Depression and Nihilism are Destroying our Relationships

“50% of marriages end in divorce. Monogamy is patriarchy. Everyone ends up leaving you anyways. What’s the point?” Have you had thoughts like this about relationships? These are just a few of the lies many of us believe today which have doomed many of our relationships before they’ve even started. But, when we live in a post-Christian, naturalist, nihilistic world, should we really be surprised? And, when one of the most common reasons cited for depression in the U.S. is due to relationship issues, should we really be surprised that, as of May 2023, Gallup has reported that now more than 25% of adults in the U.S. are depressed? So, how does what we believe impact our relationships and how can we correct this downward spiral?

Is there a God? And, if there is, does God actually want anything to do with me? The Nihilist would say, “No, and not applicable.” Nihilism is the belief in nothing. There’s no God, no order or meaning to the universe, no purpose for your life or anyone else’s. As western culture has been racing to squash the vestiges of religion and especially Christianity in recent decades, the great philosphers and influencers of our modern era have dethroned God and replaced Him with... nothing? Well, not exactly. Regardless of whether we call it a god or “the universe” or nature or our own consciences, we all will order our lives around whatever we define as the highest good. Friedrich Nietzche actually said this is one of the reasons that Christianity itself was nihilistic. In his work titled “The Antichrist,” he outlined that the Christian orientation towards a life after death and how that drove us to sacrifice in this life actually makes us self-destructive nihilists since the life we have here, he believed, is the only life we will ever have. Basically, even though we believe in something, that something doesn’t really exist, so we believe in nothing and that belief drives us to devalue and degrade what we do have.

Nietzche, however, was not only wrong, but also SUUUUUPER late to the concept. Roughly 1800 years before he even came on the scene, the apostle Paul had already said all of that.

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” - 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

Any Christian who takes their faith seriously and has read their bibles, already knew that if we are wrong, then our lives would have been wasted. But, since Christianity is true, since Jesus actually did rise from the dead, then the only logical response is to bet our lives on what He has told us. But, where does Nihilism interject itself into our relationships. Well, let’s go back to Nietzche.

Allie – In “The Antichrist,” Nietzche writes:

“Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances, it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy -- a loss out of all proportion with the magnitude of the cause (--the case of the death of the Nazerene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect.” - Friedrich Nietzche, “The Antichrist,” s.7

According to Nietzche, pity as he has defined it, is a fatal flaw in Christianity and the Christian worldview. Pity, to recognize and take on the burdens and pains of those around you, only spreads the pain and depresses us as individuals, which in turn causes all of humanity to grow in suffering and pain, creating a “gloomy and dubious” way of living. He posits that it is our belief in God and in the promise of eternal life after death which causes us to be willing to sacrifice ourselves and take on the burdens of others and that this is one of the greatest reasons why the Christian faith is holding the world and the evolution of man back. So, obviously, the answer starts with the removal of God. But, this dethroning doesn’t mean that there is no greatest good with which to order ones life around. It creates a vacuum in our psyche, a role that must be filled, and if you read his work, it is clear to see that Nietzche chose to fill that void with man – and even more specifically, himself.

Think about it; if pity – recognizing and carrying the burdens of others rather than allowing them to be weeded out by natural selection – is now considered a negative virtue, then the highest good is not just the continued evolution of man, but the unhindered progress of the individual. In this new belief system, the religion Nietzche inadvertantly creates, pity and Christian charity are now sins while self-advancement and darwinian evolution are the highest good. When the advancement of humankind becomes your new god, that’s just a more palatble way of saying that you are own new god. It doesn’t take much effort to see how Nietzche’s adaptation of darwinian, survival of the fittest, ideology might not work out so well in your relationships with other people. At the end of the day, your advancement, your success, your joy, your pleasure are all the most important things in life. It’s hedonism. And since there is nothing beyond this life, no greater truths to aspire towards or meaning to attain, then why not make the most of it while you can? This is the heart of Nihilism and it has become the governing worldview in our modern era; It's all about you. It's all about right now. Don’t worry about eternity. Don’t even worry about tomorrow. If your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wifwe isn’t giving you what you want, if they’re not exciting you anymore, if you’re just ready to find someone new, then dump them and move on. If your friends are taking up your time, if they are too needy, if don’t like the way you are living your life, then drop them. You don’t need that kind of negativity around, anyways. And why should we have to work to pay for the lifestyle that we want? That sounds a lot like sacrificing my happiness right now for a future that might not or probably won’t ever come anyways. The government should let me do what I want, live the life I want, have all of the thing that I want, and if they don’t then I'm going to burn it down and start again. Is it getting uncomfortable, yet? How about this: What about when my girlfriend gets pregnant? The “thing” inside of her doesn’t have a purpose. “It” would be a drain on our lives and I don’t want that responsibility. Besides, having pity on something as weak and defenseless as a baby in the womb would be weakness anyways. Or, the poor. Or the elderly. Or the minorities. Or the refugees... Or me.

But, what if there is a God? What if, like the bible says, we are made in His image and each one of us has intrinsic value and worth that isn’t based on what we do but in Whose image we bear? What if that value extends to the very weakest, the very lowest, the most rejected? And, what if there is a standard of truth which transcends our own experiences on this earth? What if we actually were created, each one of us, with a purpose? What if we were created to love this God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves? If that God does exist and did create us with value and purpose, then wouldn’t that also mean that His purpose would supercede our own? Wouldn’t He, being the one who created us, know what it is that we should and should not do in any given situation, and if the culmination of His ethic is rooted in love, then shouldn’t we be able to trust that His ways are right even and especially when they contradict our own desires? I mean, if He created us, and He loves us, and He proved His love by making the greatest sacrifice imaginiable on our behalf, then doesn’t it just make sense that He would be the best one to order our lives around? We shouldn’t be surprised when our post-modern, post-Christian, nihilistic world consistently leads to emptiness, despair and depression. Rather than the Ubermensch utopia that Nietzche prophesied, we are lost, godless and hopeless and looking for a way out. We have removed God from the throne of our lives and replaced Him with ourselves. We self identify, we self create, we try to imbue our lives with value while denying the value of the the most vulnerable among us. We shouldn’t be surprised when the world we have built for ourselves is crumbling around us because we were never meant to be the ones to hold it.