America is a dangerously lonely nation. That’s the
conclusion drawn by writer Ezra Klein in an essay
earlier this year, and he has the statistics to back the
claim. Fully one in three Americans feels lonely at
least once a week, and the numbers are far higher
for the young and the old, many of whom report
daily struggles with loneliness. Cultural changes
in recent years have exacerbated this reality. More
interaction mediated through screens. Less belonging
to organizations, teams, and clubs that meet regularly
in person. More time spent at home. Less time with
extended family, friends, and neighbors. Longer hours
working. Fewer hours serving or volunteering.
The epidemic of loneliness has far-reaching impact.
It threatens our individual health physically and
emotionally as Dr. Chaddock and our CenterPoint
therapists could attest. It also drives societal division.
How? Decreases in human interaction tend to make
us more fearful and less trusting of others. It is easier
to demonize difference from a distance. We tend to
move toward extremes when we do not interact soul
to soul and face to face. Polarization is magnified.
Pessimism proliferates. When we don’t talk to each
other, we cannot understand each other. And so, space
necessary for nuance shrinks. The search for shared
values is abandoned. Community collapses, and
we live in the wreckage. We are dangerously lonely.
Reading the essay, I kept thinking about the urgent
need to rebuild relationships at the most basic level. I
kept wondering where we might discover the capacity
to begin rebuilding.
When the Christian movement was still in its infancy,
ruptured relationships threatened to utterly destroy it.
The Apostle Paul, early on, recognized that the risks
within the Church, within these fledging Christian
communities, were just as great as outside pressure
and persecution. The risk of the Church collapsing from
inside was as great as the risks outside. And so, Paul
traveled all over the Roman world, visiting communities
of faith and writing letters to their members, preaching
the centrality of unity. Paul was insistent that in order to
be faithful, the Church must offer a distinctive definition
of what that word unity means. To illustrate this over
the course of his apostolic career, Paul develops a
metaphor for the Church. The Body of Christ. You are
the body of Christ. Diverse and essential parts of the
same living, breathing organism.
Paul writes in First Corinthians that there is one
sentence that no Christian is ever permitted to say
to another believer. There is one sentence that is
forbidden for followers of Jesus. Are you ready? That
one sentence is: I have no need of you. To say to
another member of Christ’s body, “I don’t need you,”
is as ludicrous as one part of the human body saying,
“I’ve got this. I can handle it all on my own.”
Perhaps this will save you some frustration or
resentment. You cannot handle this all on your own.
And the good news is, you were never meant to try.
Now we could lay the blame for our epidemic of
loneliness on many different culprits. The causes of our
discontent are legion. But here is one that we should
not ignore. It is the pernicious lie that interdependence
is weakness. It is a myopic focus on self-sufficiency
that swiftly shifts to self-righteousness. I can handle
this all on my own. I’ve got it. Tell me: when did trying
to understand someone else’s perspective become a
sign of deficient conviction? Yet another way of saying,
“I have no need of you.”
In a dangerously lonely time, what do we need? I have
an answer. It is rooted in scripture and confirmed by
experience. Here’s what we need: every single one of
us needs witnesses to our life. Regardless of our age
and stage, every one of us needs the kind of people
who show up for us. The kind of people who are there,
just there, in moments of celebration or sadness.
Those who are willing to set aside their own needs
long enough to listen to ours. And in turn, we need to
be such witnesses for each other. We need to show
up for one another. We need to listen to one another.
Perhaps the most faithful and countercultural decision
you can make—and every single one of us can make it,
and we can make it today, and we can reaffirm it every
day. The most faithful and countercultural decision you
can make is to become deeply invested in the life of
someone outside of your immediate family. To show
up for them. To be a witness to their lives. To honor the
promise we make every time we celebrate a baptism.
The good news is that there are countless ways to do
this, and every single one of them matters. Lives are
saved because people show up for each other.
Indeed, Paul says that the body of Christ is so deeply
interconnected that when one member of the body
suffers, all of us join in that suffering, and that when
one is honored in any way, all of us join in rejoicing.
Paul urges us to honor those who seem weaker and
support the ones who need it the most. Talk about
countercultural! We are taught and trained from a
young age to measure ourselves against each other.
And so, if someone else is honored, that means I am
not. When we succeed, it is at another’s expense.
There can only be one champion. Second place is
the first loser, and the weak just get in the way. I can
attest that this ceaseless drive is both exhausting
and ultimately unproductive because it ignores our
most basic needs and only serves to separate us from
shared experiences that make us human. Joy shared
is joy multiplied. Grief shared is grief divided. We need
each other.
This spring I am volunteering as one of the coaches for
a fourth and fifth grade track team. Now, for most of the
kids this is the first experience of competitive running,
and I use the term loosely because every kid who wants
to be a part of the team is welcome to join. There are
no tryouts and no required times. And what that means
is that we have, let us say, a broad spectrum of speed
and strength. At the meets, the runners are divided into
heats that can last well over two hours. And on the Clay
Center Elementary team, we have some very impressive
young athletes. But here is what has impressed me
far more. These kids, they instinctively adhere to the
Apostle Paul’s instructions.
When a runner, no matter their speed, posts a new
personal best, teammates and rivals lift them with
deafening cheers, high fives, and the kind of human
pile that only ten- and eleven-year-olds can execute
without injury. When a member struggles to get to the
finish line on his own, a swarm appears, flanking the
track on both sides to propel him forward. The shouts
are just as deafening. Keep going! You got this! You’re
almost there! Last week, when a runner fell at the
starting line, two competitors delayed their own race
to help him up, costing themselves several places in
the finish. When the emotion of the moment becomes
too much, the community steps in with grace and
compassion. After the last meet, another coach walked
over to me and said, “Don’t you wish the whole world
could be more like an elementary school track meet?”
It’s a worthy goal. And maybe it can. Afterall, it’s how
we were built.
Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those
who weep. It’s built into who we are. We need each
other. One body. It is the truth we proclaim and the
sustaining power behind our life as a community,
that no one is extraneous, and no one can be left
behind if we are all to make it to the finish line. Like
the mosaic our community has been creating, it takes
every part of the body to make the picture whole. And
so, in dangerously lonely times, perhaps this truth
is the foundation for our rebuilding. A community
that embraces interdependence. People who find
their deepest joy in being witnesses to each other’s
lives. This is what the Church can provide in a time
that cries out for experiences of belonging and
communities of compassion.
Preacher Fred Craddock grew up in Oklahoma. Though
his mother was a faithful member of the local church
and took the three children each week, his father never
attended church. He would never attend church. In
fact, he complained every Sunday that lunch was late
when the rest of the family would come home from
services. Sometimes over the years, the pastor of the
church would call, and Craddock’s father would always
say the same thing. “I know what the church wants.
The church wants another name and another pledge.
The church doesn’t care about me. Just another name
on the rolls and another pledge in the plates. Another
name, another pledge. Right? Isn’t that the name of
their game? Another name, another pledge.” I have
no need of them. That’s what he always said, until one
time he didn’t say it. He was in the VA Hospital and
down to 73 pounds. They had put in a metal tube, and
X-rays burned him to pieces. So Fred, his son, flew
in to see him. His father couldn’t speak. He couldn’t
eat. He was near the end. When Fred walked into the
hospital room, he looked around. Potted plants and cut
flowers on every single windowsill. A stack of cards
twenty inches deep beside his bed. And even on that
tray where they would have put food if he could eat, on
that tray there was a vase of flowers. And all the plants
on the windowsills, and every vase of flowers, every
card in the stack, each beautiful blossom and heartfelt
word, came from people or groups in the church.
Craddock tells the rest of the story: “Dad saw me pick
up a card and read it. He could not speak, so he took
a Kleenex box and scribbled on the side of it. He wrote
a line from Shakespeare. If he had not written this line,
I would not tell you this story. My father wrote, ‘In this
harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.’
“I said, ‘What’s your story, Daddy?‘
“And, on that same Kleenex box, he wrote, ‘I was wrong.’”