Four Questions on our Nation’s Soul

In the first of a four-part series, Sheridan Voysey reflects on social trends like ‘Me-rings’, ‘voluntourism’, workplace chaplains and quarter-life crises, and discovers four spiritual questions being asked by today’s Australians. These thoughts are adapted from a key note dinner address presented at the Christian Schools Australia National Policy Conference, held at Parliament House on May 26, 2009.

I jumped, my mind started racing for a reply, and because I could think of nothing appropriate to say I did what any Bible-believing, theologically-trained, whole-heartedly devoted Christian would do in that situation.

I lied.

‘Well, of course you’re alright,’ I said.

‘Some people think I’m funny in the head,’ she replied.

‘Now, why would they think that?’ I asked. She told me that she didn’t know and then fell back into silence, her thoughts away in the clouds.

A few minutes later floral lady crossed the isle and sat next to the only other person on the bus. Then she did it to them!

‘I’m alright, aren’t I?!’

I wondered how many times that question would be asked that day. And I wondered how deep the anxiety was in that woman’s soul—who longed for assurance so desperately that she sought it from any old stranger.

My floral-dressed, bulging-eyed, freaky-smiled friend was a little out of the mainstream, that’s for sure, but ultimately she’s no different to any of us. All of us have deep questions on our hearts that we long to have answered. They lay just below the surface, shouted out by the noise of life, then bubble up in the quiet moments: perhaps as we rest in darkness waiting for sleep to come; perhaps as we ride the 436 into the city. And when we can ignore those questions no more we begin to seek answers.