This is Water: The Currents of a Christless Life

David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech that shook the world; then he killed himself. It was hailed as wisdom for living, yet he could not live by it. The address was “met with universal acclaim.” The New Yorker, Huffington Post, and The New York Times all covered it. Time Magazine listed it in the top place in its list of Top Ten Commencement Speeches. You may have heard of it. In the speech, he gave the analogy of two fish passing by a third who asks them, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” To which, after a moment of silence, the two fish turn to each other and say, “What the heck is water?” Like these fish, Wallace said, we live in a world that surrounds us with the imperative to do in order to be, and when we don’t realize this, the results are disastrous.

Wallace put it this way: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” If we worship the things that the world tells us to—money, success, fame, even happiness—we will be consumed by things that ultimately will not make us happy.

Wallace understood this more than anyone, and the secular world quickly foisted him upon their shoulders as they seemed to chant, “Show us the way!” Yet, three years later, his adoring wife found him hanging in their home in Claremont, California. Wallace was eaten alive by the world.

Like Jesus said to the scribe in Mark 12, Wallace was “not far from the Kingdom of God.” But it is only the entrance to that Kingdom that can truly set us free from water worship. Wallace’s prescription for avoiding these soul-consuming effects was to be compassionate, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them … That is real freedom.” But Wallace was not ultimately free. This tortured man soon found out that even caring about other people was not enough.

We can be charitable and sacrifice for other people while still humming to the siren song of achievement. How many people did I feed today? What impact did I really make? Who has seen my efforts? Do I really matter? Will this make me happy?

For some, just like Wall Street executives, such pursuits truly do make them happy. There are happy billionaires driving in Bentleys and joyful social workers in Corollas. But each must face the music and ask, “Is this sufficient?” Success, whether in helping others or making money, can always rot in the rust of self-doubt. Have I done enough? Elon Musk’s heroic work ethic is driven by this desire. In his words, “It’s very hard to be useful. Are you contributing more than you consume? … If you live a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived.” Who among us has produced more than we consume—gadgets, clothes, food, cars, houses? If all these things you’ve owned in your life were piled up, have you produced more than that? If not, secular wisdom might say your life isn’t worth it.

There is only one answer to the question of our existence that does not lead to suicidal despair. Wallace had the courage to face it, yet he did not seem to find the final answer. Others are much less brave because they never consider the question of the meaning of their lives. Yet we all must face the music.

Christ not only shows us the “water” of our world, the default settings, as Wallace put it, that we operate in, which compels us to do in order to be. But Christ also shows us how to get out of the water, how to escape the soul-destroying treadmill of accomplishment salvation. Only Christ offers us a way that does not require our own achievement. The world-worship-default-setting we all have from birth tells us that our actions will, in some way, justify our existence. But our work always fails to measure up. We all realize this now or later. Only Christ tells us, “It is finished.” The work has been done. Our lives—in Christ—are not about accomplishment but reveling in that which has been accomplished. True worship has nothing to do with what we do and everything to do with what He did.

The only way to escape the hounding darkness of self-loathing is to accept our inability. We cannot even be “good people” who demonstrate true compassion for others. Even our most laudable deeds are tainted with self-preservation. Isn’t the push to care for others ultimately driven by the desire to avoid depression and death, a desire for our benefit? This death can only be avoided by walking through it, by dying to ourselves and living to Christ. This is the way out of the watery labyrinth of our world and into the Kingdom of God with its crystal sea, the sea of glass, which beckons us to follow Him into the glorious life of His joy, His accomplishment. As Wallace concluded, we must constantly remind ourselves of the worship of the world. We must repeat, “This is water. This is water.” But only Christ can show us how to walk on it.