BY ADAM ANDREASSEN

ONELINESS IS THE ONLY recorded negative emotion/experience that preceded sin.¹ I'm feeling especially lonely right now, and have been all week. As a Christian, I'm wondering if this means I'm not faithful enough. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, "So you're feeling distant from God-who moved?" This doesn't help.

For days now I've focused my energy inward, seeking to find where I went wrong so that God will take away my loneliness. I always find a countless number of faults and shortcomings to occupy my attention. The more I think about myself, the worse I feel.

Needless to say, I hardly feel acceptable to God, so of course my instinct is to avoid Him. Surfing the web and watching television for the evening may occupy my attention for a while, but sooner or later it's just me and my lonely thoughts.

I pick up the phone to call a friend, and we talk for a while-mostly about insignificant things. I call because I'm lonely, but I usually don't say it. Why? Because the person on the other end sounds happy; why would I want to drag them down with the cold reality that I feel isolated? So I sound happy too.

Sad, isn't it? Lonely people everywhere, yet we never help one another. There is of course the God who promises peace. But inside of me there is also the Christian who truly believes I shouldn't feel lonely, because I have God. Guilt and shame at my condition overrule any instinct to reach out to anyone for acceptance, so I avoid God and humanity.

Deep Relationships
A story I've heard for years tells of a young girl who was afraid to sleep alone. Her mother reassured her that God was in the room, to which the girl responded: "Yeah, but I need someone with skin." The girl had it right. So do we when, in addition to closeness with God, we long for human closeness. God intends for us to have deep relationships with each other.

Recently, while preparing for a presentation about the mind-set of contemporary people, I asked a friend how to distinguish a "deep" relationship from all other relationships in life. When I later asked the same question at the presentation, many echoed her answer. Everyone I've asked since has repeated some form of this response:

A deep relationship is a free and reciprocal sharing of our vulnerable self, especially in regard to our negative traits. We don't usually veil or hide our positive characteristics-but only in deep relationships are our negatives exchanged. (This is why few would say they have a deep relationship with their counselor, because though they share much about themselves, the counselor rarely reciprocates.)

I've noticed that my loneliness is rarely, if ever, salved in superficial relationships. My buddies and acquaintances may help me forget about loneliness for a time, but deep within there is still a hidden part of me desperate for acceptance. Yet when I dare to share with others what I perceive to be unacceptable aspects of myself, I am usually met with relief. As it turns out, they also wanted acceptance but suspected no one else would understand. To this day I have not ceased being lonely, but I have experienced some healing through mutual sharing of wounds and the relief in knowing I'm not the only one struggling.

A degree of shame is involved in self-revelation, because we usually associate loneliness with sin. A friend recently wrote, "I might be free to admit certain sins and struggles, but I'm too ashamed to admit them to anyone but God. He might accept me, but I don't accept myself and therefore cannot believe that others would." While loneliness and sin are not the same things, it is impossible for us to share loneliness without also sharing our inner faults and weaknesses-the things that make us feel unacceptable. We sense that we cannot be open without those tendencies becoming visible, and this is why we often avoid vulnerability with others.

Witnessing Through Forgiveness
When I share my lonely, sinful heart with people and get accepted anyway, it feels like forgiveness and grace. While other people cannot grant me release for self-blame and guilt, their acceptance of me in spite of what they now know brings me some degree of courage in accepting myself.² It's ironic; I'm usually the last person to give myself grace.

Living in relationship with one another has become even more important since the fall in Eden, for in relationship we begin to taste God's unconditional acceptance. These connections are God's chosen bridge to a relationship with Him. Amazing! God uses my brokenness as a means of drawing others to Him-I can't even begin to comprehend this mystery.

Witnessing Through Loneliness
Deep relationships are never meant to be hoarded and exclusive. Jesus, through the public sharing of Himself, set the example. His woundedness and His loneliness on the cross are endless sources of healing for us. What would be the effect on the world "out there" if Christians were known as those who (like their Master) made available their loneliness and wounds to others as a source of healing?

Instead, Christians are usually seen as the most pretentious, noninclusive, and judgmental element in society. It seems as if rather than being the most secure people we are just the opposite. The mistake we make is in thinking that such privacy is harmless.

Because we have not yet dared to risk the necessary vulnerability of deep relationships, those who don't know Jesus are robbed of the opportunity to meet Him through a genuine relationship with us. Instead, we focus on sterile techniques that allow us to explain the Bible to the unchurched while never getting close enough for them to see our humanity. Indeed, we often protect ourselves even from those in the church who so desperately need to know they aren't the only ones who feel lonely.

When we hide our weaknesses, we offer a living testimony to the world that says, "God hasn't healed my insecurity, and He probably won't for you, either." Why would anyone want to have a deep relationship with that God? On the other hand, consider the courageous testimony of hope we would send if we dared to be open about our loneliness while the rest of the world stayed hidden?

Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, writes, "Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: 'Who can take away suffering without entering it?' "³

As we enter into relationship with others, we do not grieve as those who have no hope.⁴ Rather, in the midst of our loneliness we courageously point to Him who offers both hope and the promise of an end to every wound. As Nouwen puts it: "Perhaps the main task of the minister is to prevent people from suffering for the wrong reasons."⁵

While sharing and exchanging our vulnerabilities with those we seek to reach, we can also help them understand why loneliness is a universal experience. Our education of others springs naturally from deep relationships, as we echo the questions they didn't even know they had.⁶ Like Jesus on the road to Emmaus,⁷ we can then open the scriptures to them as a source of healing and self-understanding.

In this way the wounds of loneliness can actually serve a purpose. "The more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon-a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding."⁸

This new approach to witnessing bypasses the patronizing and often hypocritical techniques to which we've grown accustomed. Genuinely sharing ourselves (the good and the bad) can be a very natural form of outreach. It can also be the most risky-for in it we relinquish control of our vulnerability and wounds, trusting God for protection.

In Action
It's Friday evening now, and a most interesting thing has happened. A few hours ago a close friend of mine called for help on his sermon. A collection of Bible stories illustrating the need to meet with God daily, his sermon struck a chord of loneliness inside me. Nevertheless, my temptation was to dig deep into myself and offer him some insight that would help him. Fortunately, I was too weak from my extreme loneliness to offer much assistance.

So instead of playing God (the one with all the answers), I took a deep breath and told him about my week. I had talked to this same friend about four days before and had said very little about my state of mind. But tonight I decided to take a risk.

My prayer partner of many years had been left out of the loop when I needed his prayers the most! The relief I felt in now being understood was noticeable. My openness did not cure my loneliness; instead, I grew in hope.

Then I asked, "If I were in the audience for your sermon, how would this message speak to me?" We then had a great discussion about God's faithfulness in reaching out to us, even in our loneliness. He also shared some of his loneliness since the death of a family member. He agreed that it was vital to share his own loneliness in the sermon, lest his listeners think he was speaking as one who was already removed from the daily struggle of life.

As the conversation ended we had helped each other through a mutual sharing of our loneliness. The Bible describes it as bearing one another's burdens.⁹

Taking the Risk
If you're like me, admitting your loneliness won't come easy. In writing about loneliness, I didn't set out to use myself as an example. I was not yet willing to risk the vulnerability of loneliness. My first draft contained all kinds of advice, but not one personal experience!

The skeptic Nietzsche once wrote of Jesus, "His disciples will have to look more saved if I am to believe in their Savior." ¹⁰ When we hide our basic human struggles, it indicates that we are too scared to be vulnerable and have been saved from nothing. On the other hand, when we speak of our faith in Jesus while honestly admitting our loneliness, we carry a message of hope to the world.

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¹ Gen. 2:18.
² These concepts were taught to me primarily through Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952).
³ Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 72.
⁴ 1 Thess. 4:13.
⁵ Nouwen, p. 93.
⁶ Paul Tillich explains that "it [education] must make the pupil aware of the questions which he already has" ("A Theology of Education," Theology of Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 1959], p. 154).
⁷ Luke 24.
⁸ Nouwen, p. 84.
⁹ Gal. 6:2.
¹⁰ Philip Yancey, Disappointment With God (New York: Guideposts, 1988), p. 143.

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Adam Andreassen is a second-year student at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary and a pastor for the Texas Conference.