Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”[1]
For Wolfe, loneliness is the spiritual condition of humanity. For most of us, however, loneliness amounts to little more than a problem of physical health. As is typical of a culture that sees spirituality as a purely private phenomenon, we’ve translated loneliness into a matter of public health, choosing to concentrate on its deleterious effects on a person’s physical well-being. Those physical effects, among them high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and anxiety, are indeed harmful, but they remain symptoms of an underlying spiritual condition.[2] Why is loneliness at “epidemic” levels in an age that’s more connected than ever? If email represented a drastic new infringement on our privacy, the advent of smartphones and social has only exacerbated the issue, further blurring the line between public and private life. In short, it takes serious effort to get away from the constant clamor of voices. Not even an airplane offers the reprieve it once did. Yet we remain desperately lonely.
The spiritual character of loneliness becomes clear when we recognize that it’s possible to be lonely in a crowd and content in seclusion. Think of the experience of being on a busy commuter train and still feeling lonely and isolated. Conversely, the novelist Marilynne Robinson speaks of her childhood in Idaho, where the word lonesome describes a sacred state of solitude that enlivened the mind and quickened the senses.[3] If loneliness were merely a physical problem, surely proximity to other human beings would be sufficient to mitigate its most severe effects. In fact, social proximity has left the problem of loneliness in our society largely untouched. Why? In a word, because we’re treating spiritual symptoms in purely physical terms. If we want to confront the challenge of loneliness that’s wreaking such havoc in our culture, we must go to its spiritual roots—namely, our estrangement from Christ.
In Conformed to His Image, I argue, “In the deepest sense, Christianity is not a religion but a relationship that is born out of the trinitarian love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”[4] In a time of great loneliness, fear, and isolation, we would all do well to dwell on the nature of God’s love for us: “God’s loyal love for us is causeless (Romans 5:6), measureless (5:7-8), and ceaseless (5:9-11).”[5] Such abundant love is a mystery in the deepest sense of that word—namely, it’s a reality that exceeds our full comprehension. To be sure, this doesn’t mean that understanding the matter permanently evades us. Rather, it means that we can never plumb the depths of God’s love for us. No time is ever wasted on contemplating the extravagance of our Lord’s love for us.
Because He first loved us, we must begin by dwelling on God’s love and then learn to see ourselves and others in the light of it. If we fail to acknowledge the initiating action of God’s love toward us, we cannot love properly. If it’s possible to be lonely on a crowded train, in a busy office, in a church, or in a marriage, it’s also possible for God to transform our loneliest moments into times of profound intimacy. This doesn’t mean that all sadness is immediately eradicated from our lives, but it does mean that a vital relationship with our Lord grants us the stability of resting in His love rather than constantly depending on others for affirmation and fulfillment. At its heart, loneliness is a spiritual problem, and as such, the only way to address it is to address the most important relationship in our lives. Treating physical symptoms alone will offer temporary relief at best and ongoing despair at worst.
How do we prioritize our relationship with Christ? Ours is an age obsessed with methodology and technique. For this reason, we’re more inclined to read books or listen to podcasts about the Bible, prayer, and church than we are to actually read God’s word, pray daily, and serve in our local congregations. Precisely because we’re at a moment of spiritual crisis in our culture. However, we must go back to basics. In short, if we want to cultivate a vibrant relationship with our Savior, we must recover the time-tested practices that have served God’s people down the ages. We must read our Bibles and commit generous portions to memory.
To those who object that memorization doesn’t come easily to them, call to mind the vast amounts of song lyrics, movie quotes, and other pop culture trivia that most of us carry around in our heads. We remember what we choose to dwell on. Sometimes, that’s a sobering thought. The problem is often that our imaginations have been nourished more by the wider culture than by Christ, His word, and His people. For those of us who follow Christ, prayer must be as routine as brushing one’s teeth. If that statement runs the risk of trivializing something as profound as prayer, let’s also guard against the tendency to elevate our spiritual lives into irrelevance. If prayer is difficult, pray God’s word, starting with the Psalms. In God’s word, we have all we need, whether it involves words of praise or lament. Finally, we must return to the pews and do more than be consumers of “spiritual goods and services”—Eugene Peterson’s pungent phrase. We must be active members in our local congregations, serving others, and helping to clean up the many messes, ours included. People are messy, but we serve a good God whose church prevails in spite of our shortcomings. In sum, start addressing your relationship with Christ by reading His word, praying, and attending church. Basic as all these practices may seem, they are in desperate need of recovery.
If all of these practices are integral to one’s life, loneliness will cease to be an all-consuming problem. Naturally, we live in a fallen world and will continue struggling with aspects of loneliness. But we will no longer be in bondage to it. The tragic attempt to treat a spiritual malady in purely physical terms is a recipe for frustration and, ultimately, despair. By prioritizing our relationship with Christ, we will be liberated to love ourselves and others well because He first loved us.
[1] Thomas Wolfe, The Complete Short Stories of Thomas Wolfe ed. Francis E. Skipp (New York: Scribner, 1989), 492.
[2]Available online: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-loneliness-and-health#:~:text=Loneliness%20%E2%80%9Ccan%20have%20serious%20mental,memory%20issues%20and%20even%20death.%E2%80%9D
[3] Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 88.
[4] Ken Boa, Conformed to His Image: Biblical, Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation (Revised Edition) (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 16.
[5] Ibid., 14.
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Kenneth Boa equips people to love well (being), learn well (knowing), and live well (doing). He is a writer, teacher, speaker, and mentor and is the President of Reflections Ministries, The Museum of Created Beauty, and Trinity House Publishers.
Publications by Dr. Boa include Conformed to His Image, Handbook to Prayer, Handbook to Leadership, Faith Has Its Reasons, Rewriting Your Broken Story, Life in the Presence of God, Leverage, and Recalibrate Your Life.
Dr. Boa holds a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York University, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in England.
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