We live in an age in which we are more globally interconnected than ever before in the history of the world. Communication and travel take place at incredible speeds. We can video chat or call acquaintances all over the world. But in this same moment of history, it's harder and harder to know our next door neighbors. Intimate relationships with others seem impossible as everyone is pulled in a dozen directions. Our lives are fragmented into a number of different relationship networks, and our relationships remain shallow.
The outcome? Loneliness.
Loneliness isn't just a cultural phenomenon. It isn't new. Loneliness is as old as sin itself. Because we can't escape the shame of our sin and because we all fear the ways others can sin against us, it's natural for us to shrink back from relationships. Even when we do form friendships, sin often destroys them and brings separation.
Witness Facebook and the modern phenomenon of "unfriending".
We were made for intimate community by the triune God who lives forever as a community of three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. As those who bear the image of this relational God, the loneliness we experience reflects the sinful corruption of God's creational purpose. We were never meant to be alone -- it "isn't good" (Genesis 2.18).
Now, if we're honest with our spirituality, being alone is important. "Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone" (Bonhoeffer, Life Together). Community only finds its value when we find ourselves alone before God.
What I'm concerned about is that we're alone more often than we should be. And the loneliness that attends to all that alone time can't be cured by hobbies or more relationships -- particularly romantic ones.
So why are we so lonely? It all comes down to sin -- ours and others.
1. We build walls relationally to protect ourselves from the pain others can cause us. We avoid vulnerability. We never reveal our weaknesses and failures. This does keep us safe and in control, and we avoid the shame of embarrassment and the judgment of others. Our pride is kept intact.
2. We indulge our personal comforts. We selfishly expect everyone to cater us. We orient our lives around gratifying our desires. In fact, we may be very social, always attending this or that dinner, sporting event, or party. But in the midst of our self-indulgence, we're alone because we never engage in the difficult discipline of being primarily committed to one network of relationships. We have every pleasure we want but no one to really enjoy it with. Witness the "hook up" culture.
3. We pridefully exalt ourselves above others placing high standards on anyone who would be our friend. Not so surprisingly, we find there are very few people worthy of being our friends.
4. We sin against others and refuse to seek reconciliation because it requires repentance or painfully awkward moments of naming what has happened between us. And so we move on to others and avoid humbly fixing what is broken. This seems particularly true for some Christian sisters and brothers.
5. Sometimes we exclude, look over, fail to notice, or even ignore others. Maybe we don't consider certain people worthy of attention. Sometimes envy or pride leads us to keep our distance. Sometimes we're just plain inconsiderate.
All of that sin lands us lonely.
But it's not just ours. Others sin in many of the same ways. That's why Jesus insists that naming difference and confronting one another in love is at the heart of being Church (Matthew 18).
Such separation -- from God and others -- is a living death. That's the point of excommunication (1 Corithians 5).
The Good News is that the excluded and abandoned Jesus is with us, even in our soul-crushing loneliness. Jesus embraced isolation and rejection in the Cross. Our reconciliation comes out of a love that will not leave us alone. The Resurrection is God's "No!" to sin and death -- even the death of loneliness.
And it falls to the Church to then be that community of the Resurrected One, embracing the lonely and abandoned, even in their sin.
Christ welcomes sinners because it's only in the grace of welcoming that sin and loneliness can be named.
The Church is the community created by God's Welcoming Spirit. It anticipates and demonstrates the coming kingdom of this welcoming Jesus. This means that the Church should be battling against the effects of sin as Christians are being transformed by the Spirit. While the world operates on principles and practices that reinforce the consequences of sin (loneliness for instance), the Church is to be a counter-cultural community that embodies the hospitality and welcome of the kingdom of God. This is why the Church is called "the family of God". It's why Christians celebrate family meals together in corporate worship (the Lord's Table) and throughout the week as we share our very lives with one another.
If the Gospel is true, we are not made for loneliness.
Thing is, the Church sometimes hardly resembles family. Because we're invested (infected!) with the individualism and consumerism of the larger culture (i.e., American first, Christian second), we manifest a tendency to divide and isolate. Churches feel more like malls, concerts community clubs, or movie theaters. Crowds looking for the next big experience. Even our church programming highlights this "pick your own adventure/ministry" trend.
Two of my seminary profs highlighted all this twenty-five years ago: Stan Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Resident Aliens. And they're still right. Too much of our churchly culture deistically undermines the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Christians are to share our lives together regularly as we fight the sin that isolates us all. We eat meals together regularly. We find ways to make our lives overlap, experiencing everyday normal things together as we serve, learn, celebrate, hurt, work, and rest. And we reach out to the lonely and call them to confront the sin that separates them from God and others by trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To do and be less than that is to be less than Christian.