Community is a fundamental human need. In the Garden of Eden, God declared, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”1 God understood that even though Adam was not technically alone with all the rest of creation present, there was something special and unique about having a suitable partner for Adam in the created world. Eve fulfilled a kind of community that nothing else was able to fulfill. Of course, Eve’s femininity was a critical part of her suitability for Adam on a physical and reproductive level, but it is not wise to forget her basic humanity as a significant part of her suitability to be Adam’s partner. All humans are created to be with other humans.
Part of the beauty of community is that, like Adam and Eve, groups of people can also complement each other. Paul compares the New Testament church to a body, writing, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”2 As the passage goes on, Paul explains how people have different functions, but they are all necessary for the proper operation of the body. As Paul also expresses to the church in Ephesus, “in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”3 Individuals are not being built in isolation but being built together. As Adam and Eve complemented each other, so should people in the church complement each other. Other social divisions ought to fall away within the body of Christ.
Not all partnerships are suitable, however. Consider the New Testament exhortation from Paul to the Corinthians in his second letter, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”4 While these verses are often applied to marriage, the apostle Paul does not seem to limit himself in the context of the whole passage. As Bible commentator John Gill writes, “these words are a dissuasive in general, from having any fellowship with unbelievers in anything sinful and criminal, whether in worship or in conversation.”5 Considering that in his previous letter, Paul reminded the church of their unity, it is telling that this church now needed to be told that not all relationships and not all communities were beneficial for their body.
Applying these teachings to modern communities might seem straightforward and relatively self-evident. As Christians, we need to come together as a body, providing mutual support and encouragement, and we need to avoid joining ourselves too tightly to anything that would draw us away from our commitment to Jesus Christ. However, the unique challenge of our time is that we are in the midst of a friendship drought.
In 2021, 12% of Americans reported having no close friends, according to the American Perspectives Survey.6 In 2023, that number decreased to 8%, quite possibly due to the 2021 data being drawn during a pandemic where so many people felt isolated.7 However, it is still worth considering that in 1990, this number was 3%, so even though 2023 showed a significant improvement over 2021 as fewer people had no close friends, the percentage is still substantially worse than it was a generation ago.8 This data point is significant because of its emphasis on close friends. Different people use different terms, but a Facebook friend is not necessarily the equivalent of a close friend. The survey itself does not even provide a specific definition to respond to these, so the exact definition of close friends is left up to individual interpretation. The survey did not ask how many friends a person had, but even with hundreds of “friends,” a significant number of people did not believe they had any close friends.
A 2019 study discovered that 20% of people reported loneliness.9 This study is significant because it was before the pandemic. People were already lonely, indicative of a cultural direction, not a temporary blip caused by coronavirus. 2023 data confirms that 17% of people reported loneliness in the past day, which points towards a similar level of loneliness despite the increase during the pandemic.10 Worldwide, 24% of people reported feeling either very lonely or fairly lonely, so it is not like the United States is simply an outlier.11 This is a major problem everywhere.
If it is true that community is a human need and if it is true that many people are longing for friendships, it is easy to wonder why people don’t just start making friendships. Perhaps the straightforward reason is that many of us are uncomfortable with even the process of finding friends. 7.1% of the US population experiences social anxiety disorder, and according to a 2007 survey, 36% of people who have social anxiety disorder reported experiencing symptoms for ten years or more before seeking help.12 It is difficult to speculate how many people are wrestling with social anxiety disorder right now who have yet to be diagnosed. The National Institutes of Mental Health estimates that approximately 12% of people likely experience social anxiety at some point in their lives.13 Obviously, there is not an exact correlation between social anxiety and loneliness; many people who experience this form of anxiety have friends without a doubt. Nevertheless, in a culture where so many people are so nervous about making friends that it rises to a professionally diagnosable level, it is important to reflect on the culture itself. What about this culture is causing so many people to be anxious about fulfilling a fundamental need?
Alan Noble wrote, “This is the fundamental lie of modernity: that we are our own. Until we see this lie for what it is, until we work to uproot it from our culture and replant a conception of human persons as belonging to God and not ourselves, most of our efforts at improving the world will be glorified Band-Aids.”14 Noble’s suggestion was inspired by the Heidelberg Catechism, and there are also echoes of the Westminster Catechism, “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever.”15 Even our relationships with others reflect the centrality of our lives being about God and not about ourselves. Justin Kendrick expands on this concept, “You can’t stay at the center of your life and expect to experience real relationship with God. You must orbit your life around him, preferring, honoring, and deferring to him in all things.”16 Our self-centered behavior leaves us lonely and exposes how dependent we are on other people. Justin Earley writes, “It is crucial to see that our capacity to be lonely with God is not a sign of God’s insufficiency or lack. It is a sign of his unfathomable generosity: God designed us to need people. You cannot experience God the way you were made to until you experience him alongside others.”17
Our culture continually tells us that our lives are about ourselves. That belief runs counter to how we were created, and we suffer from that dissonance. Everything in us tells us that we want to be with other people. We are told by the world that we are the masters of our own ships and don’t need anyone or anything else to find fulfillment. We have a hard time resisting the influence of this belief, so we try to tell ourselves it is true. We suppress the fact that we need friendships for the myth of autonomy.
The myth is unsatisfactory, just as much as the pagan gods were unsatisfactory attempts to recognize the reality of the God of the universe. We know the myth comes up woefully short, but we have committed to rejecting the fact of our need for other people. Even our technology allows us to believe that virtual friends are identical to literal neighbors; our technology, the god that we have created, has allowed us to master and overhaul the process of making friends. We are stubborn people who do not like to admit when we are wrong, so we delve in deeper, further committing to our errant pathway. It is not difficult to imagine two roads diverging from a junction, one to the northwest and one to the northeast. The further one progresses down either road, the further away the other path is. A longer commitment to the wrong path creates a further departure from truth. The more committed we are to the myth that we are fully autonomous, the harder it will be for us to recognize truth and be willing to traverse the distance to get back to it.
As Christians, there is an additional consideration. As was previously suggested, not all friendships honor God. In John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr. Worldly Wiseman does not initially appear to be hostile to Christian’s mission to rid himself of the burden he bore. However, when Christian discloses that he is following the advice of Evangelist, Mr. Worldly Wiseman says, “Hear me; I am older than thou: thou art like to meet with, in the way which thou goest, wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and (in a word) death, and what not. These things are certainly true, having been confirmed by many testimonies. And why should a man so carelessly cast away himself by giving heed to a stranger?”18 He advises Christian to rendezvous with Legality, who lives at the top of a hill that Christian tries to summit unsuccessfully. Another visit from Evangelist sets Christian back on the right track, but Mr. Worldly Wiseman is not blatantly hostile to Christian. Perhaps he even believes he is giving genuinely good advice, but it derails Christian from the path that he ought to be on.
Evangelist’s rebuke is telling and a helpful framework for Christians considering the implications of not joining ourselves to unbelievers. Should Christians not be friends on any level with non-Christians? Evangelist points out three things about how a Christian needs to relate to Mr. Worldly Wiseman. “First, thou must abhor his turning thee out of the way; yea, and thine own consenting thereto, because this is to reject the counsel of God for the sake of the counsel of a Worldly Wiseman . . . Second, thou must abhor his laboring to render the cross odious unto thee; for thou art to prefer it before the treasures of Egypt . . . Third, thou must hate his setting of thy feet in the way that leadeth to the administration of death.”19 The hatred is never to be directed toward even someone like Mr. Worldly Wiseman, but there is a Christian responsibility to avoid following the path that he wanted to direct Christian down. Even Mr. Worldly Wiseman deserves to be loved, not hated.
Christian love, while being called not to become unequally yoked, nevertheless requires the risk of getting closer to people who may not share Christian beliefs. Brett McCracken suggests, “Early Christians were characterized by this sort of love. They were known both for their love for one another and for their pagan neighbors. As one pagan emperor of Rome observed, it was Christians’ ‘benevolence to strangers’ and the fact that ‘the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well,’ that explained the rise of Christianity.”20 By drawing closer to our non-Christian neighbors, we are taking a risk. If our faith is not sufficiently strong, it may be challenged. Christians must develop a sufficiently strong and deep faith to handle these situations. All Christians, not just pastors and apologists, need to be a part of this mission.
To see friendships develop and flourish with non-believers, Christians must be brave enough to take the risk of rejecting bad ideas without abandoning the people who hold them. People will come together. McCracken continues, “May they ‘know we are Christians by our love,’ as the song goes, not because we are great but because the Holy Spirit is at work within us. May it be as undeniable to the world as it is uncomfortable for us.”21 Our Christian love and friendship are a unique apologetic that the world is unequipped to counteract. We put ourselves in situations where our faith may be challenged, misunderstood, or ridiculed, but we do it because we love our neighbors.
Not only that but consider the picture of Christian vulnerability. When we are willing to break outside of our bubble and reach out to others who might be substantially different than we are, we display a humility that runs directly contrary to the myth that our lives are only about us and center on our world. Bryan Loritts notes, “While pride — this idea of independence — is the number one killer of friendship, its antithesis, humility, is the prime nourisher of healthy relationships.”22 As friends, Loritts suggests that sometimes we even have to let go of what we perceive to be our right. He explains, “There is no friendship, no experience of intimacy with God, without the humble abdication of rights by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To be Christians means we must mimic this vertical humility horizontally to others.”23 Vulnerability and humility portray a picture of love for our neighbor that the rest of our culture, bent towards self-interest, will have a hard time understanding.
Embracing friendships characterized by a willingness to sacrifice harkens back to the words of Jesus. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”24 In a world hungry for friendship, Christians have the example of the perfect Friend to emulate. Jesus loved us so much and was such a dedicated and loyal friend that he was willing to lay down His life for us. Following His example, we ought to be humble and vulnerable to those around us. We ought to take risks in friendship, even when it requires leaving our safe Christian bubble and exposing our beliefs to scrutiny. People will notice when we show that we are willing to love our neighbors even when they disagree with what we do and might even be hostile to it. It will look radically different. It is anything but utilitarian, which will counteract the transactional nature of friendship in our self-centered culture.
Christians can be part of the solution to our friendship drought. We have the example of the perfect Friend, humble, vulnerable, and sacrificial, to emulate, albeit imperfectly. While we might be afraid of being unequally yoked and ought to avoid the poor judgment that causes us to become wrapped up in relationships that do not honor God, we can also be confident that we serve a God who came as a friend to sinners like us. As such, we can be assured that with His power, we can handle the delicate balance of being friends with people who might not seek to honor God while simultaneously honoring God through that relationship. It feels difficult and perhaps even contradictory, but it is one of the paradoxes of the Christian mission.
We are called to love even those who may not initially seem lovable. G.K. Chesterton wrote about Pimlico, a poor area in London which was in desperate shape in his time. He points out that a small investment in Pimlico could make a massive difference. “The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.”25 We need to love others with this love. They might be sad, hoping to find some friends but having a hard time given our cultural direction. If we step up as a breath of fresh air for no other reason than wanting to love and help our neighbor with this frustration, the world will become as beautiful as Pimlico could have become with a bit of investment.
This love extends to Christians and non-Christians. Our friendship and love cannot be contingent on the ultimate acceptance of Jesus Christ. While we hope and pray for that to be the outcome, as we should want what is best for those we love, we love them nonetheless. To build off of Chesterton’s example, there would be people that, even in a beautiful Pimlico, would reject his efforts. He could clean the streets, and others might not care to keep them that way. Sadly, not all of our efforts will turn out the way we hope they will, but that does not give us an excuse for not loving and for not trying.
I began this essay by suggesting that it is not good for man to be alone. Christians are commanded to love one another and to function as a body, valuing all the parts for what they are. We are called to avoid relationships that do not honor God and pull us away, while at the same time, we are called to love our neighbor, regardless of their faith and attitude toward God. This is not an easy calling, but Christians were never promised an easy road. Thank God we have brothers and sisters with whom to walk this road.
Notes:
1 Genesis 2:18 (NIV).
2 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (NIV).
3 Ephesians 2:22 (NIV).
4 2 Corinthians 6:14 (NIV).
5 “2 Corinthians 6:14,” Bible Hub, accessed July 20, 2024, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/2_corinthians/6-14.htm.
6 Daniel A Cox, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” Survey Center on American Life, June 8, 2021, accessed July 20, 2024, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/.
7 Isabel Goddard, “What does friendship look like in America?” Pew Research Center, October 12, 2023, accessed July 20, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/12/what-does-friendship-look-like-in-america/#:~:text=Number%20of%20close%20friends,of%20close%20friends%20people%20have.
8 Cox, “The State of American Friendship.”
9 Rebecca A Mullen, et al, “Loneliness in Primary Care Patients: A Prevalence Study,” Annals of Family Medicine 17 no. 2 (2019): 108-115, doi:10.1370/afm.2358.
10 Dan Witters, “Loneliness in U.S. Subsides From Pandemic High,” Gallup, April 4, 2023, accessed July 20, 2024, https://news.gallup.com/poll/473057/loneliness-subsides-pandemic-high.aspx.
11 Ellyn Maese, “Almost a Quarter of the World Feels Lonely,” Gallup, October 24, 2023, accessed July 20, 2024, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/512618/almost-quarter-world-feels-lonely.aspx.
12 “Anxiety Disorders — Facts & Statistics,”Anxiety & Depression Association of America, accessed July 20, 2024, https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics.
13 “Social Anxiety Disorder,” National Institute of Mental Health, accessed July 20, 2024, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/social-anxiety-disorder.
14 Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 5.
15 “The Westminster Larger Catechism,” Ligonier, May 12, 2021, accessed July 20, 2024, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/westminster-larger-catechism.
16 Justin Kendrick, The Sacred Us: A Call to Radical Christian Community (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2022), 40.
17 Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023), 14.
18 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2007), 26.
19 Ibid., 32-33.
20 Brett McCracken, Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 94.
21 Ibid.
22 Bryan C. Loritts, Enduring Friendship: Sticking Together in an Age of Unfriending (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2024), 95.
23 Ibid., 99.
24 John 15:13 (NIV).
25 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009), 85.
