In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg was just another second-year computer programming student at Harvard. Partly for fun and partly to see if he could do it, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's security network, where he copied the student ID images used by the dormitories. He then used the photos to create a platform that he called “Facemash” (Bellis, M. The History of Facebook and How it Was Invented. Thoughtco.com, February 6, 2020). What Zuckerberg’s new platform did was to place two student photos side-by-side and asked the site’s visitors to vote on which student was "hot" and who was "not" (Bellis, Ibid.). On October 28 of that year, the university shut the site down and Zuckerberg was charged with a breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. All charges against him were eventually dropped.
A year later, on February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched a new website called “TheFacebook,” named after the directories that Harvard handed out to help university students get to know one another better. Membership to the website was at first restricted to Harvard students. As its popularity grew on campus, however, Zuckerberg enlisted the aid of a few of his fellow students to help grow the website and they expanded the site to additional universities and colleges (Bellis, Ibid.) where it also became very popular very quickly. In that same year, 2004, Napster founder and angel investor Sean Parker became the company's president (Kirkpatrick, D. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011). The company changed the site's name from “TheFacebook” to just “Facebook” after purchasing the domain name “facebook.com” in 2005 for $200,000. In the following year, the venture capital firm, Accel Partners, invested $12.7 million in the company. That same year, Facebook created a version for high school students and company employees. In September of 2006, Facebook announced that anyone who was at least 13 years old and had a valid email address could join and by 2009, it had become the world's most used social networking service, according to a report by the analytics site Compete.com. (Bellis, Ibid.). Facebook is worth just under $280 billion dollars today.
In 2008, New York Times writer Hal Niedzviecki (“Neyet-vich-key”) decided to join Facebook. At first he connected with relatives and friends he’d had known over the years. Then it expanded to include friends of friends, and then friends of friends of friends until he had over seven hundred on-line friends. He was amazed and overwhelmed with the social media’s ability to connect him with the world.
Over time, he began to wonder about his on-line “friends.” How many of them were actually, well, “friends”? To find out, he planned a “Facebook party” so that he could actually meet some of his many digital “friends” in the flesh and get to know them better. He knew a lot about them from their Facebook profiles and his interaction with them on his computer but, still, he thought it might be better if they could all sit down and talk face-to-face. Niedzviecki (“Neyet-vich-key”) invited his seven hundred friends to join him for a drink at a local bar.
He watched in anticipation to see how many would accept his invitation. Fifteen said they’d be there … 60 gave him a solid “maybe” … some said “no” … but most didn’t respond at all (Jeremiah, D. What Are You Afraid Of? Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013, p. 116). In his mind, Niedzviecki (“Neyet-vich-key”) expected about 20 or so of his seven hundred on-line “friends” to show up.
On the night of the party, Niedzviecki (“Neyet-vich-key”) went to the bar, found a seat, and waited … and waited … and waited. Finally a nice lady showed up … a friend of a friend. They talked for awhile but it was clear that they both felt pretty awkward. The conversation quickly faded and she left. Niedzviecki (“Neyet-vich-key”) sat there … alone … until midnight … nursing his drink and wondering where all his so-called on-line friends were. “Seven hundred friends,” he wrote in his article about the experience, “and I was drinking alone” (Niedzviecki, H. Facebook in a Crowd. New York Times, October 24, 2008).
There are over 200 well known social networking websites. The most popular and well-known are Facebook, YouTube, WeChat, Instagram, Tumblr, and Tiktok (Ortiz-Ospina, E. Ourworldindata.org, September 18, 2019). Here’s something to think about. There are 7.7 billion people in the world today. At least 3.5 billion are online, which means that social media platforms are being used by one-in-three people in the world and more than two-thirds of all internet users (Ortiz-Ospina, Ibid.). Which begs the question: With so many ways to stay connected to so many people, why are we so lonely? In fact, we’re so lonely that we had to invent a new word for it: “autophobia.”
“Autophobia” is not the fear of automobiles. The word “auto,” from which we get our words “automobile” and “automatic” means “self.” “Phobia,” as you all know, means “fear.” “Autophobia” is the fear of loneliness or being alone. We all know the difference between being “alone” and “lonely,” amen? You can be in a crowd or have 700 friends on Facebook and feel ignored, unloved, disconnected … in other words, lonely. And it’s no wonder. The Internet is replacing face-to-face conversation. The average job only lasts about two years. People often move from state to state and from marriage to marriage. The possibilities of being alone has risen right along with the possibilities of reaching out and connecting to each other and the world.
All this new technology is great … but it’s had some far-reaching and surprising side-effects which researchers at Carnegie Mellon University began studying as early as 1998. While the research subjects saw the Internet as a “social” medium, “they derived from it only negative symptoms such as depression and loneliness” (Adler, J. Online and Bummed Out: One Study Says the Internet Can Be Alienating. Newsweek, October 14, 2011) … something we may not have known then but are certainly aware of today, amen?
Many studies have been done since then. The average amount of time that people spent online in 2009 was 12 hours a week … or roughly about 1.7 hours per day. Today, that number has jumped to six hours and 42 minutes a day or over 42 hours per week. Yeah … right?
The Digital 2019 report by HootSuite and the research group “We Are Social” reveals that the average internet user will spend more than a quarter of their life on the World Wide Web (www.digitalinformationworld.com /2019) … yikes! Pretty sobering, amen?
Another technology we are addicted to has generated another new phobia and a fancy new name for it … “nomophobia.” Care to guess what that’s a fear of? “Nomophobia” is the fear of being … phoneless! Gasp and double gasp! Remember when the phone was attached to the wall by a cord and we had no answering machines? Yeah. There were whole hours of the day when we were no where near a phone … and never gave it a thought. Now there are people who panic and experience real terror at the prospect of not having a phone within reach 24/7. One study found that nine out of 10 college students suffer from “nomophobia” and that the fear or anxiety of not having your smartphone at home or at hand can affect their health. The study found that college students who experience “nomophobia” were more likely to experience sleepiness and poorer sleep hygiene such as long naps and inconsistent bed and wake times (Anderer, J. ‘Nomophobia’: 9 In 10 College Students Battle Fear Of Being Without Smartphone. Studyfinds.org, August 31, 2020.
All of this taps into a very, very deep need. We are social creatures and we need to interact and be around other human beings. It is essential to our survival and quite literally our sanity. A crusty old prospector in one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s westerns describes what happens when we don’t get the kind of human interaction that we need. “There are lots of people you could put down in the middle of the desert, go away and leave ‘em for a week, and come back and find ‘em completely crazy,” explains the old prospector. “I’ve seen it happen. A man sprained his ankle and couldn’t travel. The party he was with had to go right on, but they left him with lots of food. All he had to do was keep quiet for three or four days. He showed up in civilization just about half-crazy. He said he’d rather have lost the whole leg than to have stayed in that desert another ten minutes. “People can’t bear it,” he wisely observed, “because out there they are alone with their Maker” (Gardner, E.S. The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito. New York: William Morrow and Co.; 1943; p. 179).
I think that the old prospector’s comment really gets to the heart of “autophobia” and “nomophobia.” We’re afraid to be still perhaps and hear that small, still voice because we’re afraid of what God might have to say … especially if we’re living the kind of self-centered, hedonistic lifestyles that most Americans and Westerners are living today … although the thought of God or being alone with God is probably something that doesn’t enter most people’s minds. Aware of it or not, isolation and separation from each other and from God can be what Psychology Today calls a ‘potent killer.’ Their article on the effects of isolation states that there is “no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and of us from them. [Isolation] has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, mass murder, and a wide variety of disease states” (cited in Swindoll, C.R., The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart: And 1,501 Other Stories; Nashville: Word Publishing; 1998; p. 352).
None of this is new or unique to us or to our time, however. It’s a problem that has plagued humanity for as long as we can collectively remember. There are plenty of examples of people in the Bible … good, Godly people of strong faith … who sometimes felt alone and disconnected and suffered from “autophobia.” One who suffered from an acute case of “autophobia” at the end of his life was the Apostle Paul. As a young man, Saul was a rising star in the Temple and priestly circles and was well-known in and around Jerusalem. He even described himself as a zealot … someone who was energetic and driven … and it drew people to him. He had that same energy and zeal when he met Christ on the Road to Damascus and gave his life to serving Christ. His travels around the cities and provinces of Asia Minor made him many friends and many enemies. In his letter to the Roman church, he mentions 26 friends by name and several more indirectly. In today’s letter, he mentions the names of 17 friends.
And yet, in his final days, Paul feels alone and abandoned. Of the 17 names that he mentions in his second letter to his friend and disciple, Timothy, six are fellow missionaries out in various regions doing the work of the Lord and can’t come to his aid. Paul mentions “Demas” who had forsaken him, “having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica” (2nd Timothy 4:10). Phygellus and Hermogenes had deserted Paul earlier (1st Timothy 1:15). Alexander not only deserted Paul but added to Paul’s concerns. “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm,” Paul writes. “May the Lord repay him according to his works. You also” … referring to Timothy … “must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words” (2nd Timothy 4:14-15).
For all the people he met and for all the lives that Paul had touched, in the end he stood before Caesar alone except for Luke. All his friends and followers had left him in the hands of the Roman authorities much like Jesus’ disciples and followers had left him in the hands of the Temple authorities and the Jewish mob.
I don’t think we can begin to imagine what it must have been like for Paul to have to go through the various trials and legal procedures that took years … meanwhile having to live and survive in Rome’s notorious Mamertine Prison … the “last stop on the road to death for the empire’s most-feared prisoners” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 132). We tend to picture prisons as places made up of individual rooms and cells but that wasn’t always the case in Paul’s day. Author and Bible teacher John Phillips tries to give us a sense of Paul’s experience in quite literally the bowels of the Mamertine Prison.
“Paul … was stripped of his outer garments and left naked, except for his tunic. … Paul was then taken over a trapdoor in the floor. The door was lifted, ropes were passed under his armpits, and he was lowered into the terrible Tullianum dungeon. Paul’s feet touched the floor, the ropes were drawn up, and the trapdoor was slammed into place. He was now in the dark” (Phillips, J. Exploring the Pastoral Epistles. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications; 2004; pp. 449-450).
Phillips goes on to explain:
“In Paul’s day, the name of that dungeon was spoken in whispers. It was a black pit, a hole in the ground. It was damp and chilly. The bed was a clump of stale, damp straw, and the floor was heaped with filth. There was a spring, at least, but the air was foul. Food was lowered to prisoners from time to time – rough fare to keep body and soul together – and perhaps a kidskin of thin, sour wine. Prisoners had been known to be eaten by rats in that dreadful hole” (Phillips, Ibid., p. 450).
How does someone like a Paul, whose life and ministry had been so people-oriented, handle the isolation of death row? “If anyone would be prey to loneliness,” wrote one author, “it would be a gregarious people-person like Paul. And if anyone had a spiritual answer for it, it would be this man” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 124). Paul’s solution can teach us a great deal about how we can handle our loneliness and isolation today.
The first thing Paul does is to realistically accept his situation. “I am already being poured out as a drink offering,” he writes to Timothy, “and the time of my departure is at hand” (2nd Timothy 4:6). The word that gets translated as “departure” in English is actually “analysis” in the Greek. It literally means to “unloose” or “untie” … to “separate.” When we “analyze” something, we’re “untying” it … we’re “loosening” it or “separating” it … we’re taking something apart and examining it. It has the same sense or meaning as untying or loosening a ship from its mooring or an army “untying” or taking down their tents in preparation for going on the march.
Paul knows that he’s probably not going to come out of the Mamertine Prison or his situation alive and so he begins “departing” or “untying” from his friends and from this earth to sail over the horizon and drop anchor in Heaven and moor himself forever with Jesus Christ. He uses the same word in Philippians 1:23: “I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart” … to untie … to loosen … to separate … “and be with Christ, which is far better” (emphasis mine).
Paul values the friendships that he has and those who are with him in his darkest moment. He mentions Luke. He also mentions John Mark. When he asks John Mark and Timothy to come, he has no doubt that they will come and that they will bring him what asked for … a cloak and some books and parchments. John Mark had a falling out with Paul and Barnabas years earlier and left them in the middle of their first missionary journey. When Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them on their second missionary journey, Paul disagreed and it led to the split up of Paul and Barnabas … Paul taking Silas and heading to Syria while Barnabas and John Mark boarded a ship and sailed to Cyprus (Acts 15:36-41). In the end, however, John Mark proved to be a loyal friend and follower to Paul.
Friendship, says author John Stott, is a gift from God. “One sometimes meets super-spiritual people who claim that they never feel lonely and have no need of human friends,” Stott writes in his book Guard the Gospel, “for the companionship of Christ satisfies all their needs. But human friendship is the loving provision of God for mankind. … Wonderful as are both the presence of the Lord Jesus every day and the prospect of his coming on the last day,” he concludes, “they are not intended to be a substitute for human friendships” (Stott, J. Guard the Gospel: The Message of 2 Timothy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 1997; p. 120). “One of the greatest omissions in the life of the average American Christian,” says Dr. David Jeremiah, “is the failure to cultivate close companions in the faith” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 133). As the Bible points out:
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
If you want proof of this, just look at how God has configured human society from the very start. When God created Adam, He saw that Adam was lonely. “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18) … so He created Eve and together they created the most fundamental and most important unit of human companionship and community that we have … the family. Family is one of the most important ways for us to be intimately connected with one another.
Paul’s request for a cloak to protect himself from the approaching inclement winter weather was no small request to make of a friend. Timothy didn’t have a car. He couldn’t hop on a plane. He couldn’t ship it by FedEx. He had to physically walk or travel by sea up the coast of Asia Minor to Troas, get Paul’s cloak, then travel by sea or on foot from Troas back to Rome … no small trip in Paul’s day. Paul’s request and Timothy’s response to Paul’s request show us the importance of having strong connections to dedicated Christians who are willing to go to great lengths to meet our desperate needs, amen? I hope and pray that you have Christian friends like that … friends like Luke or John Mark or Timothy who will stay with you and take care of you in your most desperate times.
Earlier I said that Paul stood alone before Caesar … but Paul knew that wasn’t true. He had God with him, amen? Paul’s faith and courage came from the knowledge that he was not alone … even in that deep, dank pit that the Romans had put him in. “At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me,” writes Paul. “May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. … And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!” (2nd Timothy 4:16-18).
Everyone may forsake us and turn away, but Christ never will … we have His promise on that. “I am with your always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Our courage, our faith, like Paul’s comes from knowing this fundamental truth: We are never truly alone. As David pointed out in Psalm 139, there is no place that we can go … from the bottom of the deepest sea to the highest mountain … that God isn’t already there, amen? Faith, as one author put it, “is the act of hanging on to that truth even when we don’t feel His presence” (Jeremiah, Ibid., p. 138). This same author goes on to say that it’s not what we feel that counts, it’s what we know. “Feelings deceive, but our knowledge of the truth leads us to know that though all others may fail us, leaving us abandoned and disconnected, God never will. As His children, we are always connected to Him, even when we don’t feel it” (Jeremiah, Ibid., 138).
Paul also knew what it would take to cultivate and hold on to this truth … God’s Word. Not only did Paul ask for a cloak to protect him from the elements, he asked Timothy to bring him books and parchments to fortify him from his spiritual winter. The “biblos” or “books” that Paul asked for were probably scrolls made of papyrus and the “parchments” would have been scrolls made of thin, specially treated leather. They may have had writing on them … some of them may have been blank … or both. The point in his request is that Paul was not going to let his present predicament stand in the way of his relationship and his dependence on the Lord. We should study God’s Word at all times but especially when times are tough so that we can shore up and fortify our faith in God when we need it most, amen?
I want to close by showing you how deeply our need for community is imbedded in our spiritual DNA. In Revelation, John saw a day of great judgment. Some, like Satan and his followers, were thrown into a burning lake of sulfur … but the rest were allowed to enter the new Jerusalem and spend eternity with God and with Jesus. In our Bible study on Revelation, the question was raised about hell. Was it a place of fire, of physical torment, as the lake of burning sulfur suggests? There are some passages in the Bible which suggest that possibility. In Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Lazarus lay at the gates to the rich man’s estate longing to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table (Luke 16:21). When they both died, there was a huge, impassable gulf or chasm between them. The rich man begged Abraham to let Lazarus dip the tip of his finger into some water and bring it to him so that he might cool his tongue, for he was in agony because of the flames (Luke 16:24). Literal? Perhaps. What’s important to me is the sense of constant agony … an agony that comes from eternal separation … from people and from God. Jesus often referred to people being cast off like dead wood or chaff and burned in the fire … again, suggesting extreme agony … but He also described being tossed into the outer darkness where there would be wailing and the gnashing of teeth … why? From the agony of isolation and separation (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30).
I believe that within every human heart is the desire for relationship. Our human relationships mirror our desire for our relationship with our divine Creator. “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18) and our greatest fear is being alone … truly alone. The rich man said that he was thirsty. What greater agony could there be than to be eternally thirsty and never ever receive a drop of the thing that you constantly thirst for. Our hearts and our souls thirst for God and hell is a place where we are eternally separated from God … a place where we thirst for God but never, ever receive any relief. In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes hell as a place of deep, deep … almost physical … darkness that keeps folding in on itself … getting deeper and darker. There is absolutely no light, no other person … no sound, no sight … just an eternally deepening darkness where our souls forever drift farther and farther and farther from God. That, to me, my brothers and sisters, sounds as terrifying and as horrible as forever feeling the agony of burning desire in a lake of sulfur.
“It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Let’s see what John saw when he got a glimpse of Heaven.
“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9).
Heaven is a place of beauty, filled with the light and glory of God. Heaven is also a city, a symbol of community. When we die, we hope to be reunited with our loved ones and we hope that our loved ones here on earth will come and join us. Heaven is a place where we will never be separated from God, never separated from Jesus, never separated from each other. In other words, Heaven will be a place where we will never ever be alone. The River of Life that flows from God and Jesus’ thrones signify that we will never ever thirst for them … and we will never ever thirst for companionship or fellowship.
When Jesus knew that His time on earth almost up, He promised them … and us … that not even death could separate us from Him.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. … And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. … I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you” (John 14:1-4, 16, 18).
It is not good that we should be alone … and … thanks be to God … we never have to be, amen?
