It’s Not Good To Be Alone Series

“It’s Not Good to Be Alone”

Series: Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex & Marriage

September 10, 2017 – Brad Bailey

Intro

I want to invite us to imagine the massive nature of the creation of all things. God provides us with a poetic summary in the first Book in the Bible….Genesis. It declares how the physical universe was formless…but God brought forth order…light…expanse between the waters…ground… vegetation… creatures… and at every stage… he declared it was “good.”

And the pinnacle… Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over” all this good in creation…so human life is created (1:26)… he breathes into it… living soul… and when “ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (1:31)

But in the midst of all this good… there is a divine pause…a moment in which something not good had to be acknowledged…

“The LORD God said, "It is not good for man to be alone.” - Genesis 2:18 [1]

In poetic fashion when one human life is created… God pauses… because something is not complete…man is alone.

ALONE…There is something in the sheer nature of that state of being alone...that feels akin to death.

It’s an uncomfortable topic. Many of the epic stories of heroes almost try to idealize the hero who is the lone outsider… not bound to anyone… but there is always a hint that in their venture they connected in some small at least momentary way… a seed of hope for their isolation. Why? Because otherwise… we would are left only with a sense of tragedy.

When we think of being alone just for brief times…it can reflect something positive …healthy…but as one’s ultimate state … it speaks of something perhaps more tragic than death.

Connection leads to life…and is life-giving… which is why a lack of being connected feel akin to death.

Loneliness is correlated with the odds of an early death by 26%... twice that of obesity.

It’s being considered the quiet…and even deadly epidemic.

The percentage of Americans who responded that they regularly or frequently felt lonely was between 11% and 20% in the 1970s and 1980s [the percentage varied depending on the study]. That has now grown to nearly 30% …and as high as 45% for older adults.

Why is this a growing challenge? There are two primary challenges we face. [2]

We are not doing life in community… tribes…villages… or nearly any regular non-functional group.

This is why our small groups are central to our life. I hope you consider deeply the significance of what a Life Group means.

The other force that making us more alone…is technology. Now I know that most of us have already heard comments about how negative it seems to see people in groups…even table meals…all staring at their individual devices. Moe is rising to the surface that we would be wise to consider.

Sherry Turkle is a professor in Science, Technology and Society at MIT and the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. [3]

She had authored two pioneering books on how the digital age could expand the human spirit… and identity. And in 1996 she gave her first TEDTalk, “Celebrating our life on the internet.” She was excited, as a psychologist, to take what people were learning in the virtual world and apply it to the physical world. It made the cover of WIRED.

She was described as the evangelist of the internet.

But that has all changed.

Her research revealed something else. It led to her more recent book…, Alone Together,…and a very recent TED Talk…in which she says she probably won’t be on the cover of Wired magazine again…because she sees a problem.

She describes how our true selves are being lost…and we are losing the ability to make real connection. These devices can diminish any real intimacy…because they are creating only an edited way of sharing ourselves.

We’re designing tech that will give us the illusion of friendship without the demands of companionship.

“We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.” - — Sherry Turkle

The recently released research of Brian Primack, director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh, found that among young adults, the more time spent on social media… platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram was associated with feelings with higher levels of social isolation. [5]

The good news is that we are not alone. God created relationship…

Back to our initial words from genesis… we are told how God creates “one suitable for him”… not from nothing…but from him…later Adam is depicted as saying: This is now bone of my bones…flesh of my flesh”…and immediately God declares they are to multiply…