Fearing Loneliness
We all have memories of feeling lonely or not belonging. These feelings can be prolonged loneliness, the gloomy evenings spent on our own, day after day or even when people surround us, yet we feel completely invisible. Thoughts run through our minds, ‘Does anyone see me? Would anyone care if I wasn’t here? We have all been there.
If your school experience were anything like mine, you would have gone through many different trials, dramas and friendship groups. The highest and lowest moments of your school experience would relate to your friends and relationships. They provide great joys and some pretty terrible lows. However, as you have gone through school, you (hopefully!) have made a few good friends who genuinely know and like you.
Now that school is over, you are starting university in September. Perhaps you are excited because you’ve heard that university will be your best years and that it is where you find friends for life. On the other hand, maybe you think ahead with a little bit of dread as you realise that you have to start all over again! And you fear, ‘Will anyone like me?… Will I make any friends?… Will I be lonely?’ Having these thoughts run through your mind, and the fear of loneliness is entirely understandable! It happens because of the realisation that friendship and companionship are good, and loneliness is bad. This is a biblical principle we learn in Genesis 2:18; the LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone’. We should long for friendship and community simply because it is good.
This desire to belong goes much deeper than appreciating what is good and bad; it feels like it cuts to the core of who we are. It affects our whole being. Psychology professor Baumeister writes, ‘the motivation to form and sustain at least a minimum amount of social connections is one of the most powerful, universal and influential human drives. It shapes emotion, cognition, and behaviour. This is a universal reality we all face. It is our human nature.
We might complain about this when we feel hurt or alone. However, this is part of the glorious truth of being made in God’s image, who in nature is purely relational. God cannot exist in isolation but in relationship within himself, providing his greatest joy. In this triune image, we are all made, and we get to share in this joy when we are in Christ. All human relationships find fulfilment and point back to this greater relationship with God. Christ’s love for us quietens our relational anxieties and fears.
We worry that people will leave deep down if they see who we really are. Automatically, we filter ourselves and present to others an image of what we want to look and be like; someone who we think would be more desirable. In some way, we feel like we have to perform. To put on an act, out of fear that people will see us for who we are and get bored. We put up barriers, not allowing anyone to know us too deeply, saving us from the perceived inevitable hurt when we’re left alone.
What we long for is only found in Christ. We desire someone who knows us to our darkest depths yet still receives us in love, someone who knows the very worst of us and never leaves. When we know someone like this, we can finally relax and truly be ourselves. This is Christ’s heart for us. Dane Ortlund, the author of Gentle and Lowly, writes: “In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence. This is a companion whose embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or unclean, how attractive or revolting, how faithful or fickle, we presently are. The friendliness of his heart for us subjectively is as fixed and stable as is the declaration of his justification of us objectively.” We will always have a friend in Jesus Christ whose disposition towards us will never change or waver. We can always find welcome and rest in turning to him. This is the model for human connection and fellowship.
Come Freshers Week; we do not need to try and act out our ideal versions of ourselves to find the belonging and acceptance we desire. We do not need to wear a mask or perform to feel loved. Instead, knowing that we are already welcome, we can go out to welcome others. Knowing that we are already accepted, we can accept others. Knowing that we already belong, we can give others the opportunity to belong. Knowing that we are deeply loved, we can love others. We don’t just want to find friendships at university, but we want to give our friendship.
In this nature and heart that come from an outpouring of Christ’s presence, we will find deep friendships and a strong community at university.
