The Loneliness Epidemic: Why Modern Life is a Structural Trap (and How the Church Breaks It) 🛑🤝

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on doctor James Spencer, and I'm joined again by doctor Ben Matthews. Ben is a professor of counselor education at Columbia International University. And today we're going to continue our Faith and Mental Health series when we're going to specifically talk about the issue of loneliness and try to frame loneliness as a structural problem, not just a feeling. So the general idea is that we're setting ourselves up to be lonely as opposed to setting ourselves up to not be lonely.

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Speaker 3: Now, yeah, and this was punctuated not too long ago by the then Surgeon General. This was under he is either President Biden or Obama. I'm sorry I can't remember offhand, but he had mentioned how one of the largest concerns that we are noticing in America today is the epith what he called the epidemic of loneliness, because from that flows so many other realities as much as we need to talk about heart disease, we need to talk about diabetes, as much as we may need to talk about other medical issues that rightfully the Surgeon General will understandably engage with. What he was trying to highlight is that often behind is systematically involved in many of these other physiological mental health issues. Is this larger sociological issue, this loneliness epidemic, which is not just remember hearing him say, loneliness is not just being alone, not to confuse it with just like right now, quite technically physically I'm alone, like I have you on the screen. But loneliness is not just being alone. It's the absence of meaningful participation in life together. Right And so in some cases I can be by myself in a room but not be lonely if I have a shared sense of meaning. Or I can be in a room with a lot of other people physically there and be really lonely if there's no sense of shared meaning. Hence the necessity of why loneliness needs to be understood as an epidemic that actually fuels so many other both physiological as well as mental health issues in our nation and around the world. Today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, some of the I used to do some leadership coaching, and so some of the pastors that I would work with, they would express.

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Speaker 2: This idea of loneliness.

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Speaker 1: Now they weren't alone, to your point, they weren't physically alone. What they were expressing was the lack of anyone to again, to use your word, meaningly participate with, in part driven by this notion that the pastor needed to be above reproach, that the pastor needed to be there was a different standard for what the pastor was going through.

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Speaker 2: So you couldn't have.

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Speaker 1: Sort of what let's call it casual friendships within the church, right, and you couldn't have people you could just express a problem to, like, you know, you and I work at Christian institutions, But honestly, we could complain to each other about what's going on with those Christian institutions.

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Speaker 2: It wouldn't be a big deal, could you know.

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Speaker 1: I could complain to almost anybody about it because I'm not a pastor.

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Speaker 2: But when a pastor is.

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Speaker 1: Complaining about the church, there's a very real sense in which, wow, you're you're actually talking about me as your congregant, like I'm a part your problem. Like you know, and so there was this sort of weird dynamic that developed between the pastor and the congregation where the pastor probably in a mix of sort of self isolation, but also you know, people putting him up on a pedestal created a structural not a physical structure, but a real structural challenge for him where he couldn't bridge and be in community and meaningly participating community.

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Speaker 2: He was constantly.

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Speaker 1: Standing above it and eating it, but never part of it, but never really part of it. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, he was constantly solving problems, he was constantly being there for people, but he didn't have an outlet for him to be taken care of, for him to be nurtured.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's that fracture of relational existence, right. Yes, that I've said this both when I preach or when I teach. It can be some of the most loneliest things. And I remember either students are concruance saying like, how can you be lonely when you're preaching, You're you're in front of all those people. I said, that's part of the problem is that I'm with people, and it just exacerbates the fact that we're so apart that we're so distinct from each other, because yes, I do think there's times for that, but that's not where where growth happens in the most context. And I wonder to what degree and you would know this better, like to me, the the ontology of the Trinity really plays into a lot of this, the relational reality of the Godhead, that God is fully, wonderfully, beautifully sufficiently enjoying community within himself, and from that flows I think the desires of who we are as humans. The one thing that's not good before the fall is that man is alone, right, I gotta imagine this then kind of plays itself out into this fracturing, this loneliness that we feel when we're not we're not imaging the triying God in the ways that he experiences. And that's the hope that that's the reality of the fall. But the hope of what redemption brings is this recentering with the other in a way that again gets back to this greater truth of who God is in himself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you look back at those early chapters of Genesis, what you see is interdependence, and so man is intended to be dependent upon God This is part of what it means to be made in God's image, is that you can't be made in God's image and be independent of God. You're supposed to be reflecting him, and so it stands to reason that there has to be something to reflect. Now, there's a relationship there, right, And so that relationship flows where we are dependent on God and we're executing God's authority within the context of the earth. And then you get to that not alone passage, right, Well, what is that there's a deficiency in man? The man alone can't do what God has blessed all humankind to do, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. And so there's then a mutuality between the male and the female that is created there such that they're both necessary to advance what humankind is supposed to do. And so we have this and I don't want to boil it down to like a functional distinction, That's not what I'm trying to say. But there is a sense in which I love the way you put it, that participation in a shared meaning, right, a meaningful participation.

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Speaker 2: That's what's going on here.

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Speaker 1: There has to be this meaningful participation, and so we have to find those matches right where certain aspects of our lives we just need other folk around.

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Speaker 2: I think this is why you have this whole.

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Speaker 1: Narrative of God bringing the animals to Adam to name, and a lot of people talk about that as you know, Adam exercising his creativity or helping God to establish culture or what have you.

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Speaker 2: I actually don't think that's what's going on there. I actually think what's.

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Speaker 1: Going on is God is bringing them before the man so that the man understands that there is no match for him in the world. He's now seen everything, and as he sees everything, he's realizing that he really is alone. And now when he sees the woman, you see the celebration he has this is bone of my blown and flesh of my flesh. Right now, there's an immediate connection with this being that God has created to match the man. And so I think in those early chapters, what we really do deeply see is are interdependencies. And you could even talk about interpendencies with creation, you know. I think it often escapes people that man was put in the garden to till it and to keep it. A lot of people talk about that in terms of worship of God. But the pronouns are it.

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Speaker 2: It's to kill and keep.

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Speaker 1: The man is put in the garden for the sake of the garden, and the garden is now feeding the man.

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Speaker 2: The man is also caring for the garden. Yeah, there's this mutuality with all of it.

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Speaker 1: And I think that you know, again, in that context, extremely embodied, right, Like we're seeing that embodied there. But there's also a non physical structuring that's.

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Speaker 2: Happening right where we have God giving a.

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Speaker 1: Command to the man and to the extent that he obeys it, this world is going to function as it's intended to function, as God designed it, and so you have this sort.

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Speaker 2: Of symbolic element there as well.

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Speaker 1: But I do think that there's just a deep interdependence that we're supposed to be feeling with others.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, toward a meaningful end that tell us that we've talked about before, this is a deeply embodied.

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Speaker 1: Sense that we are participating in something and we don't really belong to ourselves.

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Speaker 2: We belong to everyone else.

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Speaker 3: And what a beautiful picture that is in Genesis two, which then creates the tension and drama of tragedy in three. Yes, if Adam and Eve are given the good work to both tend the garden and be blessed by the garden. You know, that first work of gardening, as it were. I was just talking about somebody about this last week. We were having this conversation about technology and the as the cultivating of God's creation for human flourishing is a good reason, and I think that's what he was doing there. He was engaging it in a human flourishing capacity as an image bearer of God in all the right ways and too. But then the first thing he does after the fall is he uses gardening in all the wrong ways. He takes fig leaves and he covers himself up. The very thing he was supposed to engage with as a means of human flourishing and worship of God, he now takes for inward protection isolation. And it leads not just to individualistic response. I'm now going to use this good work for myself, but it also creates a barrier. That part of the frustration, then is when God comes asking questions, what's going on here? Who told you you were naked? You know? Who told you this stuff? And the very thing that Adam celebrates in chapter two now woman of bone, of my bone, flesh, my flesh. He's now throwing her under the bus. Yeah, well, you know it was the woman you gave me that really caused all this problem. And you see all the good work they were supposed to do here. Now, can I say, James, in a lot of marriage counseling that I've done, this is one of the phrases that comes up a lot. How you have these two people in a marriage, sometimes in the same house, in the same bed, and sometimes one, if not both are just saying I am just so lonely, And sometimes one of the spouses may be like, what do you mean lonely? We live together, and you can just see the frustrations like then you obviously don't know what I mean by how I'm so lonely. That living in a shared space, while good, does not constitute shared meaning. Yeah, and I can be in the same bed with you and be incredibly alone. And that just harkens back to what our first parents were doing in response of using God's shared meaning of cultivating creation to now doing it just to care for myself and the struggles that we see even today. Like I said, even in marriage counseling, that I work with with a lot of my clients.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a hard thing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I I can think back to jobs I've had in the past where I knew in my mind that if one guy left the organization, I would feel completely alone.

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Speaker 3: I forgot. I have some guys like that in mind in my organizations too. Is right.

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Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I used to phrase it, and this probably wasn't the appropriate way to phrase it, but it's like he's the only other sane person here.

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Speaker 2: Like, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't.

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Speaker 1: Be here without this guy, right, And you just start to, you know, as you think about that and you contemplate how lonely you would be without that person.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, right, because you then you fall again.

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Speaker 1: We've mentioned for like that Elijah moment right where Elija is like I'm the only one.

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Speaker 2: I'm the only one doing this and is lonely.

00:14:59
Speaker 1: Man. God comforts him, But there there is still a sense that knowing that there are seven thousand people out there who haven't bowed the need to bail doesn't really help you that much because you don't know them. Yeah, it's like, I know there are other people out there engaged in discipleship. I know, like intuitively and intellectually I know that, right, and there is some some comfort in it. But there's a proximity issue, right that there has to be a proximity you know that that that you can't just know these other people are out there, some faceless human is out there doing something that you really care about and you're doing it actually with them, right. You kind of need somebody in proximity to you to remind you. It's like, oh no, there are other people out there and there's this person right right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And to the degree I mean we've seen this sociologically. You've referenced things like bowling alone and things like that, as well as as an indicator how those those communities, those clubs, those social gatherings. And I think the research that has kind of framed a lot of our discussions, highlighted particularly religious affiliation, yes and communal engagement, has this corollary effect that the more we kind of pull away from those realities because it is easier to do that, right. I mean, just earlier this morning, I ordered something on Amazon that'll be here today, So not only is it now just not two days, I can get it same day, and I don't have to go to Walmart, I don't have to go to AutoZone. I don't have to deal with actual live parking lots and waiting in lines and pulling up. It's just so much, so much less friction. Yeah, and yet the friction actually is what I need for sanctification, like need. I don't want it, but I need it in a way that actually helps me grow up in all the ways that I need. When it becomes a frictionless society, as we know is the goal for many, it creates a very lonely society and all the after effects of that.

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Speaker 2: I agree.

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Speaker 1: No, I mean I work from home, so I have a basement office. I'm basically there are days I don't go outside all day, right, I haven't been outside all day to day. And so I even have a home gym, Like I can just walk through my office door and be working out in like five seconds. Right, So I have a pretty self sustained, like you know, bomb shelter sort of a setup going.

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Speaker 3: I know where I'm going when they drop, just so you.

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Speaker 2: Know, like I just walked downstairs.

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Speaker 1: But I will say I I grew up my family never really stocked groceries. So I just got used to going to the store every day, and I try to go to the store every day.

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Speaker 2: I'll go out and buy whatever.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna eat for dinner tonight, right, just so that I have some sort of human interaction during the day that's not on camera. But actually, even if it's just in a checkout line, yeah, right, it's just it. The adays, I don't but I need it, you know, we don't. We don't watch church on Sundays, like we go to church on Sunday, those kind of things. We just do those kind of things. And so I think, you know, if I didn't have that, if I didn't have those touch points with actual other humans where I'm seeing them in the flesh, not in you know, on a screen, I would probably go a little nuts. But I would also be extremely lonely. Yeah, it's not fun just to sort of sit around and do productive work by yourself consistently only interacting with people through screens or phones or.

00:18:49
Speaker 2: What have you.

00:18:50
Speaker 1: Right, Like, there has to be some other connection there. And I think as we just think about that sort of not only the physical embodiment that needs to happen in order to curtail loneliness, but also that structural element that we kind of talked about with the lonely pastor where you know, you do get in these times where you just feel sort of you can be in the same room, in the same group with these other people, but you know that if you really told them what you were thinking, you would be alienated in some way.

00:19:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, or at least you think that.

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Speaker 1: I think those two pieces are really crucial for us to be thinking through when it comes to loneliness. I think some people probably have a paranoid delusion that if they shared who they really are, they're going to be shunned. And maybe that's not true, but I've been around enough to know that some of it actually is.

00:19:47
Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and some of that research that you know, again we're basing some of this discussion on highlight it again this you could have right belief, but when participation collapses, when when when loneliness increases, participation collapses that put it put it in belief alone is not enough. Belief is a good place to be. I mean, orthodoxy is important and we would celebrate that, but the research also highlighted that they may have all the right beliefs, but without an actual connection to others. That's intentional, that's that's relational, that's part of a rhythm. That those are buffers, those those are safeguards in both physiological health, mental health, all those realities of what goes into human flourishing in ways that I think again, because we are confessional, we as Christians are confessional people. We we we affirm the creeds and the orthodoxy and the truths we earnestly contend as it were, for the faith that's once delivered. So I'm especially in a post modern epistemology, we need to we need to be willing to recognize it's important to have truth, yes, and that just having truth can make you really loathly.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: Well, And I think to your point, there's I think we could make a heuristic distinction. I don't want to make a philosophical distinction that would take way too long, but a heuristic distinction between shared knowledge and shared understanding. So when we think about shared knowledge, you have the doctrines of the Church, Like I believe that Christ came to earth and became man. I believe in the incarnation. That could be a that's a shared knowledge that most Christians would have. Ye Now, what's the meaning of it? Not hypostatic union one hundred percent God one hundred.

00:21:48
Speaker 2: Percent man like. Yes, those are aspects of it, sure, but what's the meaning of it? Well, the meaning of it that we find in something like a Philippians too, is.

00:21:58
Speaker 1: That the incarnations serves as a paradigm for the way that we are to interact with one another. Now there's an understanding of that, a depth of understanding of that that influences the way the posture we adopt toward one another and the way.

00:22:12
Speaker 2: That we now interact.

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Speaker 1: And so we have to start moving from shared knowledge just having the same belief systems that other people have, to a shared understanding of how do these things work themselves out in practice and what does it entail for me and you to have these shared beliefs, and how does that influence them the way that we the way that we position ourselves in the world. It's not exactly the same as orthodoxy, orthopraxy right right belief right practice, it's not quite it. I think it's an in between stage where we sort of say, we don't always know what right practice is going to be, and so we need to orient ourselves toward it. And that I think is what I'm trying to get at with that shared understanding. It's a posture.

00:23:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's yeah, it's the orthopathy, that's right, hearts. And that's a shameless plug for CiU here, but it's actually it's actually been a lot of what we're discussing here in the School of Counseling. We want to give our students right information, right knowledge, not just theological but clinically. We want them to have good techniques. We want them to know how to do assessment, we want them to understand how to do that. But a big part that we're realizing that is, if not missing in most programs that we need to champion, is how do I help develop this to use your word, understanding that is more than just this, but it's deeply here. Yeah, right orthodoxy, yes, orthopraxy, Yes, orthopathy right heart. And again, I don't want to be your holy Spirit. I don't. That's way above my pay grade. That is not for me. But I do want to provide a construct a community that at least asks those questions, how is it moving from here into here in a way that affects there?

00:24:03
Speaker 2: Yes?

00:24:03
Speaker 3: That and you probably know this better than I do that even when I think of something like Philippines too, if I understand it, it was perhaps even a hymn in regards to the person and work of Christ. And whenever I think of hymns, I think about singing, and more often than not what Paul admonishes to sing with others. The whole point of taking that good theology of who Jesus is fully God and fully man. Yeah, you should make you sing man, like you should. You should be wanting to just share the joy of it, not just here, but like Lewis says, joy is incomplete until it is shared with another right When he talks about this in Surprise by Joy, he recognizes that the joy I experience internally is not fully fully felt, fully consummated until I can kind of like when I go out to dinner with my wife and I take a bite of something and I'm like, oh, my goodness, this was really good, and then I scoop some for her to eat. Right now, I could just give her information, but it's it's almost like I need for her to experience the joy, not just hear the joy coming from my mouth, but I want her to partake in it. Lewis calls this praise. Right, praise is the communal activity, and this is the shared meaning that I'm often trying to get at with both my clients, if not my local church myself. Is how do I find this greater joy that goes beyond just this? My marriage needs to have these elements as related to Gotman's study, Well, yeah, I guess that's true, but so much more than that the check mark the to do list of what constitutes a good marriage. What does it mean when Adam just responded out of pure joy, this now is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. That it wasn't just we're gonna do this work together, but we're going to do this work together. Right, This sense of communal context that then can engage in the work together. We need all elements of that to for today.

00:26:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean if you think about the way that that would actually combat loneliness, right, this this structured shared joy, not just shared mission.

00:26:23
Speaker 2: Like I'm all on board with shared mission. I think shared mission is great, right.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: Y awesome, great, But there's also a way to do shared mission in a very sort of militant, unjoyous fashion.

00:26:38
Speaker 2: Yes, where it becomes.

00:26:40
Speaker 1: Drudgery, you know, the worst sort of obligation, right right, I think I think obligation is an appropriate theological category. I think we have a lot of obligations, but there's also a drudging, you know, a drudgery to obligation if you let it become that where it's like, oh no, I have to do this, yeah right, That to me is not a theological obligation. That is a rote behavior modification strategy. Real, true biblical obligation involves more than just doing something and involves our whole selves. And so that to me is where we can connect in with joy, where a lot of these things that it's a shared zeal for as some one too talks about, you know we delight in the law of the Lord.

00:27:28
Speaker 2: Well, here we are. We're gonna delight in this.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: This isn't just something we do because God said so, and if we don't do it, we're going to get in trouble.

00:27:36
Speaker 2: Sure that factors in, but at the end of the day, we delight in it.

00:27:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the that's the state we're trying to get to. And I think that delight would be infectious and would draw people in who may feel lonely. But it's hard to feel lonely when when you're around people who are feeling deep joy that you.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: Can actually participate in.

00:27:58
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're about, you know, your wife giving her a spoonful of the food.

00:28:03
Speaker 2: Right.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: When we can help people participate in the joy we're feeling, that is the sort of guard against real loneliness.

00:28:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the invitation of the other into the joy you experience is a combatant against that loneliness factor that I think it was. It was now in his book on the Prodigal Son where he talks about that the tragedy of that story is that the older son was still outside the party. Yeah, thats as we often focus on the younger son and all his licentiousness, his bringing back into it. The heartbreak is that the story ends with the older son so insular. I never got a fat a calf? How come you never threw a party for me? And it ends with him outside. Yeah, that's the real tragedy is that we think we can kind of muster up our own, you know, pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I'll just get get it done, you know, mark off the to do list, and I'm doing everything right? Like why am I feeling this way? But that's part of it is because you think it's actually all about what you can do and the whole. I think Keller would highlight too, that the story is actually about the father. Are we willing to enter into the relationship with the father who has already done the work in a way that we can actually find joy and rest into? And I don't want to give this implication. I try to do this a lot with my clients. I don't want to give the implication that joy looks like this, that it has to be loud and explosive. I'm a kind of person, you know what I'm feeling. I'm terrible at poker because I can never bluff my way for anything. So my kids often claim, we know when dad's happy, and we know when dad's matt. I get that I'm a little bombastic. That's I don't want to give the impression that joy only looks one way, right, But the question does need to be asked, to what degree are we experiencing it that we can't help but want like the father, like come in the party, like you're missing out, dude, it's not worth stand out here it's and it's not about the party, it's about being together in the party that is really trying to be the antidote to the loneliness that is so plaguing our communities today.

00:30:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think part of it is, you know, in that story, what we see is the brother who is unwilling to even enter the party. Yet there's an orientation within him that just says, no, this is not this is not what I want, this is not what I'm going to accept.

00:30:39
Speaker 2: I'm not doing this.

00:30:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so's there's an individual sort of agency and responsibility that we have to take on to ourselves to enter into that joy. But then I think there's also a communal sort of notion where are we creating these spaces where where people could be invited in to chair It's it's the twofold thing. You know, If the father never throws the party, there's nothing for the son to declimb, and he's still stuck in the same place. Now, within the context of the story, there is a party, So the father's created this.

00:31:15
Speaker 2: Context and the sun declines.

00:31:18
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes we're in the opposite situation where the nobody's throwing the party.

00:31:23
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, and so.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: It's just a I think, you know, we we think about that on multiple levels and we start to recognize why. I think I would argue loneliness is in part a structural problem that we're just the way we are arranging our lives is conducive to loneliness.

00:31:46
Speaker 3: This is this is a natural outcome of the systems and structures we've developed.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: That's it.

00:31:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, just like you know, obesity seems to go along with fast food somehow, Yeah, right, Loneliness seems to come along with with some of the ways that we have set ourselves up. And I think there's a reorientation that needs to happen, of restructuring. And again the church is just crucial for that.

00:32:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And that's and that's why it's so acutely surprising for some people when they talk about the communities that they're part of, and I think they are, whether it's at work or family, maybe the local church, maybe it is a bowling league, And yet there's this growing angst of loneliness, right, because we're falling into all the other systems, all the other structures that we've created that give a false impression of connection, right, when I when I see how many likes I have here are when I see certain you know, views on a certain thing, I feel connected to certain degree. Yeah, and it feels like it's enough, but it painfully we have this gnawing suspicion it's not, and we're feeling it as a society and it's having all the corollaries that come with that. And that's why when I was thinking about how the Surgeon General talked about loneliness being the epidemic that is fueling and he has I mean the actual studies to kind of highlight that as well. As much as we look at all these other problems physiologically unpacking, it needs to be done also within a relational context that, yeah, we can provide really healthy food and good exercise regiments and maybe even medication manage it to help you know, heart disease yep. But if we don't deal with these other relational constructs, we're just making really healthy people who die alone. That's that's not really flourishing.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: No, And I'll say, I mean kind of close this out.

00:33:50
Speaker 1: I'll close with the death of Despair article that sort of inspired the direction we took this. But if you look at that what's happened, Well, the repealing of the Blue State laws and the opening up of retail on a Sunday.

00:34:06
Speaker 2: Gives people a choice.

00:34:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a structural shift, and that structural shift allows people to now choose to step away from religious institutions that were, even unbeknownst to them, doing something good for them. And as they step away from those things, then we see this correlative sort of movement of deaths of despair.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: It's a structural issue. Now does that mean.

00:34:37
Speaker 1: That we can just go back and put the Blue State loss back in place and.

00:34:43
Speaker 3: Finished?

00:34:44
Speaker 2: No shot, right, There's no going back, not at this point.

00:34:49
Speaker 1: But I do think that it's important for us to recognize that's a structural problem that was created, and it's then human agency that chooses to step away from some of these things, not realizing I think in many cases how important it actually was to be within these religious communities. And that I think is my biggest concern with technology as well, is that we have no clue what this is going to do to us.

00:35:22
Speaker 2: And so we need to step carefully.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: I'm not an anti technology guy at all, but at the same time, I think we have to have a pretty good grasp on what it means to be human in the first place, so that we can be aware when we're using technology, when we start to feel like, oh wait, I'm giving up too much.

00:35:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the reality is, like you said, we're just now in terms of social science, we're just now starting to scratch an understanding of the effects, yes, of what prolonged engagement, both technologically physical as well as social media is having on us as a as a culture. The reports on the front end are not the greatest in terms of that, and I agree with you. I don't think the answer is to take all my devices and just you know, start throwing them into the river. But but woe to us we don't tread lightly. And more so, how do we build other systems that not just counteract it, but actually give us flourishing, give us. To me as a Christian, it's not just enough to say what's wrong? What we need to break down? And we do. We do need to deconstruct in some ways that I think is healthy. And how do we actually get back to some my opinion, ancient truths that continue to have meaning for us today in ways that actually build us in all the things that are deficient in our realities as well. To me, that's the the both and we're pushing towards.

00:36:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's a good place to sort of end, because I think our next episode is going to be.

00:36:57
Speaker 2: The search for relief.

00:37:00
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that we can constructively do in order to move past where we are now or to bear faithful witness in this moment? And I don't think like you, I don't believe it involves throwing my devices in the river, right. I think it means that we don't need to change our situation in order to bear faithful.

00:37:19
Speaker 2: Witness to the Lord.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: I think that's what First Corinthians seven kind of Paul is conveying there. Yeah, we don't have to change our situation. We can still do this. We just have to be reflective and thoughtful and really wise about the way we do it. Yeah, And so yeah, as we jump into this next next episode, Ben, thanks again for being here, Thanks everybody for listening, and come back from the next episode of Thinking Christian, where we'll be talking a little bit about the Search for Relief. Take care, everybody. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.