Loneliness

Loneliness is a universal experience; some cultures embrace it (like Eastern cultures, heavily influenced by meditative religions promoting the loss of self into the great consciouness or Western monasticism, seaking solitude to avoid contamination by the world), some eschew it (cultures that emphasize large families or communal living). 21st century America, especially on college campuses, has definitely moved into the embracing side of the continuum, though, perhaps, unwittingly.

Perhaps we should blame the media, for, indeed, the media does play a huge role in creating an environment wherein isolationism is feasible. Take, for example, the Internet. It is possible, with a good connection, to order food and clothing to be delivered, to downlaod any music you could want for immediate consumption, to "interact" with people in chatrooms, on IM, playing chess through Yahoo!, or, in the countless video games available, create your own reality with a group of people who totally "get" you. In theory, nothing else would be necessary for you; you could live completely dependent on the computer.
This is extreme, but the point is made. Technology encourages isolation in other ways as well, as Doug has often commented: iPods and Walkmen ensure that we are never without noise (a music "addiction" according to Allan Bloom of The Closing of the American Mind); cellphones allow us to avoid the people who may be around us; constant images of other people, other times, other places, other cultures, other music, other beliefs, other, other, other, make us forget the here and now. The media bombardment definitely contributes to the isolating of American college students.

Doug made a startlingly adept observation in his article today in the OUDaily:
We have 20,000 students at OU, but what sort of community do we have here? What binds us together? Football, perhaps, because we have something in common to care and talk about. But most of the time most students pursue un-connection, un-integration in their lives. We watch our own shows; we listen to our own tunes; take our own classes; eat our own foods; travel to our own apartments.
Shallow friendships and tenuous intra-personal ties mask, but do not cure, loneliness. How often, especially my freshman year, I have assumed that proximity and length of time spent with someone meant friendship and community! But no - I was an entity to myself, unattached and unresponsible.

For when you get down to it, being alone is the opposite (in as sense) of responsibility. When I don't want to own up to something I've done, I run from friends, I run from church, I run from accountability. The church was given to us so graciously so that there might be a check on our tendency to run, to flee penalty. (Perhaps then, a church that promotes community without active discipline is promoting shallow fellowship, based more on similar likings than a desire to promote holiness.)

Thanks be to God for His great gifts to us: His Spirit, His Word, and His Bride, the church. Never must I be truly alone, for the Lord speaks to and nourishes me through His Word, indwells and animates me by His Spirit, and hugs and comforts (as well as confronts) me by His church.

Is loneliness then the Lord's method of prodding us back into the fold? Does he use it to remind us of how much we lose in running from him, from the church? Like hunger alerts us that our bodies need food, is loneliness our alarm that we need fellowship?