Why So Much Despair?

HOPE for a better life​—realized at last! Many people living in what was then East Germany believed this when the Berlin Wall toppled in November 1989. Little more than a year later, however, they complained of “finding the harsh world of capitalist democracy harder to cope with than life protected by the Berlin Wall.” The result? Disillusionment and growing despair.

Domestic and community violence may force people to leave home in search of security, but few find it. Some may even end up among the homeless who camp on city streets. In some lands many of these end up entangled in red tape. Unable to afford a home because they have no job, they cannot get employment because they have no home address. Government welfare agencies try to help, but it takes time to unravel the problems. So frustration and despair set in.

Many women are driven by despair to truly desperate measures. In the report Women and Crime in the 1990s, law lecturer Dr. Susan Edwards explains: “The involvement of younger women [in prostitution] is as a direct result of economic necessity, not lack of self-discipline or family background.” Similarly, young men who leave home in search of work often find none. Some, in despair, end up as ‘rent-boys,’ making their bodies available to homosexuals in return for food and shelter, becoming pawns in the hands of corrupt vice rings.

Harsh political realities, violence, economic difficulties, all may provoke degrees of despair. Even professional people are not immune as they seek to maintain their affluent life-style while coping with increasing financial problems. The result? “Mere oppression may make a wise one act crazy,” as King Solomon of old said!a (Ecclesiastes 7:7) Indeed, despair leads an increasing number to take the most extreme way out​—suicide.

The Most Extreme Way Out

The many cases of suicide among the young show that even they are affected by the plague of despair. A British news columnist asked: “What is it about our times that is causing so much teenage despair?” In a study of children between the ages of 8 and 16 who had been admitted to hospitals after trying to poison themselves, Dr. Eric Taylor of London’s Institute of Psychiatry reports: “One striking thing was how many of the children were despairing and hopeless about things.” Britain records an estimated 100,000 nonfatal but deliberate cases of taking poison each year in what amount to desperate cries for help.

One British charity launched a campaign to lend the despairing a sympathetic ear. In this way its counselors claimed to offer “alternatives to death.” Yet, they admit that they are unable to solve the problems that cause people to despair.

The rate of suicide reflects “the level of alienation and lack of social cohesion in society,” comments The Sunday Correspondent newspaper. Why the high suicide rate today? The newspaper cited “homelessness, increased drinking, the threat of Aids and the closure of mental hospitals” as factors that drive individuals to such depths of despair that they consider the taking of their own lives to be the only solution to their problems.

Is there any hope to dispel despair? Yes! “Raise yourselves erect and lift your heads up” is Jesus’ rallying cry! (Luke 21:28) What did he mean? What hope is there?

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