Long before the pandemic forced us into isolation and onto Zoom, we were gleefully aware that we could be in touch — and in view — of anyone, anywhere, at any time. We relished the thought that this was new, a marvel no one could have dreamed of just 30 years ago.
We are less restrained by the boundaries of space and time than any people have ever been, and yet this newfound freedom hasn’t made us happier or given us any deeper sense of satisfaction. In fact, “The technological wizardry and individual empowerment have unsettled all facets of life,” says Wilfred McClay, a University of Oklahoma history professor. They’ve sparked “profound feelings of disquiet and insecurity in many Americans, especially the young, who have never known anything different.”
We have so much more, McClay writes, but it feels like less. Something’s missing, something that’s essential to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. We’re more connected, and yet so many of us feel like we just don’t belong.
And the fact is, we don’t. A recent survey conducted by Cigna, the health insurer, reported that 54% of respondents feel like no one actually knows them well; 56% said the people they spend time with “are not necessarily with them,” and 40% said they “lack companionship,” that their “relationships aren’t meaningful,” and they feel “isolated from others.”
That’s not healthy for people or society.
People and Places That Shape Us
We all need a place to hang out with others, says Eric Jacobsen in his book “Three Pieces of Glass.” It’s the way we’re made. We need acquaintances, casual friends, and a couple of close confidants. That’s why, Jacobsen argues, the Bible encourages “civic friendships.” He points out that when the Jews were exiled to Babylon the prophet Jeremiah provided them with a blueprint for living in such circumstances. Jeremiah 29:1-10 is a plan for seeking shalom, Jacobsen says — a strategy “to experience the fullness of God’s intent for human existence” — which, from the moment of Adam’s creation, has required a deep sense of belonging. From Genesis to Revelation we see that people need to fit in “with a particular place, particular group of people, and/or the ethos or narrative of a place,” Jacobsen writes.
But things in Babylon didn’t look promising. It wasn’t home; it wasn’t where the exiles belonged or where they wanted to be. And since they weren’t about to renew or transform the dominant culture, shalom — finding that critical sense of belonging — would come incrementally, with small changes in their circumstances and attitudes.
The exile shows that there’s more to belonging than one-on-one relationships, Jacobsen tells us. We also need to live in a place that encourages healthy connections; a place that becomes the setting for the stories we create, remember, and share; a place and a people that shape us and make us who we are.
Jacobsen tells the story of Marina Keegan, a Yale student who in 2012 published an article called “The Opposite of Loneliness.” There’s no one word for that, Keegan lamented, but if there were, “I could say that’s what I want in life.” It’s not quite love and not quite community, she mused, “It’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s 4 a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.”
Marina longed for relationships (love, community, people), new experiences in physical places (at the table, no one goes to bed), and memories that she and her friends could bask in for a lifetime (“we did, we went, we saw. … The hats.”).
“I think Marina understood her taste of belonging among her friends was a foretaste,” Jacobsen writes. “That’s what I want,” she said, not “that’s what I have.” Maybe, Jacobsen says, if the church were a sign and instrument of belonging, Keegan might have been drawn to something like that.
No doubt others would have too, because disconnected people rarely share that contenting sense of togetherness. They don’t know what it’s like to be of one mind and one spirit with kindred souls. Apart from being Braves fans or Republicans or dog lovers, they don’t know what it’s like to belong; to be warmed by the tales we’ve told a hundred times.
Wounded People Produce a Damaged Culture
This lack of belonging wounds millions of Americans and leaves us all in a diminished society. Perhaps that’s why, in part, we can’t mend our torn culture. It could be why we rail against racism but are at a loss for how to fix it; why our fights about climate change and socialism and capitalism tear us apart instead of drawing us together.
Our limits reveal our God-given aptitude for creating neighborhoods, cities, small businesses, baseball leagues, schools, churches, and libraries. They show us the purpose and beauty of working side by side with neighbors.
It’s surely what’s behind Damon Linker’s observation that there’s “a refusal on the part of lots of Americans to think in terms of the social whole — of what’s best for the community, of the common or public good.” Each of us, says Linker, a writer for The Week, “thinks we know what’s best for ourselves.”
The New York Times columnist David Brooks adds that “this individualism, atomism, and selfishness is downstream from a deeper crisis of legitimacy. A lot of people look around at the conditions of this country — how Black Americans are treated, how communities are collapsing, how Washington doesn’t work — and none of it makes sense. None of it inspires faith, confidence. In none of it do they feel a part (emphasis added).
“If you don’t breathe the spirit of the nation, if you don’t have a fierce sense of belonging to each other, you’re not going to sacrifice for the common good” (emphasis added).
Nor will you know where to go with your grievances. With no sense of belonging we’re left to vent our frustrations through cultural symbols, such as language, where, instead of working problems through, we simply forbid certain words and ideas; where we push communities to name and rename buildings with wary caution.
Because so many lead solitary lives, there’s no forum or felt need for conversation and compromise, leaving us with no better option than to “cancel” those who offend us. If a piece of art is distasteful, remove it. If the artist holds a distasteful view, ban his work. If an employee or employer has ever held an opinion that is now censured — and expressed it on social media — they’ve got to go. Just last June, a Boeing executive “retired” after someone complained about an article he wrote 33 years ago opposing women in combat.
Because we don’t talk, we “de-platform” those who fail to fall in line; it’s simpler to banish anyone who’s at odds with current cultural fashion.
And we pay for it. Lance Morrow, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “The most tragic impediment to honest conversation about race in America is fear — an entirely realistic fear of being slain by the cancel culture. This fear to speak is a civic catastrophe and an affront to the Constitution. In induces silent rage in the silenced. It is impossible to exaggerate the corrupting effect that the terror of being called a ‘racist’ — even a whiff of the toxin, the slightest hint, the ghost of an imputation — has on freedom of discussion and the honest workings of the American mind.”
These observations from Linker, Brooks, and Morrow beg the questions: Do such tactics work? Do they solve deep-rooted problems? Do they lead to wiser policies? Or do they make change harder?
In Brooks’ view, these ploys aren’t solutions; they’re one more symptom of the challenge. “We’ve turned politics from a practical way to solve common problems into a cultural arena to display resentments,” he says. That’s because politics is relational. It depends on flesh-and-blood neighbors discussing the life and character of a particular place at a given time for the common good.
In our era of livestreams, Twitter, and the amassing of distant Facebook friends, we’ve lost — not gained — the wherewithal to address hard issues. Because more people have fewer friends and looser ties, many reimagine themselves as citizens of the world or as the brother or sister to all mankind. But such a life is not only unlivable, says Mark Mitchell, a Patrick Henry College political theory professor, it’s unnatural. It’s a life perpetually lived in the abstract, a life that’s prone to get caught up in one grand and distant cause after another — from the People’s Climate March (2014) to the March for Science (2017) to the Women’s Marches of 2018 to the upheavals of today. It may feel good — even righteous — to demonstrate for this cause and then that one, but such “cultural cosmopolitanism” as Mitchell calls it, is costly. It draws attention away from the problems before us; it cheats us out of the rewards that come with focused commitment and the satisfaction of working with others to see a problem through.
Our sense of belonging — by God’s design — is meant to coincide with the capacity of our love.
Strength in Our God-given Limits
We weren’t made to live in isolation or to be citizens of the world. When God made us in His image, He created finite creatures. We exist in one place where we experience life hour by hour and day by day. These constraints aren’t “bugs” we struggle to overcome, says theologian Joe Rigney; they’re features designed according to God’s infinite wisdom for His glory and our joy. Not once have His plans for the world been thwarted by our limitations, Rigney argues, nor has God ever been frustrated by our finitude. “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and it’s more than OK; our limits are integral to creation’s glory. They don’t inhibit us; they empower us. They reveal our God-given aptitude for creating neighborhoods, towns and cities, small businesses, baseball leagues, schools, churches, and libraries. They show us the purpose and beauty of working side by side with neighbors. Our limits are how we carve out our niche in the church, community, and in God’s ongoing story for creation.
They also bring us face to face with the reality that we, personally, can’t battle nationwide racism. We can’t have any appreciable effect on global climate change. Such problems are too big, too distant, and long past our capacity to fix them. So we adjust our perspective. We may be limited, but we’re also made “according to the scale designed for human flourishing,” Mitchell says. We, with our neighbors, are fully capable of doing what’s needed for creation to thrive and for each of us to find satisfaction.
It follows that if we’re to build communities, we must be bonded to a particular group of fallen people. If we’re to achieve anything that resembles Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community,” then all God’s people must get tangled up with real-life neighbors and the institutions and ideas that affect them. We’ve got to elbow our way into the conversations and compromises that shape the character of the community we share.
That, says Mitchell, is because our sense of belonging is meant to coincide with the capacity of our love. Think about it like this: If we don’t live in Minneapolis, we don’t have much of an emotional attachment to it. We may feel strongly about race relations and police conduct, but we’re not likely to visit Minneapolis to soothe that city’s pain. It wouldn’t occur to us to leave our families and businesses to come alongside Minneapolis store owners to help rebuild their businesses. None of us will play a part in that city’s racial reconciliation. And we’re not supposed to. Because our sense of belonging corresponds to the limits of our love. And we can’t love Minneapolis the way we love our own city.
For Bryan Stevenson, author of “Just Mercy” and subject of the movie by the same name, “proximity” matters most. Proximity, Stevenson says, is “where we find power.” If we care about justice, we must get closer to the neighborhoods and the people afflicted by poverty, abuse, violence, and despair, he says. “You’ve got to be willing to get closer to where there’s inequality.”
Such problems, he says, can’t be solved from a distance. “I believe you’ve got to get proximate.”
For perspective, contrast the philosophical difference between kneeling for the National Anthem with the protests of the Civil Rights era. Rosa Parks challenged an unjust law on her bus, in her city. Neighbors, stirred by the seamstress’s courage and roused by the leadership of a local pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., launched a boycott of city buses. For 381 days the entire Black population of Montgomery walked and carpooled. Together, they pursued justice — not in the abstract — but from Montgomery Bus Lines and the Montgomery city council.
Or, consider the influence of four Black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. On February 1, 1960, these young men took seats at Woolworth’s “white only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Though refused service, the young men stayed until closing time. They returned the next day. And the day after that. On day four, more than 300 of their neighbors packed the small diner. Five months later Woolworth’s changed the protested policy.
In both cases, “powerless” protesters were connected to one another and to their particular place at a critical time. They changed hearts, minds, and laws one city at a time. Because they were proximate.
That’s how we’re made — for proximity — and to work in and through the relationships that come with it. Despite a multitude of Facebook friends and faithful Twitter followers, most of us still see ourselves in terms of personal relationships: We’re Susie’s husband, John’s wife, Steve’s mom, and Bill’s dad. We’re neighbors to the Smiths next door.
These relationships define us and our responsibilities. They affirm the truth that we can’t live virtuous lives in the abstract. That it’s not enough to be against racism in general. Or to fight the concept of poverty. We can’t do good or be good when we’re detached from the people we see, talk to, live beside, and wave to at the grocery store. And from those we choose to avoid.
G.K. Chesterton, the 20th century Christian writer, illustrated the point nicely, explaining that artists do their best work when they set boundaries: “Art consists of limitation,” he said. “The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.” The same holds true for civic life and community-making. The art of transforming shapeless space into a place where people might thrive is the art of setting boundaries and creating within them.
Our limitations are God’s way of saying you’ve only got so much time, so much energy, so much knowledge, a spiritual gift or two, and the particular place where I called you. Take what you’ve been given, care for the places and institutions you’ve inherited, and pass them on in better shape than you found them.
Christ himself sets the example. Katelyn Beaty, writing in Christianity Today, noted, “The Incarnation is one of the most radical dimensions of Christianity because it attests to a God who stoops down to the world of limitations. The ruler of the universe, in Christ, binds himself to a particular time and place, to specific people and circumstances, and ultimately, to the weariness and vulnerability of human flesh.” In Christ, God Himself took on the constraints of being human, and He didn’t view it as an obstacle. It was part of the plan, the very purpose of His coming.
By God’s design, we are embodied creatures. In His providence, we occupy our current place at this particular time, and that’s what dictates our responsibilities — socially, spiritually, economically, educationally, and professionally. We gladly accept our constraints, Rigney says, knowing that God delights in revealing His power in our weakness.
Politics That Pulls Us Together
That holds true in politics, too.
Thankfully, we live in unique communities, and it’s local politics — the city commission, county commission, school board, housing authority, and transit authority — that give each city its special charm. And it’s that charm that binds us to it. We “love the particular, the eccentric, the known in ways that no generic expression of a town can produce,” says Ted McAllister, a Pepperdine University associate professor of public policy.
Such engagement is possible, says Peter Wehner, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, because in our communities we’re free to experiment. We can tailor solutions to our problems in our neighborhoods and our cities. Policymaking isn’t the province of faceless bureaucrats. It’s no longer impersonal. Nor is the process mediated through tribe-focused cable news. In our communities, we work with complex, fully dimensional people — with Bob and Linda, who on Fox News might be grouped together with crazy leftists; with Sue and Jerry, who on CNN might be written off as Christian fanatics. At city hall and the PTA, we deal with people, not caricatures. And together, we strive to create peace and prosperity for everyone.
Local politics draws people out of their “partisan silos,” Wehner says. It pulls citizens together — allies and adversaries — and helps forge human connection. It’s where we interact with folks we’ll get to know by name, who shop in the same stores and eat in the same restaurants. We — personally and as local congregations — transform race relations, care for the environment, and tend to the local economy.
National politics, of course, is important. There are crucial problems only the federal government can solve. We have a responsibility to be informed and vote wisely. But for all the emotion we invest in presidential elections — the anger, resentment, and bitterness — we rarely see a healthy or profitable return.
There doesn’t seem to be much we can do to change politics in Washington, D.C., Wehner writes, “But you’re not powerless to change politics where you live … in any of the 3,000 counties and 20,000 cities across America. You’re not powerless to serve the people in your neighborhood — to become exposed to their worlds, to listen to their perspectives, to learn from their experiences, and to lend a healing hand. You’re not powerless to model civility, temperance, humility, tolerance, honesty, compassion, decency, and grace in your home life and at work, in your relationships with your spouse and children, at the board meeting, and the dinner table.”
If we seek the peace of our nation, then each of us must seek the peace of our community. We must write ourselves into its story, shaping and improving schools, libraries, businesses, museums, restaurants, and government — cultivating a biblical vision for what life together looks like.
It’s in our interests to do so. Because it’s only when the community achieves shalom, that we do too.
Richard Doster is the editor of byFaith.
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