It's hard to run a race when you're holding on to your luggage

I don't understand how people can live without Christ. My mind honestly cannot grasp how it is possible to find any form of meaning or purpose to life without the love of God. My knowledge of life without Christ is pretty much non existent as I was fortunate to grow up with two parents who both had to live through it, and so protected me through prayer from going my own way. But when I talk to my friends who don't believe in Jesus, I am completely blown away by how they survive. All around me, all I see are people falling deeply into depression. When I was on my practicum we picked up patient after patient taking anti-depressants or alcohol or drugs. Things to try and take away the pain, the emptiness, and the sorrow inside. When I went to Bible school, a place I assumed would be full of people that knew what it was to be loved by God, there were 4 students taking anti-depressants. Two had tried to killed themselves previously, one took to cutting her arms. Two had had eating disorders, two others had weekly visits with a therapist, one couple had a pregnancy scare, and three students were kicked out of the school for inappropriate behaviour. This was in a class of just over twenty. These were from the people I saw as "Christians." I remember thinking to myself that if this was how we lived, then how could the rest of the world possibly know what joy and peace was.
It makes me think about how we do things inside the church. How we assume everyone who comes to church is automatically a "Christian." But I'm guessing, by the sorrow and the deteriorating lifestyles of my classmates, and by the attitudes I see in churches around me, that most of us who call ourselves "followers of Christ" don't even know what that phrase means anymore, because if we truly did we wouldn't be carrying all this baggage around. After all, Jesus even told us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.