We Are Thirsty, and the Wells Are Older Than We Think
We live in an age of abundance that does not know how to quench thirst.
That, more than anything else, is what stayed with me after my conversation with Andrew Arndt.
We are surrounded by options, access, information, entertainment, mobility, stimulation, and influence. We are, in material terms, among the wealthiest and most connected people who have ever lived. And yet beneath that abundance runs a strange and persistent dryness. Something in us remains unsatisfied, undernourished, and restless. We have more than many generations could have imagined, and yet we burn with a thirst we cannot seem to name, much less relieve.
Andrew’s language about “searching for the wells” struck me because it names the problem without sentimentalizing it. We are not merely busy. We are spiritually dehydrated.
And one of the deepest confusions of modern life is that we keep expecting the same civilization that made us thirsty to provide the water.
It will not.
We are spiritually thirsty, but we have forgotten where the wells are
One of the gifts of Andrew’s work is that he speaks about spiritual hunger with a seriousness that does not collapse into cliché. He is not talking about vague inspiration, nor about a passing desire for “meaning.” He is talking about a real civilizational condition: modern people have become alienated from the life and love of God while continuing to live amid extraordinary comfort and technological power.
That is a difficult diagnosis for a culture like ours to accept.
We tend to assume that if we are dissatisfied, the problem is a lack of optimization. Better tools. Better habits. Better information. Better therapy. Better politics. Better branding. Better curation of the self. Better access to spiritual content, perhaps. But spiritual thirst is not solved by content volume. A dehydrated soul cannot be fed by scrolling.
This is where Andrew’s turn to older Christian sources becomes so significant. The “wells” are not primarily novel techniques. They are older, deeper, and usually quieter than our age prefers. They belong to a longer tradition of prayer, suffering, discipline, wisdom, and communion with God. They are found among people who understood that life with God is not built from excitement alone.
Modern society, for all its gifts, is simply not structured to lead us there. It can carry us. It can distract us. It can enrich us materially. It can connect us superficially. It can accelerate almost everything except depth.
And depth is what thirst requires.
What if the wilderness is not a detour, but a path?
If society itself is not where the wells are found, then the next question becomes unavoidable: where are they found?
Andrew’s answer, shaped in part by his encounter with the desert fathers and mothers, is deeply countercultural. The wells are often found not in places of abundance, rather in desolate areas. Not in proximity, but out in the wilderness.
This is where his story becomes so compelling. He described a profound season of vocational and existential unraveling, a moment when identity, calling, and direction all seemed to collapse at once. And in that collapse, he was introduced more deeply to the wisdom of those Christians who had understood long ago that desolation is not always a sign of divine absence. Sometimes it is the place where false selves die and deeper realities emerge.
That is not the message contemporary society likes to hear.
We prefer to think of wilderness as interruption. A detour. A glitch in the system. Something to medicate, bypass, explain away, or hurry through. But the biblical pattern suggests otherwise. The desert is not incidental. Israel goes through it. Elijah goes through it. John the Baptist emerges from it. Jesus enters it before public ministry.
The wilderness does not merely happen to the spiritual life. It is often part of it.
This is also where the old phrase “in the world, but not of it” takes on renewed significance. We do not get to escape society. We have work to do, neighbors to love, institutions to inhabit, and responsibilities to fulfill. Withdrawal alone is not faithfulness. But neither is uncritical integration. To be fully absorbed into the emotional, moral, and technological habits of contemporary society is to become incapable of hearing quieter voices.
So there is a tension to be held.
We must remain engaged enough to love the world.
But detached enough not to be possessed by it.
That is difficult. It always has been. And it is especially difficult now, when distraction is not just a temptation but an infrastructure.
Thin faith cannot survive real suffering
This is where Andrew’s reflections on the theological thinness of some forms of spirituality become so important.
A faith built only for enthusiasm will not survive desolation.
A faith built only for victory will not survive loss.
A faith built only for blessing will not survive suffering.
Andrew spoke candidly about coming from a spiritually alive but theologically thin environment, especially when it came to suffering. If hardship is always interpreted as failure, sin, weak faith, or divine displeasure, then suffering becomes unbearable in more than one sense. It hurts, yes—but it also destroys meaning. It isolates. It accuses. It turns pain into spiritual shame.
And that is one of the surest signs of a thin faith: it has no place to put suffering except in the category of malfunction.
The Christian tradition, at its best, has always known better.
Not because it romanticizes pain.
Not because it seeks misery for its own sake.
But because it knows that suffering can be revelatory. Clarifying. Purifying. Stripping. Even, in some cases, participatory in the life of Christ.
This is not an easy message. It is not meant to be.
But it is a necessary one. Because every life will be tested. Every soul will face some form of wilderness, disappointment, death, betrayal, illness, confusion, loss, or desolation. The question is not whether we will suffer. The question is whether our understanding of God is thick enough to survive it.
A spiritually mature tradition prepares people for this. A thin one often leaves them disillusioned at precisely the moment they most need depth.
That may be one reason older Christian voices keep sounding new. They were formed in harsher conditions. They did not assume that comfort was normal. They knew that God had to be sought in darkness as well as light.
The church did not begin in 1981
One of my favorite moments in the conversation, and one that immediately resonated with me, was when Andrew described reading Richard Foster as a young man and realizing, almost all at once, that the church did not begin in his own local movement.
That realization may be one of the most important thresholds in spiritual maturity. And
For some, the date is not 1981 but 1957, or 1517, or 1906, or the year their particular denomination, renewal movement, seminary tribe, or theological subculture first became real to them. But the temptation is the same. We unconsciously assume that the version of Christianity we inherited is the version. Our vocabulary becomes the whole horizon. Our local emphases become universal categories. And what does not fit them starts to feel suspect.
Then, if grace intervenes, a window opens.
We discover that the church has been thinking, praying, suffering, worshiping, arguing, repenting, and loving God for two thousand years. We realize there is a much larger conversation underway than the one we happened to be born into. We discover saints, mystics, reformers, martyrs, monks, pastors, poets, theologians, and ordinary believers whose lives reveal dimensions of the faith we were never taught to see.
That is not a betrayal of our roots. It is often their fulfillment.
But it is also disorienting. Because it forces us out of the familiar zone. It makes us spiritually homeless for a while in order to make us more deeply at home in the household of faith itself.
And this is where I want to press one point carefully.
Community is indispensable. We are not self-created Christians. We need congregations,, mentors, elders, friends, and the communion of saints. We need correction, encouragement, liturgy, accountability, and mutual care.
But community is not where our deepest spiritual answers finally come from.
Those answers are fought for in the wilderness of the soul.
They are discovered where no one can go for us.
They are received where borrowed language stops working.
They are tested where inherited certainty grows thin.
They are clarified where God meets a person in ways that cannot be outsourced.
That does not make the spiritual journey individualistic in the modern sense. It means that, in the deepest matters, no one can drink on our behalf. Others can point us to the wells. They can preserve them, protect them, and testify to them. But each soul must drink.
We all must be pushed beyond the familiar
This may be one of the hidden mercies of spiritual upheaval.
Most of us do not leave our comfort zones voluntarily. We are pushed.
A leadership crisis.
A personal collapse.
A loss of certainty.
A betrayal.
A season of dryness.
A prayer that seems unanswered.
A text we can no longer explain away.
A community that fails us.
A suffering that does not fit our framework.
These are painful things. But they can also become invitations.
Andrew’s own life demonstrates that the breakdown of a former spiritual structure does not have to end in cynicism or exile. It can become a doorway into something larger, older, deeper, and more durable.
That is one reason I find his witness compelling. He does not seem interested in merely deconstructing what came before. He is interested in thickening it—placing early instincts inside a richer, wider, older Christian reality. Not abandoning the sense that God is alive and near, but grounding it more deeply in a tradition robust enough to survive suffering, complexity, and time.
That is, I think, exactly what many modern believers need.
Not a new trend.
Not another shallow burst of intensity.
Not one more niche spiritual brand.
But a thicker faith. A desert-tested faith. A faith rooted in wells deeper than the present moment.
A final thought
We are spiritually thirsty.
That is not because God has hidden Himself. It may be because we keep looking for water in places designed to keep us stimulated, not sanctified.
The wells are there. But they are rarely found on the surface of contemporary life. They are often found in wilderness, in suffering, in older wisdom, in slower practices, and in the difficult but necessary work of going beyond the spiritual vocabulary we inherited without despising it.
Andrew Arndt’s journey points toward that kind of faith.
A faith that knows society cannot save us.
A faith that understands wilderness is often part of the path.
A faith thick enough to survive suffering.
A faith humble enough to remember the church did not begin with us.
And a faith personal enough to know that, though community matters immensely, each of us must still learn how to drink for ourselves.
That may be one of the great spiritual tasks of our time.
Not to invent new wells.
But to remember where they are.
Sneak Peek
Next on Created in the Image of God, the conversation continues in two directions that naturally extend what Andrew raised about belovedness, fear, and the deeper work of the soul.
On Sunday, October 11 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I’ll be speaking with Misha Boyett—author, youth pastor, and Down Syndrome advocate—about rest, disability, and our culture of achievement, and what it means to recognize the inherent belovedness of every human being. From confronting perfection and performance to discovering a more grace-filled vision of wholeness and flourishing in Jesus, it promises to be a deeply needed conversation.
Then on Tuesday, October 13 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be joined by the founder of World Without Fear to explore the inner work of facing fear, uncovering the patterns that hold us back, and how deeper self-awareness can open the way toward transformation. From shadow work and spiritual healing to living and leading with greater clarity, purpose, and courage, this should be a rich discussion.
