Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
August 2007
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
One of the most affecting lines I have ever read appeared, of all places, in the New York Times of 20 May 2007. A man called Richard Guthrie received a number of those irritating phone calls from telemarketers, who then sold his name to con artists. What was extraordinary was Guthrie’s attitude to the telemarketers, and what this led to. Guthrie explained: ‘I loved getting those calls. Since my wife passed away, I don’t have many people to talk with. I didn’t even know they were stealing from me until everything was gone.’ Advances in telecommunications have not led to advances in any sense of community or a reduction in the number of lonely people. No wonder the Beatles sang in Eleanor Rigby of all the lonely people, and no wonder Paul Tournier referred to loneliness as ‘the most devastating malady of this age’.
Poor Richard Guthrie illustrates the truth that for most people ‘it is not good that man should be alone’ (Gen.2:18). Hence we also read that it is God who settles the solitary in a home (Ps.68:6). Being with the wrong company can deceive us and ruin our morals (1 Cor.15:32), but being alone – even being alone in a crowd – can be a devastating experience. Friendship is one of the consolations of this vain world: ‘Two are better than one … for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!’ (Eccles.4:9-10) A friendship betrayed is a particularly hurtful experience (Ps.41:9). It is natural to look for comforters, and devastating when there are none (Ps.69:20).
Jeremiah writes of the isolation that can come from being a child of God in a sinful and rebellious world: ‘I did not sit in the company of revelers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone, because Your hand was upon me, for You had filled me with indignation’ (Jer.15:17). The story of Athanasius is often recounted in terms of Athanasius contra mundum – ‘Athanasius against the world’. To believe as Athanasius did, that Christ alone is the divine Saviour, when even the religious world is obsessed with compromise, was and is a lonely business. Then, as now, the world is surprised when Christians do not join it in debauchery, and it maligns them (1 Pet.4:4).
Christians are not made of cast iron, and the apostle Paul himself, when imprisoned and awaiting execution, felt his vulnerability as a human being. His second letter to Timothy contains the poignant request: ‘Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me’ (2 Tim.4:9-11a). On the night before His crucifixion, even the Lord Jesus Christ looked upon His disciples with deep affection as ‘those who have stayed with Me in My trials’ (Luke 22:28). They failed to measure up as friends as three times they fell asleep when He had asked them to watch and pray (Matt.26:36-46). In His humanity, our Lord craved human company as He prepared for the next day when He would be forsaken by God and man.
Paul and even Jesus longed for company in their trials. Paul notes that at his first defence no one came to stand by him, then he adds: ‘But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me’ (see 2 Tim.4:16-17). Christ too commented: ‘Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave Me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with Me’ (John 16:32). Lesser mortals, exemplified by the Puritan, Thomas Brooks, have experienced something similar: ‘Though my comfort is gone, yet the God of my comfort abides.’
This is a fallen, fractured, and alienated world. We are not what we were created to be, and this affects all relationships. In the present expression of the new creation, there should, however, be some substantial healing of that sense of alienation. The Christian is restored to a right relationship with God and with his fellow Christians. He is, says Paul, ‘one new man in place of the two’ (Eph.2:15).Before there was the old Jew-Gentile hostility, but in Christ that is transformed. The new community in Christ is to be where there is compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and forgiveness (Col.3:12-13). As Dick Lucas comments: ‘it is God’s purpose that in the local church should be seen a glimpse of the new man’.
In Christ and with His people, the effects of the Fall will remain, but there is also healing and blessing in this broken world. Grace leads to brothers dwelling together in unity (Ps.133:1). It is true, as Bonhoeffer put it: ‘Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.’ The Pharisees thought they were righteous before God and so despised others (Luke 18:9); the Christian stands on grace alone and so seeks to serve others.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes