In May the United States Surgeon General issued a public health advisory. No, we aren’t heading for another pandemic and the prospect of two years working in our jammies and waving at our grandchildren from the windows. But, in some ways, Dr. Vivek Murthy’s advisory is even more disturbing. The nation’s #1 physician is warning us that a new plague is sweeping the nation, and this plague has the capacity to harm us every bit as much as COVID 19. This “new” plague has a very common name: loneliness.
Our new age has been called “the information age.” We can access more information at the touch of a finger than our parents could have imagined. There’s a story about how, at nine years old, Abraham Lincoln walked several miles to a neighbor’s house to borrow a book on the life of George Washington. My nine-year-old granddaughter could access the same book, and millions more, from all over the world, simply by laying her index finger on an “app” on her tablet computer.
This incredible advancement has undoubtedly helped make our lives better. We can consult with our doctor over the telephone. We can buy anything we need (and even more things we don’t need!) on-line. And there is no household repair job for which there aren’t thousands of helpful video how-to’s available at the swipe of a finger. We live in a hyper-connected world.
Except that we don’t. This explosion of information has reduced the need for us to be out and about, and we are responding. Along with the explosion of data, there has been an implosion of our interactions with other people. Twenty-three years ago, a Harvard professor wrote “Bowling Alone,” a seminal work detailing how participation in nearly every form of social connection had been dropping. Everything from churches to bowling teams were experiencing a dropoff in participation; a dropoff that has continued through today. And this isolation is not healthy.
I won’t go through the statistics, but you can read up on them yourself. The bottom line is that a human being is less healthy living in isolation than in company with others.
Here’s a shock: God told us that from the very beginning. After God finished shaping the Earth and populating it with plants, flowers and beasts, He realized that something critical was missing. “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” And thus, Adam and Eve began our human journey. Together.
On our wedding anniversary last month, my wonderful helpmate pointed me to another example of God’s recognition that solitude is not His desired plan for humanity. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 is worth reading: “Two people are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor; if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
From the very beginning, we were designed to be together; to help one another and to keep one another warm, both physically and spiritually. As often seems to be the case with new inventions and innovations, our “Information Age,” has done wonders for our physical needs and wants, but seems to be completely missing the mark with regard to our emotional and spiritual needs.
This is more than a statement about marriage. Human beings need the social connections that we get in churches, schools, clubs and societies. Even our form of government, representative democracy, relies upon social connection. Democracy works when people with different viewpoints gather together to talk, because in talking we find common ground on everything from filling potholes to immigration. Lobbying one-sentence insults at one another on (anti-)social media may attract a lot of attention, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. We are at our best when we are with one another. We are at our most vulnerable when we are alone.
See you in church next Sunday?
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