The Community Of Loneliness

Something I've come to look forward to about summer camp with the students at my job at Faith Presbyterian Church is the time I get to spend with my friend Jake. He's been the "guest speaker" the past two summers and has done an excellent job both years. Each time there's been a chance for the two of us to escape off for a couple of hours to catch up on life and share some thoughts that we normally wouldn't get to bounce off one another.

Though the first year we spent our time discussing baseball and why Albert Pujols may be the greatest player of all time, we spent this year discussing an idea that Jake has expounded upon called "the community of loneliness." It's the idea that everyone is longing for community, but instead of embracing real community, we desire instead to simply be lonely while being around other people.

While initially it doesn't make sense to think about being lonely while being around others, we see this fleshed out in real life quite often. Students and white collared workers do their work at laptops in coffee shops, not for the community, but to simply "feel" as if they're in community. Truly, there is no greater sense of community in these places in any objective form, but rather the lonely have gathered together in the same place to be lonely together (a line from Billy Joel's "Piano Man" comes to mind.....they're sharing a drink they call loneliness/but it's better than drinking alone).

We see it also as a more sinister part of culture. Privately, lives fall apart while publically we put on the appearance of wellness. We die inside at the monotany of everyday life, yet are more fearful of the death of ever confessing that we had more fun when we were 17, or wish our kids were somewhere else for a few days, or wondering why falling in love with our spouse was more fulfilling than simply "being in love" with our spouse. We run from the idea of ever confessing such things because everyone else is pretending, too, and it seems like the status quo is simply to maintain the facade of wellness in community when in reality we're all dying the same private death together, side by side, with no one knowing about each other's struggle.

All sorts of wickedness come out of this, and its seen clearly and often in churches, of all places. There are those who practice self-estrangement when the weight of their private lives becomes unbearable, and they fear the repurcussions of having to be "ministered to" by the "strong and stoic." Usually, some very public sin brings about the self-estrangement. It seems often these sins are of a sexual nature, such as an affair, a pornography addiction, or a child out of wedlock. Fearing the collapse of the image, self-excommunication seems to be the easier model than re-earning respect and trustworthiness. What an irony in the body of Christ, whose Head says "Come ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The greater evil, of course, is the estrangement of those whose private collapse becomes public. Those who commit self-estrangement may not do as such if the majority wasn't so interested in protecting the facade of wellness. Jake, yesterday, in a phone conversation said that when the Bible speaks of depravity, it really is good news that the Bible says this. It means that God already know us and chooses to love anyway. There are no pretenses with God, no facades, no barriers, because He sees all and knows all. His bride, the church, has often operated differently, working hard to establish the false righteousness of pretending to be ok for fear of anyone seeing the unrighteousness that is in need of the grace of God. When anyone breaks this unspoken truth, whether by accident or on purpose, often the answer is estrangement. It is a blessing when, instead, the church embraces and loves the weak to built them up to strength.

Just the other day in a public parking lot I saw a mother loading her kids up in the car, sharing a joke or two with a passerby as her kids behaved unruly. As soon as the passerby turned away, I noticed as her face turned to extreme grief, and I could see in her eyes that there were a million other places she'd rather be than with her kids. As the passerby turned back to continue the conversation, her demeanor changed once again to one of humourous understanding of her unruly kids. I hope there's someone in her life who she can confess to her struggle with being a parent.

I have, more than once, looked at my crying daughter in a crib, a girl who I love with my life, and wondered why I decided to have kids in the first place. In that moment the joy is forgotten, and I need help to be restored to the proper mindset. If I keep it in, it continues to fester, and who knows, maybe one of these days I come to resent the fact that I had kids and I abandon my family. If I confess to my wife that I'm struggling, she can pull me back around. If I confess to my brothers, they can exhort me to be strong for the sake of my daughter, and to give me the foresight to see that these moments are part of a bigger, more beautiful picture, that God is forming up my daughter to be something greater than a crying baby.

So let me go first here. There are days that I'm bored with adulthood and I need brothers to hang out with. There are days that I'm not sure I'm ready for adulthood and would rather be 16 and single again. Here is my cry for help, that though I intensely love my wife and daughter, and I intensely love my God, it is not always so, and in those moments, I need help.