The quarter-life crisis—if you’ve not come across this increasingly popular phrase, it’s probably time that you did. It describes a phenomenon that can strike at pretty much any time in your 20s or early 30s. It’s that dawning realisation that you’ve reached the age by which you had always assumed that you’d have got it all figured out, only to find that you haven’t. The QLC creeps up around birthdays and New Year’s, and it rears its head any time you see on social media that someone you went to school with has got engaged, gained a promotion, or simply had the audacity to look happy in a photo. It’s the uneasy realisation that comes when you take stock of everything around you—the people, the places and the relentless routines of work and washing dishes—and find yourself asking, “Is this it?”
The networking website LinkedIn found that 75% of 25-33 year-olds report having a quarter-life crisis. And I’m one of them.
A personal journey through the challenges of adulting, revealing the difference Jesus makes
When I first made the pitch for a Christian book on the quarter-life crisis, the idea was met with bemusement. I was in a room full of older people with bigger problems. What could I possibly have to complain about in comparison?
The phenomenon seems to feed into a wider cultural stereotype about miserable millennials who moan about their lot in life and refuse to grow up. It’s a stereotype that’s pretty common in Christian culture too.
You might be reading this as a bemused older person who thinks the millennials having a supposed “crisis” are probably overreacting. And we might be. But I’d urge you not to dismiss the phenomenon out of hand. At the very least, it tells you some helpful things about what the 20-somethings in your church are feeling, what the challenges to their Christian discipleship are, and how the church can help.
20-somethings need older, wiser saints who are ready to listen, and who are willing to help us wrestle through life decisions with an eternal perspective.
For a swathe of economic and social reasons, rates of homeownership among this generation are at a record low. The combination of renting and rising mobility leads to many 20-somethings feeling unmoored. In the five years since I graduated I’ve lived in five different houses with a revolving cast of roommates. This is not particularly unusual. But even as 20-somethings long for the permanency of home, many of us harbour an equal fear of settling down.
So millennials need help to see that home is where God’s people are—the household of faith—and that this is a community worth committing to. They need help to see that to follow Jesus is to follow the one who “had no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20)—and that their sense of rootlessness is an opportunity to set their hearts on heaven, not on home ownership. They need the conversations that happen over coffee after church to not be dominated by the topics of buying, decorating and renovating houses (a recurring theme at my church at least)—but about the things that really matter.
“What should I do with my life?” You’d be hard pressed to find a 20-something who hasn’t contemplated this question with a degree of terror. What job, who to date, where to live… This is the paralysis of adulting. We feel unable to make decisions, because there are so many paths to choose from, and we’re not sure where we’re aiming to get to. And we can’t figure that out because we don’t know what it is that will make us feel happy and fulfilled. So we keep our options open—even as they overwhelm us—so that we don’t miss out or get it wrong. And in doing so, we never go anywhere.
But we all want life to go somewhere. And we need Christians in our life to remind us that our existence is not one of aimless drifting—we’ve got a destination. Where we’ll be in 50 years’ time is uncertain. Where we’ll be in 500 years is not. We’re part of a story that is building to a climax where Jesus is glorified forever. 20-somethings need older, wiser saints who are ready to listen, and who are willing to help us wrestle through life decisions with this eternal perspective.
As we move through our twenties, our relationships are in a state of flux. People move away or move on—a new job, a new girlfriend or a new hobby changes the dynamics first in one relationship and then in another. Eventually most of us reach a point where we look around and ask, “Wait… where did all my friends go?” In one recent study, more people in their 20s reported feeling lonely “often” or “very often” than those over 75.
We need to be reminded that God is the one who searches us and knows us (Psalm 139:1). When we read God’s word, we’re coming to listen to a living God who is speaking to us—not as a politician does through a TV screen but as a friend does face to face. And we need a church community, of all ages and stages, that embraces us as family and encourages us to be known by others as we are honest about ourselves.
I could go on. I could write about how God’s people can help us fight discontent; about the sense of meaning that can be found in dying to self in the service of Christ’s body; about how the church family help us when it feels as if all our friends are getting married and our time is running out.
But one thing is for sure. I couldn’t have ridden out my quarter-life crisis without older, wiser Christians and the millennials in your life can’t ride out their quarter-life crisis without that too. The Quarter-life Crisis needs a whole-life view of Christ. Together, we can fix our eyes on him—the one who gives purpose, peace and joy in every season.
This article first appeared on TheGospelCoalition.org
Is This It? by Rachel Jones is a personal journey through the challenges of adulting, revealing the difference Jesus makes. If you're not in that life-phase, you probably know someone who is. This book will help you to understand their struggles and joys and show them the difference Jesus makes to your 20s. Buy it here.
Rachel Jones is the author of A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, really), Is This It?, and several books in the award-winning Five Things to Pray series, and serves as Vice President (Editorial) at The Good Book Company. She helps teach kids and serves on the mission core team at her church, King's Church Chessington, in Surrey, UK.