Acts 2:40-42
Together in Australia
One of my most memorable moments while visiting Australia almost four years ago, was the experience of family and togetherness. For five days, we stayed at our Pakistani friend’s home, the Yousef’s, who now live in Brisbane. We were treated like royalty. They were so good to us. Every day we ate Pakistani food and laughed together like we had known each other and been together our whole lives. It soon became apparent that their political and religious views had become very different than ours—but that didn’t matter. It was a place of belonging and togetherness for us because our differences did not keep us or break us apart but deepened our conversations to a place we never expected.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, says that humans are born good and concerned with the welfare of others. Like Rousseau and I suspect most of you, I truly believe that people are good. That belief shapes my theology and understanding of the world around me. It compels me to always look for the good will in people instead of assuming their ill intent. At the same time, I agree that it has become more and more difficult to come together in an increasingly binary world of good vs. evil of them vs. us of individualism vs. collectivism.
A Lonely World
The truth is that we live in a world where loneliness and individualism is one of the fastest growing mental health concerns. The Nineteenth Surgeon General of the United States and the current nominee for the same position, Vivek Murthy found that one of the most common underlying themes of adverse health is loneliness. In fact, Murthy wrote a book entitled: “Together – The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. The book was used in one of our book groups last month. The book seeks to explain why building a more connected world holds the key to solving many medical and societal and political issues. And as Murthy argues throughout, we are already equipped with the antidote: our universal condition for human connection.
Many people think that loneliness won’t kill you but the research is profound: loneliness is a greater predictor of early death than smoking, obesity and excessive drinking—loneliness can absolutely kill you. One significant study by Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that people with strong social relationships were 50% less likely to die prematurely than people with weak social relationships.
The causes of this loneliness are all around us—social media makes us believe that we have lots of friends and “belong” when it often serves to make us more isolated and has been linked with higher rates of loneliness. Our divisive politics forces us to sort ourselves by ideology into bunkers. We create “barricades of belief” to shelter us from those who do not think like us. Brene Brown refers to this as “common enemy intimacy: “I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you but I am glad you hate those people as well.” But this is not togetherness and only serves to deepen the divide and isolate us even more.
Circles of Connection
The first step to overcoming this trend toward loneliness and isolation in our world is to accept that human connection is as important as food and water. Murthy highlights three circles of connection that we need to be mindful of and work to build:
- #1: Our Inner Circle: Close Friends and Confidantes. I suspect that most of us have a strong inner circle. A well-known longitudinal study from Harvard that has run for more than 80 years found that inner-circle relationships were better predictors of health and happiness than IQ, wealth or social class.
- #2: Our Middle Circle: Occasional Companions. Middle-circle friends protect against relational loneliness. According to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the middle circle gives us a sense of otherness and an appreciation for diversity. We can develop our middle circles by gathering for common interests and building partnerships. Interestingly, according to the research, “laughter” seems to produce more satisfying social bonds than group activities like creative writing. In other words, we need to help people laugh more. It builds connections. Maybe we should be Presbyteriand and develop a “laughter” committee? What do you think?
- #3: Our Outer Circle: Colleagues and Acquaintances. Shared purpose and interests help to stave off collective loneliness and develop a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. Dunbar suggests that the role of social connection in work has important performance and political implications. Friends at work increase our “relational energy”, first having a positive emotional effect and then firing up our cognitive engagement.
So who are those in your circle of connections—your inner circle—your middle circle—your outer circle? The research clearly shows that the absence or deficit of any of those circles of connection will have negative consequences. This means that if we at Southminster want to forge a sense of togetherness in our community and in our world, we will need to strengthen and expand these circles of connection for each other and our community.
Compassionate Togetherness
Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, writes, “It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads to unconditional compassion for others… Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
There was a study several years back conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary. Students studying to be ministers were asked to reflect on the Good Samaritan parable and then give a short speech about it. These ministry students at Princeton were being set up for an experiment they didn’t know was taking place. The students were sent rushing from one building on campus to another to give their prepared speech about this parable on mercy. Unbeknownst to them, they were set up to pass an injured person in need of help along the way, and the researchers were curious to find out how many of them would actually stop and help.
Believe it or not—few of the students actually stopped and helped the injured person. Think about that for a minute. On their way to share their theological reflection on this biblical story of helping others, most of these future ministers walked right past someone in need. In fact, one of them even stepped over the man.
How often do we do that? Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we can get so caught up in what we feel we need to do in the moment, we tunnel our vision so finely that we miss the hurting man lying in the street. We miss the need that is right in front of us. We become blinded by our own existing circles of connection and lose touch with our shared humanity.
Togetherness is a Call to Believe Again
My pakistani friends in Australia are a part of my Middle-Circle and have given me not only a sense of connection to the global world but deepened my sense of responsibility to humanity. Vivek Murthy asks: “What is humanity, really, but a family of families?”
I want to believe that. I want to believe that the world is not so binary. I want to believe that all people are good—we are all just striving to be connected—as much as we are striving to be fed and hydrated. I want to believe that life is not just a battle between good and evil, between the rich and poor—between the liberals and conservatives—in which we need to arm ourselves. I want to believe that our common circles of connection is our power to change this world.
Togetherness is a call to believe again—even in a world of increasing isolation and loneliness. It is a call to build connections and help others build their connections, to come together in spite of our differences—to live into the image of the biblical community in the book of Acts—to be a family of families.
A-men.