enjoy is scratching the surface of the goodness that life is. Any happiness you experience is a glimpse of the one who is happiness himself. Choose the Better Way We circle back, as Hebrew poetry so often does, to where we began: to the worship of the living God. The final verse of Psalm 8 says, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (v. 9). Worshiping God doesn’t mean life will be easy. As a certain Beaver once said, Jesus isn’t safe, but he’s good. In this life, there will be many troubles. You can try to live so you control as much as possible and achieve your way to the good life, but in the end, that will only lead to anxiety, loneliness, and eventually despair. Or you can receive the kingdom like a child and worship the living God––the God who is there, who isn’t safe, but whose majesty and glory shine through all the earth.

There’s a true gospel, and there are false gospels. There are believers in historic Christianity, and there are unbelievers. People genuinely remade by the gospel don’t seek to remake the gospel. But this isn’t the way Matthew Avery Sutton—the Claudius O. and Mary Johnson distinguished professor and chair in history at Washington State University—describes American Christianity in his new book Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity. As evident by his subtitle, Sutton contends that, in their 500-year quest to turn North America into a holy land, Christians have repeatedly reinvented their faith with virtually nothing tying the reinventions together in the way of creed or idea. In the process of “reconstructing,” “rebranding,” and “recasting” Christianity, Sutton claims, Americans have “spun Christianity into the United States’ most popular and enduring product” (4, 7, 9). The only constants of American Christianity have been its malleability and its marketability. Rather than a faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3), Christianity is “something packaged, advertised, and sold to Americans and exported to people around the world” (7). This misrepresents the mission of the majority of believers in America over the course of 500 years, who were motivated to evangelize not by worldly profit but by the salvation of the lost. Constant Critique Sutton artfully demonstrates that the history of American Christianity hasn’t been heaven on earth. However, he seems to highlight the most carnal, self-interested episodes. Chapter 4, for example, begins with the account of eccentric revivalist James Davenport taking off the pants of which he was inordinately proud during a bonfire for burning away vanities. Around every turn in Chosen Land, Christians wield the gospel for personal power or prestige. For example, Great Awakening evangelist George Whitefield didn’t just preach to the lost; he “pitched salvation” as if it were a product in a window (61). The famous Haystack Prayer Meeting (1806) wasn’t just an effort to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission; the students at Williams College “acted both as ambassadors for the gospel and as American imperialists” (193). The only consistent feature of Christianity in North America, according to Sutton, is its near-constant use for material gain: preachers become “entrepreneurs of faith,” Puritans sanction free market capitalism, and Christianity becomes a “commodity” (7, 192, 40). Examining the Puritans, for example, Sutton quips, “Had they aimed to establish a New Testament–type communist community, things might have turned out differently. But for these faithful, God ordained the pursuit of wealth rather than equality” (40). Rather than engaging Puritan theology at length, Sutton frames the early church as protocommunists and refashions Max Weber’s “Protestant ethic” thesis to paint Puritans as forerunners of the prosperity gospel. Rebranding vs. Reforming Sutton is well versed in American religious history, having written five other books on the subject. In his American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, Sutton pushed back against George Marsden’s authoritative telling of American fundamentalism. In contrast to a “militantly anti-modern Protestant evangelicalism,” Sutton framed fundamentalism as an “apocalyptic movement” oriented more eschatologically than doctrinally. But Sutton’s more recent views of evangelicalism have come under increased scrutiny. In a 2024 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion titled “Redefining the History and Historiography on American Evangelicalism in the Era of the Religious Right,” Sutton argues that post-WWII evangelicalism is best understood as a “religio-political coalition” and as a “white, patriarchal nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free market economics.” There’s little that’s actually theological in Sutton’s view of religion. There’s little that’s actually theological in Sutton’s view of religion. Sutton elaborates on these ideas in his new book. He considers the term “evangelical” in the 1940s to be simply a “rebrand” of fundamentalism: “The postwar evangelicalism that they promoted was not the continuation of an older tradition but the start of a new American religious movement, a reinvigorated fundamentalism. There is no singular evangelical throughline dating from the colonial period to today” (9). Rather than identifying a consistent evangelical emphasis on the rebirth or the atonement or the Bible, and rather than positing that evangelicalism might be “reformed” according to Scripture, Sutton argues evangelicalism is just another “rebrand” or reinvention of American Christianity. He doesn’t simply deny a “singular evangelical throughline.” At times, it seems as if he denies one for Christianity itself. Kingdom of This World Ironically, Sutton’s approach to history has much in common with certain corners of ultraconservative scholarship and Christian nationalism. For example, “American Christianity and American history are not two parallel stories,” he explains, “they are the same story. The history of the United States is the history of American Christianity, and the history of American Christianity is the history of the United States” (15). However, while these two entities undeniably overlap, they aren’t identical. Christianity shaped America. Christianity suffused America. But America was also molded by people and ideas and movements that weren’t Christian, in confession or practice or otherwise. American history is, after all, also part of the long history of sin. Many of the founders spoke Christian language without embracing historic orthodoxy. Christianity suffused America. But America was also molded by people and ideas and movements that weren’t Christian, in confession or practice or otherwise. Sutton’s atheological approach to religion is never more evident than in the way he defines who is Christian and who isn’t. In Sutton’s book, a host of groups—Unitarians, Universalists, Deists, skeptics, Quakers, Shakers, Mormons, and Baptists—all fall under the canopy of “American Christianity.” But there’s little theological continuity between these movements. Based on this approach, are we to believe that Christianity was “reconstructed . . . over and over again” to meet “the demands of the public” as if it were a new iPhone? (4). Or are we instead to profess that an ancient faith was passed down consistently to each American generation—to a people who modified their beliefs and styles based on their understanding of the Bible in their own day and yet still combated heretical challenges to the Bible? One view of American Christianity is transactional; the other is traditional. Christian Tradition The church sits atop the greatest tradition of all. For two millennia, Christians have believed the kingdom advances not through clever reinvention but through fidelity to what has been received. By conflating the entire history of America with the history of its Christianity, Sutton implies that all American religious expressions are equally Christian, that doctrine evolves as rapidly as politics, and that the nation’s sins can therefore be imputed to the church. Sutton is right to assert, “Christianity in the United States was political” (123). But it was much more than political. The once-for-all delivered faith isn’t a Starbucks coffee we customize to the felt needs and cultural trends of our generation. Christianity has endured because of Christ’s faithfulness, not because of our inventiveness. Still, Chosen Land reminds evangelicals that if someone believes that the gospel can be reduced to a commodity, we shouldn’t be surprised when he longs for a Christianity that looks exactly like the world.

To celebrate the first birthday of The Deep Dish, Courtney and Melissa welcome special surprise guests to answer tough questions sent in by listeners. They talk about the difference between shame and the Spirit’s conviction, how to seek advice about a conflict without gossiping, how to sit with the tension of a biblical text, how to keep the Sabbath, and more.  Resources Mentioned: Remembering Death Teaches Us to Live The Dish on Gossip Becoming Good Stewards of Our Bodies Conversations with God When You Want to Change Your Husband Related Resources: Sabbath Rest (Disciplines of Devotion series) by Megan Hill Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin Gospel Parenting During the Little Years

Discover the dramatic story of Esther, a Jewish queen who defied danger to save her people, proving that even in luxury, purpose can call. Explore how her courageous act of intervention challenges us to consider if we too were placed in our current circumstances for a significant reason.

Most cultures have some form of fasting, but Christianity gives it a particular purpose.