People

The Epidemic of Loneliness

by Terry Barlow
05/02/19
For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

It has been well said that loneliness only intensifies pain. If someone is alongside feeling the pain with us, whether it be physical or emotional, their presence helps to alleviate it. That is what sympathy and empathy are about. Just giving voice to pain to a listening ear can begin to dissipate it by blunting it’s sharp edge. In that sense company is like an anaesthetic. Company can relieve suffering because it can distract us from the suffering. (Unless the relationship is centered around the suffering, in which case it can actually increase suffering in the worst sense of that familiar saying, “misery loves company.”) I read that loneliness had reached such proportions in England that a "Minister of Loneliness" was appointed by the government to ascertain the causes of the loneliness and to propose ways of addressing the problem.

Company that relieves suffering though doesn’t even have to be human company. Animals don’t talk back or criticize. In fact, the Old Testament figure Job might have been better off with two cats and a dog than with his three “friends.” That is one reason pets are so popular in our western culture, a culture in which loneliness is epidemic. ( One might be hard-pressed to believe the immense amounts of time and money lavished on the care of pets in the U.S.A.) But that brings us to the issue of loneliness in the midst of company, human or otherwise, which is a whole other kettle of fish, and one that factors heavily into the aforementioned epidemic. For more about that we will wait until later.

Suffice it to say now that God has the bottom line in all this and, because God has the bottom line, God will have the last word of that bottom line. Thank God. It was Jesus who told his followers, “I am with you always (uniformly) even to the end of the age.” And that was the bottom line of the Gospel according to Matthew. He thereby promised us his continuing company. Let us appropriate that promise and allow His company to become more and more real in our daily lives as we go forth onto highways and byways. And the last word was “Amen” (so be it.)