.: Refresh Life :.

Editors Note: One word can conjure up many thoughts and definitions. Sometimes "aloneness" means solitude, quietude, or a Selah - as the Psalmist would say. In other definitions it may mean separate, by ones self, exiled (self chosen or by the hands of others)... different writers have used the word in various contexts. Each author on Refresh Life has used a varying definition of the word “aloneness”. Please note the different uses of the word.

By Daryl Fleming

It began in the Garden of Eden…..the horrific decent away from community into the pit of individualism and isolationism. Satan had accomplished more than a disobedience, he had severed relationships. The relationship between God and man (our vertical relationship), and relationship between men (our horizontal relationships) were severed. The diabolical serpent had introduced the first anti-Christ thinking (Genesis 3:4). He suggested taking God out of the picture. Eve and Adam’s gaze shifted from God to self. Where their consciousness had only been God-aware they now were self-aware. Where they had been a community of three, integrated parts of a whole, part of a divine “belonging”, they were, in an instant, torn from each other – emotionally and spiritually isolated. They instantly became “hiders” (Genesis 3:8). Their children were born into “aloneness” and, in turn, became hiders. They were individuals with such a lack of connectedness that murder was now an option (Genesis 4:8).

In God’s ancient idea we were not created for aloneness – that is why it is so shattering, so harsh, and decimating. To be alone means to be separate, apart, solitary, by oneself, and isolated from others. In the great “Beginning”, Eve was given to Adam because it was not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). When they took Satan up on writing the end of their own story, they bought into individualism, dismissing God, and ultimately isolating themselves…..ripe to become the prey of Satan and continued anti-Christ thinking.

God, in unwavering pursuit of us, put His great plan of recovery into motion. He would buy back the original relationship at great cost to Himself. He would shatter “aloneness” by bearing the ultimate severed relationship on the cross of Christ. He would reconcile all things to Himself, banishing aloneness, and reuniting us to community with Him and with each other. On the cross “He became sin for us” (2 Cor. 5;21), bearing the full brunt of severed relationship alone as He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46)

On rising from that death, Christ provided to those who would become the children of God relationship reinstated with God and man. Aloneness would no longer exist for the child of God. He said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) The promise of His Presence is a constant. He also reconciled relationship within the race of men and we became mystically drawn into the Body-relationship of believers. ( I Cor. 6:15, I Cor. 6:19, I Cor. 12: 27) Our glorious Head (Col. 1:18) intimately connecting us again. No individualism, no “aloneness.”

Solitude is different than aloneness. It is a needed practice for the follower of Christ. He modeled it for us. “Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in His beauty deigns to walk.” (C.H.Spurgeon)

Our solitude still finds Him present – even solitary confinement does not find the believing one alone. So, should the follower of Christ experience “aloneness”? Scripture doesn’t support it as a path for the believing follower of Christ. Is it sometimes experienced? Yes.
A believer can choose to isolate themselves from the Body-experience Christ provides. Sin can reintroduce hiding to us. Anti-Christ thinking can be adopted by the believer who leaves Christ out of thought.

Isolationism can begin to eat away at the reality of connectedness. Proverbs 18:1 warns us, “He who willfully separates and estranges himself from God and others seeks his own desire and pretext to break out against all wise and sound judgment.” Elitism can create aloneness. Feeling our spirituality is superior to most of the other messy members of the Body of Christ can cause us to withdraw ourselves from community. But we are exhorted not to forsake the gathering together (Hebrews 10:25)– no matter how messy.

Our sin nature, ever alive and well until it is severed from us in death, may seduce us to isolate ourselves. Mike Mason writes, “Given the natural bent of ours toward isolationism, how vital it is for us to know and discover again and again the shattering truth that we indeed are not alone in the world (however much we would like to be left-alone, and forget the sticky problem of others and God as our sin nature would like us to).” (1) God refuses to allow us to be left alone. The Body refuses to allow us to be left alone.The Biblical story refuses to allow us to adopt individualism, isolation or aloneness in our earthly experience with Christ. Mike Mason continues, “God is always on our backs, forever admonishing us that there is no such thing as life apart from relationship – no life apart from sharing ourselves with others.”

The Biblical narrative has substantial stories that show when we try self-imposed exile God comes to get us. When Elijah ran away, feeling as if he was alone in the world, God pursued him and told him to get up out of his despair because there were seven thousand more just like him serving the living God (I Kings 19:8-18).

Aloneness is never to be the watchword of the Christian. Community is. God will not grace us for an aloneness we were not designed for. We are connected and expected to live an other-centered, poured out, relational life. In the United States community is richly everywhere. We are commanded to avail ourselves of it and live the Body-life. We live out the beautiful story of reconciliation. We may often be “onlys” out in the world – the only believers, only people with a moral compass, only ones living by Biblical ethics – but we are never truly “lonely”. We have the Great companionship of the indwelling Spirit of the risen Christ Himself…..and the intricate Body of believers all connected to our glorious Head.

John Donne (1572-1631), clergyman and influential poet of the Renaissance, expressed the interconnectedness of man beautifully in his now-famous poem:

No Man is an Island

No man is an island,
Entire if itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
Europe is the less, as well as if
A promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friends
or of thine own were.
Any mans death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Work Cited:
(1) The Mystery of Marriage by Mike Mason Multnomah Publishers