Further Into The Void
by Donavon L Riley
True reality—raw, untamed, and holy—was never meant to be found in the armchair’s soft embrace or the stockpile of wealth that does nothing but stoke a deeper hunger. We’re led to believe that the more we accumulate, the more we become, but it’s a lie as old as time. No, the heart of real living doesn’t beat because of the wealth we chase or the comforts we covet. It doesn’t throb with meaning in the political chambers where laws are spun like spiderwebs, ensnaring the spirit, nor in the hollow pursuits of pleasure that leave men shattered, like broken vessels unable to hold anything lasting.
We are a generation intoxicated by illusions, and the worst of it is that we don’t even know we’re drunk. Real humanity—fierce, unbroken humanity—lives in the rejection of this materialism that clings to us like a second skin. It’s in peeling back the layers of the world’s distractions, rejecting its hollow promises, and recognizing ourselves as beings made in the image of Christ.
There’s something primal, something dangerous in this realization—dangerous because it shakes the foundations of everything we’ve been told to hold dear. St. Athanasius said it right: when we rid ourselves “of the thought of God,” we don’t just lose sight of Him—we lose ourselves. Without God, we’re ghosts, faded images of what we were meant to be, cast adrift in a sea of empty pursuits.
And it’s not just the world we’re enslaved to anymore. No, we’ve gone further than that—we’ve sold ourselves to a world of simulations, a world of images that flicker and fade, but never nourish. Modern man doesn’t just surrender to the material; he bows to illusions within the material. He kneels at the altar of the screen, the social feed, the virtual reality that promises connection and joy but delivers nothing but hollow echoes. We’ve traded the call to become like God for the pathetic mimicry of living that we find in glowing screens and virtual dreams.
Our enslavement has deepened, and the worst part is, we’ve done it willingly. We’ve embraced this artificial life, believing it to be real, while the true world—the one brimming with divine purpose—fades from view. We were created for more than this, to dwell with God, to rise up, to grow into something holy. But instead, we settle for what dehumanizes us, for the hum of machines that lull us into a false sense of being. We’ve forgotten what it means to be truly alive, to feel the weight of our divine calling. And in forgetting God, we’ve forgotten the very core of ourselves. This is the sickness of our time—an age of distraction, an age where we reach for something that’s not there, thinking it will save us, when all it does is lead us further into the void.