It was reported earlier this year that Japan had become the latest country to appoint a Minister of Loneliness. With a growth in suicide, particularly among young women, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga created an office to "carry out activities to prevent social loneliness and isolation and to protect ties between people."
Loneliness has been an issue in Japan for a long time and different solutions have been offered including a robot designed to "hold someone's hand when they're lonely." One man even makes his living charging people to "do nothing" except keep them company.
The social isolation of 2020, both the mandated and the voluntary, has taken the existing problem of loneliness to plaid. Most of us have kept up with our closest friends and family, at least virtually. But social distancing has also "evaporated entire categories of friendship" as pointed out by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic.
These "weak ties," relationships on the periphery of your life, turn out to be as good for well-being as our besties. The familiar cashier, the co-worker you always greet in the hall, the delivery man who engages in small talk. These regular interactions with people outside our inner circle make us feel more a part of our community, of something bigger.
Jennie Bristow writing for Unherd, has considered broader implications for pandemic isolation and wonders if we've "tacitly embraced loneliness as a way of life." Bristow engages with theories of conformity and suggests that lockdowns have revealed that there is a profound loss of an inner life, which can be relied on to guide when the light gets dim. People are lost and looking to others to tell them what to do and think.
Of lockdowns, Bristow writes that "the enforced cessation of all spontaneous human contact has been as much about our quest to balance our desire for social contact with fear of its consequences." She sees people as yearning for intimacy and friendship, but fearful of offending, of being cancelled. . . or killing Grandma.
Of course, Mad Christians will recognize the slow dissolution of marriage and the family as a key factor in today's statistics on loneliness. Bristow notes that individuals used to have a solid core of "norms and values passed down through the generations and internalized at an early age" whereas now we are "trained to be continually responsive to present-day influences— and, therefore, better suited to a bureaucratic era dominated by advertising, television, and HR departments."
So yes, it's a jungle out there. The pontification of media and the folks whose MO seems to be "politics is life" are signs that people are looking for guidance— they want to be part of something bigger. What an awesome gift we have to offer! What stronger foundation is there than Christ and His Word? What bigger hope is there than the world to come?
We know Christ has not left us as orphans; He sent us the Comforter. We don't always feel the reality of the Spirit's help, as sometimes life is heavy. But we know he groans with us, and makes intercession for us, as St. Paul wrote. So if all you can do is take the Supper and hear the Absolution, that is enough. But whatever consolation you receive from the Spirit, whatever anchor you find in the Word, pray for the strength to share it.
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