Help! I’ve Stopped Caring About God. | for Christianity Today
Why Christians slide into spiritual apathy, and how they can recover.
Believers often describe the Christian life as a series of peaks and valleys, with periods of joyful discipleship followed by seasons of spiritual listlessness. Uche Anizor, a professor at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology, writes for those trudging through the valley in Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care. Matthew LaPine, a pastor and author on topics of theology and human psychology, spoke with Anizor about the causes of spiritual apathy and the pathway back to a passionate pursuit of God.
What motivated you to write a book on apathy among Christians?
Now is your chance to support Gospel News Network.
We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
There are two motivations. One comes from experiences early on in my Christian life, particularly when I worked with Campus Crusade for Christ. Basically, my job was to mentor students and do regular evangelism. However, there were many days when I would dread facing these monumental spiritual tasks. It troubled me: I had raised support to do this, but when it came time to do it, I didn’t really want to. Fear of evangelism was probably a factor. But overall, there was a general “blahness” in my attitude. During that time, I told people over and over that my main vice as a Christian was being an apathetic person. So I wanted to get my mind around why that was.
My other motivation comes from having mentored lots of students during my years at Biola. They struggle with typical stuff, but I think the main thing is just not caring about their spiritual life. Intellectually, they know the importance of knowing theology, loving Jesus, and living the Christian life. But they can’t get themselves to care the way they know, deep down, they should.
When it comes to the pull of apathy, do you see any generational differences?
There is apathy in every generation. But different people process and evaluate it in different ways. The irony right now is that younger people are often far more emotionally aware than their elders. They are aware of their internal world, aware enough to want to talk about it openly. But I’m not sure that awareness leads them to deal with what’s going on inside. Their friends might say, “Yeah, I totally connect with that.” But they’re all stuck in this self-affirming mire.
Perhaps previous generations were less emotionally aware. Even if they had feelings of apathy, they would just persist in putting their heads down and getting the job done, whereas members of this emotionally aware generation might stop doing something when they don’t feel genuine passion. If they’re feeling apathetic about the things of God, they’ll be less inclined to continue pursuing those things.
How would you distinguish between apathy and close cousins like depression, despondency, and what might be called “dry spells”?
