A counselee shared this quote that he was learning from the Divorce Care Ministry he was participating in:
Loneliness is a terrible thing; it’s a disease; it’s a product of a poor self-concept. It’s a product of people who don’t believe that they are worth being loved or that they are important, so they feel isolated from the crowd. That is a sickness. God says He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want that to happen to anybody. Aloneness is the source of that.”
This quote is representative of many counseling models that are so convoluted with truth and non-truth that it is hard to know how to work through personal issues. There is truth in this quote, but there is also just enough non-truth that it could lead the counselee into greater despair.
The Truth
It is true that loneliness is a terrible thing. God told us this in the early pages of Genesis when He saw man all alone. God exercised divine initiative by creating a woman for the man. (Gen. 2:18)
It is true that lonely people can feel lonely in the midst of one-thousand people. It is easy for lonely people to walk into a church meeting on any given Sunday morning and feel the sting of their loneliness.
It is true that God does not like this, which is why there is a Gospel. God came to earth and took on flesh in order to rescue man from himself.
The Non-Truth
It is not true that it is a disease or a sickness. The “disease” language is more than just a poor word choice. It is a presuppositional worldview for many who use this type of language. Typically, and in this quote, this type of language points man in the wrong direction: a sick person attempts to cure the problem within, while the Bible appeals to us to run from ourselves, toward the new man found in Christ.
Man is broken and cannot be fixed. He must be born again or what we call theologically, regenerated. There is a subtle teaching here, with a trajectory and methodology that leads to ever-increasing inwardness, individualism, and despair. This worldview perpetuates a victim mentality that typically leads to more alienation from the community they long to be part of.
The Bible’s View of Self
If anything, a poor self-concept is an accurate assessment, though I would not frame the problem with this kind of convoluted language. The truth is that the individual is so in love with herself that she hates what she knows to be true inside. Therefore, her solution is to pursue a self-centered approach to fix the problem. I have written several articles on the deception of loving yourself through our culture’s answer to a poor self-concept, also called self-esteem.
Prior to regeneration God wants us to have a poor self-concept. He tells us how pitiful we really are and that we are not worth being loved. We deserve hell. God wants us to be miserable, hopeless, and in despair. It is not until we come to the end of ourselves that we see the need to look outside of ourselves in order to be forever changed. God does not want us to turn inward toward self, but to turn outward toward His Son, who can save us from ourselves.
The Bible wants us to get “inside Christ” in order to be (1) born from above; (2) and gradually transformed from who we used to be, to who we need to be, which is a Christ-like person.
The Bible motivates us to flee from ourselves by teaching us that we are worse than we ever thought we could be and that none of us are good or worth being regenerated. It is only when we come to grips with the bad news that the good news can really be good. It is an act of God’s divine mercy that any of us have been rescued from ourselves.
As it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. – Romans 3:10-12 (ESV)
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. – Isaiah 64:6 (ESV)
Reflective Thoughts on Loneliness
Loneliness is a product of the fall. When Adam sinned, he isolated himself from God. Once he partook of the fig from the fig tree, he felt a sense of shame and guilt inside. This was a new and awkward reality for Adam. Rather than fleeing to God, he fled from God. (Read: loneliness) This was a selfish, individualistic solution to his new poor, self-concept. He did not like who he was, though who he really was should have been a clue that he was now broken and the solution was to come back to God rather than dressing himself up.
By dressing himself up, Adam was attempting to fix himself. He knew something was wrong inside and fig leaves seemed like a good idea at the time. Therefore, he covered himself with the leaves from the tree. This was his way of elevating his self-estimation of himself.
God knew Adam could not fix himself by himself. Adam was not sick. Adam was fundamentally broken from the inside out and divine intervention was the only thing that would work. Therefore, God made a promise in Genesis 3:15 that there would be a Savior who would fix not only the problem of loneliness, but the problem with man in general.
The first step for the lonely person is to build a community, which begins with God. Therefore, he must be born again in order to enjoy the benefits of real community. A Christian not only loves the divine community (Father, Son, & Spirit), but he also has an affinity for the Christian community. As a born again person, he now has the joy and privilege of entering the community of like-minded believers.
The cure for loneliness is found in the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor. (Matthew 22:36-40) If you are engaging these two communities then you’re well on your way to solving the problem of loneliness. However, if you are inwardly focused, you’ll only become more and more alienated, individualized, and angry. Too much inward looking will lead you to despair.
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