Over the weekend came news that the Nebraska State Patrol arrested two men for transporting with intent to deliver enough Fentanyl to kill 26 million people. That is extraordinary. Obviously, we are grateful to the authorities for doing their job and glad that the officers who came into contact with this deadly drug were not themselves injured, which is a very real possibility in such cases.

I first became aware of Fentanyl a few years ago as part of an “end of life” question in hospital. There I was told that Fentanyl is a powerful, even dangerous drug and everything I have seen since supports that view. Police officers and other first responders now must carry NARCAN in their vehicles to treat other officers who may inadvertently come into contact with Fentanyl while searching a person or a vehicle. It is so powerful that there is concern that the gloves they ordinarily wear for such searches may not be sufficient to protect them.

My concern here, however, is not so much public safety and public policy as it is to ask what it means that Americans are apparently consuming such powerful drugs in such quantities. That shipment of Fentanyl was, in effect, a weapon of mass destruction. What on earth is happening?

A partial explanation is illustrated by a 1943 documentary I saw on Saturday. The Spring cold that has been circulating in our area finally tracked me down. So spent a beautiful Saturday in front of the television watching war films. One of them was particularly striking, December 7th a documentary shot by the great cinematographer Greg Toland and directed by John Ford about the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The film was apparently censored by the War Department and not released in full until 1991. I had never seen it before. The film is cast as a dialogue between Uncle Sam and Mr Conscience, who raises questions about the American response to the attack, including the war-time internment of Americans of Japanese descent.

One of the more striking features of the film is its patent assumption of and unashamed appeal to a shared Christian faith. It refers to Sunday as “the Sabbath” without explanation of what a Sabbath is and how the Christian Sabbath differs from the Jewish Sabbath. At one point the narrator says, without apology, “our faith teaches us…”. We may be sure that few blanched at such language in 1943. Indeed, such language was common during my childhood in the 1960s and early 70s. In post-Christian America, however, to hear such language used sincerely, without irony, is remarkable indeed. My point is not to justify such assumptions but only to note the difference between then and now.

Might people have taken Fentanyl in 1943 had they the opportunity? Who knows? Americans not only defied the the 18th amendment in great numbers, with great ingenuity, and industry but they repealed it at the first opportunity. Yet, beer and Fentanyl are hardly the same thing. The latter represents a quest for relief for temporary euphoria, even if it kills us. The CDC says, “The age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (drugs such as fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and tramadol) doubled between 2015 and 2016, from 3.1 to 6.2 per 100,000.” News accounts, including the latest, suggest that trend is not slowing.

Perhaps the fact that Americans are buying, and using Fentanyl tells us something about the American character? Perhaps it tells us something about how we now define the “happiness” of which we spoke in the Declaration? Perhaps, however, it is an indicator of the emptiness of late-modern life? No one could make a a general documentary today and speak the way that Ford did in 1943. It would not make sense. It would not be true (setting aside the question of the degree to which it was true then). Americans seem to have become existentialists or “Epicureans” as Luke calls the philosophy in Acts 17:18. It has been called materialism. Whatever we call it, this philosophy, this religion (for it is that too) says that this life is all there is. Paul summarizes it in 1 Corinthians 15:32, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'” Paul was quoting the 8th century BC prophet Isaiah (22:13), so there is nothing new about this view. It is just as empty today as it was in Isaiah’s day and in Paul’s.

Whether we call him an Epicurean, an existentialist, or a materialist he knows in his conscience that he is liable to judgment (Rom 1:18–22; 2:15–16). What is one to do when one’s conscience is testifying against what one’s mouth and keyboard confess? The materialist says that human existence ends at death, that life is random, meaningless. From that starting point people have tried to theorize about different ways that life can be meaningful even if this is all there is. Evidently the theories are failing. Why else do people turn to deadly narcotics such as Fentanyl to dull their psychic and emotional pain? What is the quest for euphoria but a witness that we know in our conscience that there is more to life than this life.

Then there is Jesus and his empty tomb. The Christian conviction, as Paul indicated, is that Christ was raised from the dead. The life after this one is not absorption into the One or nothingness but an accounting before Jesus. Either one has reckoned with Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, raised, ascended, and who rules now or one has not. Either one has acknowledged and repented of one’s sins and put one’s trust in Jesus for righteousness and eternal life or one has not. That empty tomb also stands as a witness against the materialist/Epicurean/existentialist.

It is not just poverty. Americans have been poor before. In the Great Depression people stood in bread lines. Before that some hardy Nebraskans ate bugs to survive famine. Today, even our homeless have $800 mobile phones. In some cities the authorities will pick up the willing homeless, feed them. clothe them, house them, and educate them for free. No, it is not poverty that drives people to Fentanyl. It is hopelessness. That people risk their life for another high, possibly their last, tells us how much humans desire something beyond this life—even if they have substituted blessed fellowship with the living God, in whose image they are made, for a narcotic high.

Fentanyl cannot save you but it might kill you. Jesus saves sinners who have given up hope in this world. The only way to enjoy this world, as it was meant to be enjoyed, to the degree it can be enjoyed, is to give it up. It is a paradox. Jesus: “Whoever loves his life in this world will lose it. He who hates it will keep it forever” (John 12:25). He also said, “come to me all your who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).