We're all mystics and freaks
With the spirit beneath
Deeper than any ocean
Let the string section "riff"
Seal it up with a kiss
Honey, we are all golden
In the new dark age
No one trusts anyone
In the new dark age
They forget to have fun
In the new dark age
The only light from the sun...is you
Bill Mallonee, "In the New Dark Age," from the album Winnowing (2015)
Introduction
A cursory Google search for "loneliness" yields results not entirely unexpected. We are told that we are a profoundly lonely people here in the west, despite our technology, despite connectivity on a global scale. Supposedly, the more communal eastern cultures do not face such individual isolation and, so we're told, must therefore be less lonely. News articles bombard us with both practical and psychological solutions to the "problem" of loneliness in western culture. Pop culture produces dozens of songs per year in which loneliness is the dark muse. The church even occasionally throws her hat into the ring, inventing a new "program" to be implemented at all the satellite campuses, like a new singles ministry to afford the unmarried and lonely opportunities to mingle together in the hope that some of them will become married and therefore un-lonely.
What all of these proposed "solutions" have in common is a presupposition that is not entirely wrong, nor is it entirely right. A presupposition that says loneliness is a negative human emotion to be eradicated. After all, wasn't it God himself who said that it's not a good thing for man to be alone in Genesis 2:18? Yet in correctly identifying the profound importance of relationships and connectivity to the human experience, perhaps this presupposition simultaneously shallows out that importance by misunderstanding the most critical aspect of loneliness: that loneliness is as much a condition of spirit as it is an emotion.
Our goal here is not to offer a solution to the crisis of loneliness—here identified as a "crisis" because to identify it as a "problem" implies that an easy solution exists. Rather, our purpose here is to redefine loneliness to incorporate the spiritual condition of man, the fundamental aspect of loneliness that seems to be entirely absent from mainstream thinking, especially in the church.
The Self-Conscious Soul
Only the lonely
Know the way I feel tonight
Only the lonely
Know this feeling ain't right
Roy Orbison, "Only the Lonely," from the album Lonely and Blue (1960)
American poet Sylvia Plath writes:
Plath understands something that many modern Christians would see as cynical: that the degree to which one feels lonely or experiences the sensation of loneliness is the degree to which one recognizes that they actually are lonely. What she manages to capture here runs opposite the conjecture that says, "I am not lonely because I do not feel lonely." Instead, she suggests that one only feels lonely when the soul becomes self-conscious, aware of its present state of loneliness. The difference here is subtle but key. In the same way that anger can be described as the reaction of the spirit against that which causes it pain, perhaps we can begin our redefinition of loneliness by suggesting that loneliness is the sensation of the spirit that recognizes something is missing.
Such a notion flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which can often be gleaned by simply attending any singles group that meets at a local church throughout the week. This wisdom says loneliness is simply the degree to which one is isolated from other people. And while there is certainly an important physical aspect to the condition of loneliness, hollowing out loneliness to be a straightforward issue of proximity eliminates a present reality that Christians do not have the luxury of eliminating: a reality in which we are not merely physical beings with combustible chemicals rattling around inside our skulls, but in which we are deeply, intrinsically spiritual beings as well. This spiritual component of the human condition and its relationship to loneliness is our target here.
Plath herself was married when she took her own life—again, the crisis of loneliness is not merely an issue of physical proximity, because the divide in our spirits carved by sin is vast, and infinitely more frightening than the divide between ourselves and the people we love. So frightening, in fact, that it is enough to make those of us who feel it most deeply consider taking our very lives.
Here Lean identifies in overt terms the same "deficiency" which Plath speaks of more implicitly in her own writings. As Christians, we understand this deficiency in ourselves as the great divide that sin has carved in our spirits, a divide between ourselves and God, which has a million implications for the divide between ourselves and other people. Scripture is saturated with language that directly correlates the relationship between God and man to man's relationship with his own kind, and we prove ourselves foolish if we believe we can excise from the discussion of loneliness the recognition of this initial divide between ourselves and our Creator.
After all, out of this great divide we turn to what Plath calls "the opiates," and the "shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose." While the church is quick to sit in judgment of a secular world where such hedonism is on full display, we are all too eager to ignore the fact that we modern evangelical Christians have become very good at producing our own opiates and throwing our own parties with no purpose, numbing agents in the form of what theologian Stanley Hauerwas identifies as "sentimentality."
In an interview with Duke University titled, "The Life of a Theologian," Hauerwas asserts:
The sentimental believer is one adept at appearing devoted to Christ, whose faith holds up in fair weather because fair weather is what the faith demands. But the moment this faith is excavated, the topsoil overturned and the roots exposed, we find that Christianity is present in this believer's life because it supplies comfort through emotional shortcuts, worshipping a Christ who demands nothing beyond a vague and nebulous "love." The sentimental Christian can speak the language of sacrifice yet know nothing of its practice. The moment Christ truly demands something of this individual, the faith becomes compromised, much like the second seed in Jesus's parable of the soils (Luke 8:4-15). This is a faith that neglects to count the cost of sin, because this faith is built on pretense—the "new dark age" of western Christianity, in which every interaction between two people is built fundamentally on pretense, manifesting as the "opiates" and "parties with no purpose" in the church.
These opiates and purposeless parties meant to remedy the perceived problem look a lot like "community groups." In an honest effort to combat the loneliness-inducing effects of sin, we tend to encourage simply making the right friends, all in the effort of attaining the holy grail of marriage, wherein all negative emotions like loneliness are banished to the nether, never again to return because, after all, God is love and love is all we need. While this is not to say that such groups do not serve a good and healthy purpose in the church, we are naive if we believe loneliness is a problem solved by putting people—even believers—in close proximity to one another. Especially in the church, we tend to become sentimental about loneliness.
We spend countless hours looking for ways to numb that chronic ache in our spirits. We turn to the opiates and the shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose, both inside and outside the church, community groups and coffee dates, drugs and the Internet, all looking for some means by which we do not have to reckon with the fact that we desire to be fully known and accepted, and the only one capable of such a thing is alive and well but he is not here in the flesh. He is certainly present, but not in the way our loneliness desires him to be. At least, not yet. This is the paradox of being and living in the third dimension.
And the moment we succeed in numbing that profound ache, perhaps we will have lost it all.
God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of 'parties' with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship—but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed. Karen V. Kukil (New York City: Anchor, 2000), 31.
Plath understands something that many modern Christians would see as cynical: that the degree to which one feels lonely or experiences the sensation of loneliness is the degree to which one recognizes that they actually are lonely. What she manages to capture here runs opposite the conjecture that says, "I am not lonely because I do not feel lonely." Instead, she suggests that one only feels lonely when the soul becomes self-conscious, aware of its present state of loneliness. The difference here is subtle but key. In the same way that anger can be described as the reaction of the spirit against that which causes it pain, perhaps we can begin our redefinition of loneliness by suggesting that loneliness is the sensation of the spirit that recognizes something is missing.
Such a notion flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which can often be gleaned by simply attending any singles group that meets at a local church throughout the week. This wisdom says loneliness is simply the degree to which one is isolated from other people. And while there is certainly an important physical aspect to the condition of loneliness, hollowing out loneliness to be a straightforward issue of proximity eliminates a present reality that Christians do not have the luxury of eliminating: a reality in which we are not merely physical beings with combustible chemicals rattling around inside our skulls, but in which we are deeply, intrinsically spiritual beings as well. This spiritual component of the human condition and its relationship to loneliness is our target here.
Plath herself was married when she took her own life—again, the crisis of loneliness is not merely an issue of physical proximity, because the divide in our spirits carved by sin is vast, and infinitely more frightening than the divide between ourselves and the people we love. So frightening, in fact, that it is enough to make those of us who feel it most deeply consider taking our very lives.
Loneliness and the Human Condition
Yeah, I still watch the shows you showed me
I still drink that wine
But these days it tastes more bitter than sweet
And all my friends are way too drunk to save me from my phone
So sorry if I say some things I mean
I don't know, I don't know
How I'm gonna make it out
I don't know, I don't know
Now you got me sayin'
Fuck, I'm lonely, I'm lonely, I'm lonely as
Fuck, come hold me, come hold me, come hold me
It's been me, myself and why did you go, did you go?
Fuck, come hold me, come hold me, come hold me
It's been me, myself and why did you go, did you go?
Lauv (ft. Anne-Marie), "fuck, i'm lonely," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)
The great filmmaker David Lean, when discussing his seminal film Summer Madness (1955), said:
I think loneliness is in all of us; it is a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. We are ashamed of it. We think perhaps that it shows a deficiency in ourselves.
from David Morrison, "10 Great Films About Loneliness," British Film Institute (BFI), Aug. 8, 2018.
Here Lean identifies in overt terms the same "deficiency" which Plath speaks of more implicitly in her own writings. As Christians, we understand this deficiency in ourselves as the great divide that sin has carved in our spirits, a divide between ourselves and God, which has a million implications for the divide between ourselves and other people. Scripture is saturated with language that directly correlates the relationship between God and man to man's relationship with his own kind, and we prove ourselves foolish if we believe we can excise from the discussion of loneliness the recognition of this initial divide between ourselves and our Creator.
After all, out of this great divide we turn to what Plath calls "the opiates," and the "shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose." While the church is quick to sit in judgment of a secular world where such hedonism is on full display, we are all too eager to ignore the fact that we modern evangelical Christians have become very good at producing our own opiates and throwing our own parties with no purpose, numbing agents in the form of what theologian Stanley Hauerwas identifies as "sentimentality."
Sentimentality and the Condition of Loneliness
Strangers
Killing my lonely nights with strangers
And when they leave, I go back to our song, I hold on
Hurts like heaven, lost in the sound
Buzzcut season like you're still around
Can't unmiss you and I need you now
I'm so tired of love songs, tired of love songs,
Tired of love songs, tired of love
Just wanna go home, wanna go home,
Wanna go home
Just wanna go home, wanna go home,
Wanna go home
Lauv & Troye Sivan, "i'm so tired...," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)
The church is filled with sentimentality. I wish that we could produce interesting atheists. But we're not strong enough believers to produce interesting atheists. Instead, what we hear so often in sermons is sentimental drivel about how Christians are to love one another, and to love everyone in a way that is just bullshit. There is no reality to that.His trademark wit and colloquial speech on full display here, what Hauerwas keenly identifies is perhaps the most insidious threat to the modern church: sentimentality. We might best describe sentimentality as that which trades on emotion for the sake of emotion, that which seeks emotional satisfaction without the emotional connection. Grace without pain. Love without cost. Redemption without the cross. To put it another way, sentimentality could be described as the "Disneyfied" version of the Christian life.
The sentimental believer is one adept at appearing devoted to Christ, whose faith holds up in fair weather because fair weather is what the faith demands. But the moment this faith is excavated, the topsoil overturned and the roots exposed, we find that Christianity is present in this believer's life because it supplies comfort through emotional shortcuts, worshipping a Christ who demands nothing beyond a vague and nebulous "love." The sentimental Christian can speak the language of sacrifice yet know nothing of its practice. The moment Christ truly demands something of this individual, the faith becomes compromised, much like the second seed in Jesus's parable of the soils (Luke 8:4-15). This is a faith that neglects to count the cost of sin, because this faith is built on pretense—the "new dark age" of western Christianity, in which every interaction between two people is built fundamentally on pretense, manifesting as the "opiates" and "parties with no purpose" in the church.
These opiates and purposeless parties meant to remedy the perceived problem look a lot like "community groups." In an honest effort to combat the loneliness-inducing effects of sin, we tend to encourage simply making the right friends, all in the effort of attaining the holy grail of marriage, wherein all negative emotions like loneliness are banished to the nether, never again to return because, after all, God is love and love is all we need. While this is not to say that such groups do not serve a good and healthy purpose in the church, we are naive if we believe loneliness is a problem solved by putting people—even believers—in close proximity to one another. Especially in the church, we tend to become sentimental about loneliness.
The Paradox of Loneliness
I traded all my friends for drugs and the internet
Ah shit, am I a winner yet?
Look quick, hasn't hit him yet
Mom's back home with a drink and a cigarette
Still hasn't hit him yet
I sold my soul
And all I got
Likes from strangers, love on the internet
Drugs and the internet
I wonder what it feels like
To be more than I am
Lauv, "Drugs & the Internet," from the album ~how i'm feeling~ (2020)
At this point, we've entered firmly into the paradox. If we understand loneliness as a condition of spirit, then we can understand the longing for physical proximity to be one that seeks to remedy that much wider fissure. As Christians, we understand that only God can fulfill the longing of our spirits to be both fully known and accepted. Yet Scripture does not teach against physical proximity; rather, Scripture teaches that community in the context of the church is a good thing. So, "community groups" can be worthwhile ventures, provided that, in the context of our discussion here, community groups are not seen as the singular remedy for the sensation of loneliness that is inherent to the human experience. We should not seek to eradicate the experience of loneliness, precisely because we should allow for loneliness in recognition of it being not merely the experience of a single man or woman; rather, it is a significant and pervasive component of the spiritual condition of every man and woman, east or west, married or single.
Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner puts it this way:
The paradox is that part of what binds us closest together as human beings and makes it true that no man is an island is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you there is a self that longs above all to be known and accepted, but that there is no such self in me, in everyone else the world over.
Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1985), 47.
And herein lies the crux of the issue: We, by very nature of being human, have an insatiable desire to be fully known and accepted. This desire rests in each of us, this longing hardwired into us through our spirits. But the present reality of living in a fallen world means that no one—no matter how close, how open, how exposed we are to them or they are to us—is ever going to be able to meet that need completely.
So, the question we must then ask: why does God allows us to experience such profound emotional turbulence? Why, even as Christians, do we not feel un-lonely? And, at this point, I cannot help but think that the recognition of our spiritual state of loneliness is not only appropriate for every Christian, but also that such recognition is necessary. Necessary because the feeling of isolation that haunts us in our recognition of our lonely state is the thing that keeps us from ever becoming too satisfied while we live in this fallen word. This is a recurrent theme in Scripture—the recognition that God's people are not earthbound, but that, as the old song says, we are "bound for glory." And with this recognition comes the sternest of warnings—that if we are ever fully satisfied while on this side of eternity, then perhaps we are truly earthbound.
In The Hungering Dark, Buechner suggests that, for many Christians, experiencing the darkness of doubt and dealing with the more troublesome aspects of faith is the only way forward. The only way for faith to grow is to first get stuck in a rut, so that faith can "work itself out." In much the same way, perhaps the only means by which we can truly begin to deal with the loneliest parts of ourselves is to recognize that loneliness is not always a negative emotion to be eradicated; indeed, while we live on this side of eternity, it cannot be eradicated, no matter proximity to other people. The only way to frame loneliness correctly is to see that we are all lonely because there is still something we are fundamentally lacking—even as Christians.
I think that a sentimental faith looks for an excuse to get comfortable on this side of eternity. To go back to the parable of the soils, a sentimental faith either falters when tested, or is choked out by the enticing and sensual pleasures of life, the opiates and parties with no purpose. Sentimentality is an excuse to not reckon with reality, a reality in which life on this side of eternity is marked by hope, and not by satisfaction. A life that anticipates the life to come, not one satisfied by the life lived now. Indeed, the wisdom books of Scripture remind us that all earthly possessions fade with time, be it money, be it power, be it attractiveness. This is gaining the world, but losing the soul. The very notion of hope contains a tragic element, because to hope for something greater is to acknowledge that something lesser is now present. And somehow, in a sense of divine irony, loneliness becomes the very basis of why we believe anything about Jesus in the first place. Because in our loneliness, we find that we are desperate to, as Australian songwriter Nick Cave once wrote, "Just be done with all this twisting of the truth." And this recognition fuels our longing for the day when our faith becomes sight.
In his book, A Cross Shattered Church, Stanley Hauerwas writes,
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But Lazarus was still to die. We are still to die. Jesus, by contrast, has been raised never again to die. His death makes possible a communion that overwhelms the loneliness our sin creates. Our God has made his home among the mortals by assuming our deadly flesh so that we might be made friends of Jesus and even one another.This means the incarnation is something more than a means of atoning for sin. In taking up human flesh, Christ found the way to finally bridge the gap in our spirits. Which means that loneliness, as a condition of spirit, might then be better understood as an intuited or felt eschatological realization that pushes us toward the future, as a chronic ache of the spirit for the day in which we finally look upon the one who understands us totally and accepts us in spite of it all—the key being that he looks back at us with human eyes. The face we will look upon is a human face. And the emotions we will see registering there as we talk with him and laugh with him are human emotions. In other words, the incarnation accounts for the human element of loneliness, the issue of proximity, which demands that we need something tangible for our longings to finally be fulfilled. And the thing that we still lack is the very tangible presence of Christ. We all laugh at doubting Thomas, but who among us would not sacrifice every last shred of dignity we have to be the one to plug our finger into the wound, to have him with us and our faith become sight if only for a single, fleeting moment?
We spend countless hours looking for ways to numb that chronic ache in our spirits. We turn to the opiates and the shrill tinsel gaiety of parties with no purpose, both inside and outside the church, community groups and coffee dates, drugs and the Internet, all looking for some means by which we do not have to reckon with the fact that we desire to be fully known and accepted, and the only one capable of such a thing is alive and well but he is not here in the flesh. He is certainly present, but not in the way our loneliness desires him to be. At least, not yet. This is the paradox of being and living in the third dimension.
And the moment we succeed in numbing that profound ache, perhaps we will have lost it all.
Resources
Buechner, Frederick. The Hungering Dark. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1985.
Ejsing, Anette. The Power of One: Theological Reflections on Loneliness. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011.
Harries, Richard. Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith. London: SPCK, 2018.
Hauerwas, Stanley. "Why Community is Dangerous." Plough Quarterly, no. 9.
Mailer, Norman. "The Language of Men." Esquire (April 1953).
Morrison, David. "10 Great Films About Loneliness." British Film Institute. 8 Aug. 2018.
Plath, Sylvia. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. ed. Karen V. Kukil. New York City: Anchor, 2000.
"Stanley Hauerwas on the Life of a Theologian." Duke University Office Hours. Duke Univ., 2010.
Varden, Erik. The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance. London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018.
This essay was originally written in 2019, revised and updated May 2020 to include lyrics from the album ~how i'm feeling~ by Lauv.
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| ~how i'm feeling~ (March 2020) |
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