June 15, 2025 • 30 mins
In a world more connected than ever before, we're paradoxically facing a global loneliness epidemic. Dr. Jake Thurston, lead pastor and author of "You Need Friends," joins host Rodney Olsen to explore how we've lost the art of meaningful connection and what we can do to reclaim it. From the architectural changes that replaced front porches with garages to the rise of tribalism and social media's hollow promises of connection, Jake reveals the complex factors contributing to our isolation.
Drawing from his decade of research and the ancient Christian practice of spiritual friendship, Jake offers practical solutions for building the deep, vulnerable relationships our souls crave. He discusses how the decline of faith communities, our fear of vulnerability, and our individualistic culture have left us surrounded by people yet profoundly alone. This conversation provides hope and actionable steps for anyone longing to move from surface-level interactions to life-changing spiritual friendships that can transform both our mental health and our relationship with God.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Dozens more Bleeding Daylight episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
By sharing this and other episodes through word of mouth or social media, you'll ensure that others are hearing stories of hope too.
(00:37):
In a world that has more opportunity for connections than ever before, we're facing a global loneliness crisis.
How do we begin the journey out of loneliness towards thriving relationships?
Today's guest has been asking the questions and has found many of the answers.
(01:03):
Joining me today is Dr. Jake Thurston, a passionate advocate for spiritual friendship and community, who has made it his personal mission to help people overcome loneliness.
Jake is a lead pastor whose church serves a large number of college students and young adults.
His newly released book, You Need Friends, Reclaim Your God-Given Design for Community and Remedy Your Loneliness for Good, draws from his decade of research on how God designed us for meaningful connection.
(01:34):
I'm so pleased to have him here today.
Jake, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thanks so much, Rodney.
It's great to be here.
Now, the fact that we need each other to get through life should be self-evident, yet we're facing an epidemic of loneliness.
Where do you think it all started to go wrong?
Oh, my goodness.
I think there's so many factors.
(01:56):
In some instances, you start seeing the manufacturing and structure of homes shifting after World War II.
The front porch that used to be a social icon for many societies where neighbors would be able to interact with each other before and after work.
That's just where you gathered all the time with your neighbors on the front porch.
Well, now what's been replaced by the front porch is a large garage that's on the front for your individualized transportation.
(02:22):
And now the entertainment goes into the backyard with a picket fence so you can't even talk to your neighbors.
Literally, you can arrive at your home now and not even speak to the people you live beside.
Even that little change in how our homes are designed all the way through.
I mean, you flash forward to today through social media and just the constant drive for like we have to be entertained all the time and we don't want to talk to strangers.
(02:45):
So what do we do?
We can just whip out our phones to keep us entertained.
Whereas before you had to talk to the people who are standing in line with you.
It's been such a gradual thing, but I feel like it's really ramped up here over the last decade or so.
This is another thing and I don't have full evidence of it, but I think the decline of faith and religion across the board too, I think is also a big piece.
I don't think it's a coincidence that you're seeing the decline of Christianity in the West with an increase in loneliness as well.
(03:11):
Because a lot of people have always found their communities in spiritual faith communities.
It's a very unique part of that.
But the question then is are those who are leaving replacing it are finding similar depth of friendships too.
So there's a wild force of things that are really driving our loneliness from rampant individualism to our digital age.
I saw some research some time back that said that many years ago, as you've mentioned there, the center of community in a town or in a city would be the church.
(03:40):
And that's where people would most find their sense of community, their sense of belonging.
Stunningly, it said that people now find that sense of community at a big shopping center or a big shopping mall.
And that to me is frightening because most of the time when we go to a shopping mall or shopping center, we're not actually interacting with people.
(04:01):
We're surrounded by people, but have no connection to them.
Is that something that you've discovered as you've looked into it, that we can be surrounded by people, but we're not forming any connection?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
When I was doing my doctoral research, one of the things that came up is sometimes the loneliest people can feel are in crowds.
(04:21):
On one hand, depending on the public space that you're in, you know, maybe it's your favorite mall, maybe it's your favorite restaurant or something.
You go there for the connection that everyone is there for the same place.
That's called the public space of belonging.
I don't know anyone here, but I know we're here for the same reason.
OK, well, that might work well for some people, but you're connecting over just this honestly kind of surface level thing and you don't know anything else about them.
(04:48):
And so you might have some people who immerse themselves in those public spaces.
But a lot of times loneliness isn't just this image in our minds of someone just being friendless of having nobody they connect with.
I literally have no friends ever at all.
And that certainly is a severe case of loneliness.
But really, loneliness at the end of the day is a lack of connection.
(05:10):
You can be in a crowd surrounded by people, but if you don't have a connection with them, you're not seen by them, you're not known by them.
It actually proliferates that feeling because you'd almost rather be by yourself where you do confidently know yourself versus being surrounded by all these people who know nothing about me.
Or even if you do have a group of friends that you hang out with or connect with, whether those are coworkers, roommates, you name it.
You can still feel lonely because you're afraid to share the deepest parts of yourself with them.
(05:34):
You hang out, you go to the bar, you have all these activities, you share life together, but you never share the deep parts of yourself, your deep struggles, and you're not seen, you're not known.
That can actually proliferate feelings of loneliness as well.
How about this growing sense of tribalism that we see where in the past we had the opportunity to sit down with people who had different points of view to us and we could discuss that civilly and still in the conversation, shaking hands and going off and being friends.
(06:02):
It seems more and more that we are divided down thought lines, political lines, a whole range of different lines that we decide to part company on and we're seeking someone who has exactly the same ideas as us rather than in the past where we were more open to the person sitting next to us having a different point of view.
(06:25):
Yes, I actually talk a bit about tribalism in chapter three, and I think that's just evident of our increasing individualistic cultures that we live in because the thing about tribalism is that they're entirely designed to keep you safe and to find people who specifically align with everything you believe in and that you want to have affirmed about your life.
People in tribalistic groups tend to not tell you the hard things.
(06:51):
They're the complete opposite of community because they're not people you submit to, and they're not people who have been given the right to speak into your life and call you out of your shortcomings.
Again, the whole idea of tribalism is to continually affirm what you believe and to not challenge it and actually the people we're going to challenge and push back on are all the people who do disagree with us, right?
(07:11):
So you have no chance for growth, no chance for being expounded and perhaps being told that you're wrong.
One of the best books on tribalism and just kind of the general political climate right now why people are the way they are is called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Heights.
Blew my mind.
Completely changed my perspective of how these groups work because essentially what he's saying is the reason why we identify with people like that is all because of fear.
(07:36):
Our brains are hardwired and you got to get around people who are going to protect you and to affirm what you believe in because it's all about survival instincts at the end of the day.
And so the more and more we bulk up this image that the others are enemies, therefore they should be feared.
Therefore, we're going to surround ourselves with our people, our armies basically to protect us and therefore have more ammunition to fight against those who disagree.
(08:01):
That just completely kills any opportunity to befriend those who are different from us.
(08:41):
Mm hmm.
Hundred percent.
Absolutely.
(09:21):
There are exceptions to the rule that typically people don't post on social media.
I'm just having the worst day of my life right now.
Or sometimes actually they might be more prone to reach out about the worst days of their life or, you know, prayer or support or something.
But it's still just like, man, today's been really sucky and all this is going wrong.
And here's the other thing.
(09:41):
Even if you do and you're getting the likes and you're getting the comments, it feels like social connection because you're getting the dopamine hits from the notifications.
You think you're connecting with people, but it does not even come close in comparison to what your body needs when you connect with people in person.
Yes, you get dopamine, which is just a pleasure hormone your brain releases when you do something good or that feels good whenever you connect with someone over social media.
(10:07):
But someone over social media will never give you oxytocin, which is the cuddle hormone that you get when you get a hug or just like a firm, just like someone rubbing your back because you just need to be consoled.
You can't replace those things.
And there's a reason why people get exhausted after doing too many Zoom calls or FaceTime calls, because your brain is working on overload, trying to connect with this person through a screen who's not even there in person.
(10:29):
You know, we are hardwired to be gathered in person, digital connection, social media, all those things have done amazing ways for us to supplement our friendships, for us to connect with people that we otherwise would never be able to connect with again, meet people we'd never be able to meet, which is all super cool and amazing.
But social media is a terrible substitute for those relationships.
(10:50):
FOMO, beer missing out, that is definitely a thing that can cause more loneliness when you're seeing all your friends connecting on socials.
But the other thing about social media is it's becoming less and less social now and more just media that starts with looking at your friends content.
And then you get a real suggested on Instagram and then you start scrolling Instagram reels for 20 minutes, all while being exposed to ads that benefit their platform at your detriment and at your mental health.
(11:15):
And now you just wasted 20 minutes that you could have been clearing your emails.
So it's becoming even less and less social and more and more about just a new form of media consumption that's not really connecting us with our friends as it used to.
Social media is not necessarily the cause of this loneliness epidemic.
It's more a symptom of it.
And it's something that does exacerbate it.
So I want to jump back a few years and ask you, what was it that made you decide to jump in and research this whole idea of loneliness and connection?
(11:57):
So I naturally just see the people who are outside of groups or just try to get people's input and things like that.
I've always valued being a good friend.
That's just wired in my DNA.
I think God's just really wired me to be that person.
Because of that, when I was just doing some random research for a project in my master's program in 2015, I stumbled upon a phrase that America was amongst the loneliest nations in the world.
(12:22):
And that we're seeing a loneliness epidemic ensue in our nation, let alone our world.
That just really intrigued me.
How could that even be possible?
A loneliness epidemic?
What?
People are exceptionally lonely.
And this was in 2015.
This was way before it was mainstream to talk about it.
I feel like rampant loneliness is more and more talked about today.
And this was especially before the pandemic, right?
(12:44):
Before stay at home orders and all those things.
So that really intrigued me.
That was part one.
But in the same semester, I eventually stumbled upon another topic called spiritual friendship, which is this long lost ancient Christian practice that just articulates the possibilities of what our human connections with others, especially that are founded on the mutual pursuit of Jesus, can do.
(13:06):
There's a wide range of different church fathers and theologians who talk about spiritual friendship.
But the one that really stuck out to me was a 12th century monk named St. Alred.
He was an abbot of the monastery of Reveaux in England.
Reading his treatise just really opened my eyes to, wow, this is amazing.
So I had this thought, how can the local church remedy the loneliness epidemic through the rediscovery of spiritual friendship and trying to put that language back into the kind of bonds we can form with God himself, but also with others who claim that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, just to try to see those loneliness levels go down.
(13:41):
I guess when we start to see that this is the way that we have been designed, intentionally designed by a creator to have these sorts of friendships, to have these connections, it shouldn't be surprising for us that we also have an enemy who wants to tear this down.
So it's not as if these things just happened, but we do actually have someone who is forcing and pushing against us creating these relationships.
(14:08):
So how do we start to reclaim them?
Yes, there's so many different things that we could talk about, just really clear and simple steps.
You know, I outlined them quite a bit in my book, but I'll just start shooting at the hip.
Let's just see what comes up.
First, y'all need to go to church, not just when you feel like it, not when it's finally a rainy day and you can't go on your kayaking trip or whatever.
(14:30):
We need to commit to the local church because in first century Israel, they lived in a collectivist culture.
So we live in an individualist culture where our self reigns supreme, highlight yourself at all costs.
It's all about how we live outside of the social context.
But in collectivism, it's all about how you are integrated into the social context.
(14:53):
And this is the context that Jesus is ministering to and he's starting his church up from basically in a first century collectivist culture, which the majority of the world remains collectivist today.
The number one group that is the most important one you can belong to is your family.
Everything you decide about your life is about how can you support your family so that they can survive and thrive for the long haul.
(15:14):
Even marriage was about prolonging your family because it was about the alliance between two families.
And in a collectivist culture, the most important people in your life was not your spouse, but your siblings.
So brothers and sisters were the closest friends that you could have.
So when you see that Jesus starts his church, that's essentially the image he's communicating that you are being given a new surrogate family with brothers and sisters in Christ.
(15:43):
And we use that phrase all the time.
Oh, hey, brother.
Hey, sister in Christ.
But we use it just more of a metaphor for friends.
But that's literally how they understood the deep relational bonds with their communities in this first century.
How could we even come close to kind of capturing that same vision that Jesus had for his church today?
When church is more of just an extra service we can consume, especially with online services, you can stream whatever service you want, whenever it's convenient from the comfort of your home.
(16:11):
Well, I figured at the very least, we can try to start committing to a church weekly, attend weekly.
The service in itself isn't everything, but I mean, that's for sure where it starts.
And then just some other small things you could do, like get involved on a serving team.
There's a lot of teams that help make church services run, that you can help rub shoulders with other believers.
Maybe that's a first impressions team or a kids ministry team or a missions team, you name it.
(16:35):
Start coming early and start staying late.
You can get there 30 minutes before service starts.
A lot of Christians show up at like, you know, 10 or five, five minutes after the service starts and they leave five minutes before the service ends because they have lunch plans and they wonder, man, why don't I have more Christian friends?
It's because you're not making any friends, right?
(16:57):
So come early, stay late, start rubbing shoulders.
Small groups are often a really great way to at least start building those connections.
At the end of the day, though, from my research and what I found, if you want to deepen your friendships, because I believe the loneliness epidemic isn't coming from a lack of friends, but a lack of deep friends, people who are close to you that you feel comfortable to share yourself with at the most vulnerable levels.
(17:22):
That's what we're missing.
People don't know how to get close.
People don't know how to share the uncomfortable, vulnerable parts of themselves.
But again, from my research, what I found is that the depth of your friendships are determined by the depth of yourself that you're willing to share.
Honestly, if you want to grow in your friendships, you've got to find those few people that are close to you that seem like they have potential for getting close that you trust and just spill the beans.
(17:46):
What's hard?
What are some things that nobody else knows about that you're carrying by yourself?
And just talk about it.
Give yourself space to do so.
And it's so counterintuitive because we think that growing in Christian community means that that's just going to happen automatically when we read through a book of scripture.
And it's good, you're discussing content, but you're not sharing about the deep parts of yourself.
(18:07):
I've been in a ton of small groups, and the things that draw us the closest together aren't when we're studying an obscure passage from First Chronicles, but from when someone requests prayer for their cancer that's returned, and they've never told anybody about that, and we got to pray with them and support them in that moment.
Or someone shares about their infertility issues that they're going through, and we really get to support them in that.
(18:29):
That's what bonds you.
Studying scripture is just an extra benefit that can come with that.
And I'm not downplaying the study of scripture, hear me, but if we want to be able to grow in our friendships with others, that's really going to be a key practice for us is learning how to be comfortable with our weakest, most vulnerable selves.
In that sort of setting, we get those moments where we hear, oh, you too.
(18:52):
That we suddenly realize that we're not the ones that are alone in this struggle, but that others have gone through it, or they know someone who's passed through those waters, and so there's something that they can do.
But I think one of the other reasons that sometimes people don't want to commit fully to a church is that dirty word that you mentioned earlier, which is to submit.
(19:12):
In our culture, we don't like this idea of submission.
I think we've got the wrong idea that submitting one to another is, they get to be the boss of me.
We don't like that.
And yet when we're submitting to each other, it's more, in my mind at least, we're saying, hey, here's the idea I've got.
(19:33):
Can you test this for me?
And that other person does that, and it goes both ways, doesn't it?
Yeah, for sure.
I think a better word for it, for those who don't like the word submit, it's just service.
It's mutual service.
If a friendship is one-sided in that one person's doing all the work, and the other person's just on the receiving end, just simply benefiting it, and you're not like, that's a counseling relationship.
(19:57):
That's not a friendship.
So if you want to build community in the church or with others, yeah, you got to learn to not just rely on them for all of your issues, but then to give back and to support them and to hear them out and to submit to the things that they need to do.
We don't like the word submission or obligation.
We're our own bosses.
(20:19):
We control our own ways.
That's another one of the many reasons of this complex issue for why we're facing a loneliness epidemic right now.
And I know that there are a number of reasons that people cite for them not turning up to church regularly, not being part of a weekly service and meeting with people, and some of those are not great reasons.
(20:40):
But we also need to acknowledge that there are people that feel hurt within a church.
Where do we go when that happens?
I've spoken to people who, because of the hurt that has happened to them in the church, maybe abuse or something like that, they desperately want to get back in community with other believers, but walking through the door of any church is still a struggle for them.
(21:04):
How do we start to build friendships and community for people that are in that place?
For sure.
Don't underestimate the power of counseling, just as you have if anybody experienced trauma from a spouse, maybe abuse from a marriage that ended in divorce.
If you ever want to get married again and to defeat the cycle of what you went through to ensure that that doesn't happen, counseling and being surrounded by people who love you to help you overcome those hurts and to build trust in others again, your brain is wired to help you thrive and survive.
(21:38):
So if that happened once with a spouse, then it's going to say, okay, this is going to happen anytime I get close to people.
So then we can become distrusting of others in that very, very intimate relational category of spouse.
I mean, then that happens with any other group of people.
Even if you go to your favorite restaurant, right, and you get a terrible experience and you get food poisoning from the pasta, your body's going to protect you by saying, I hate pasta now.
(22:02):
I'm not going to eat that.
Same applies to church.
The other side of it is you have this big deconstruction movement right now that is almost encouraging people to not only to heal their faith, but just you're better off without it anyway.
But no one's saying like, well, I guess some people might advocate that, you know, just don't even don't even get married.
(22:22):
It's not good for you anyway.
So not only are people getting very, very hurt from the church and you name your scenario, which would require a lot of extra work counseling, really being exposed to a church that actually loves them and isn't their previous past.
But then there's this other huge cultural movement that's saying like, you don't even need it.
Don't even move on from it.
All churches are bad.
(22:43):
Faith in general is bad.
You are your own God.
So I think because there's this extra push from the spiritual level, it's almost encouraging people to not take that step to get healing in the church.
I think it's just remembering that not all people are like the spouse who's abused you.
All restaurants from your favorite chain are going to have that that that pasta given another chance is the same thing with churches, because that happened in one church.
(23:08):
It does mean it won't happen in others, but it requires hard work to overcome those hurts just as you would with any kind of relational damage that you would want to overcome.
So to work through those with someone that you trust through a counselor being exposed to a church that's not what you had before to then gradually ease yourself into possibilities of those spiritual friendships in that community.
(23:57):
I think a lot of people in the church have the relationships where you share a mutual pursuit of Jesus.
That's kind of the first big category of spiritual friendships, at least at how St. Howard talks about is that they're founded on the mutual love of Christ who laid his life down for his friends.
You know, and so we mimic a similar kind of life where we're submitting ourselves to them or laying ourselves to them to help them in all areas of their life, but especially in their growth and pursuit of Jesus themselves, right?
(24:24):
That's an essence of Christian community.
I think a lot of people are doing that, especially if you're involved in a small group, you're already getting there.
In fact, I hold to this.
I think a lot more people are in spiritual friendships than they think, but because they don't know what spiritual friendships are, they don't have language to put to it and therefore they don't know how to cultivate it even more.
If people even do have spiritual friendships, they actually stumble upon them haphazardly and not even know like that's the greatest good you could have on this earth aside from a relationship with Jesus.
(24:51):
So there's that.
But I do think the biggest piece that's missing is the vulnerability piece to really, truly support each other in our wrongs and our burdens.
That's the other big thing that St. Howard pushes is it's this deep support.
Those are really the main key things that I hit on in my book.
When it comes down to someone wanting to create those sorts of spiritual friendships that you're talking about, of course, they could grab ahold of your book, read through it and think, yes, this is what I want.
(25:19):
Can we actually read it ourselves and say, I can be the instigator and I can see this happen?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, Rodney.
I think the hard part about friendship is that everybody wants it, but no one wants to initiate it.
Everyone wants to be on the receiving end.
Everyone wants to have that person reach out and be like, hey, can we grab coffee sometime?
(25:39):
I just want to get to know you.
Like that makes us feel good.
That's fantastic.
Of course.
Yes, I've been longing for this.
Thank you for asking.
I feel seen.
But nine times out of 10, that's not how it works.
And because most people are waiting for that to happen.
And so it takes the one out of 10 people to actually muster up the courage to say, hey, would you want to get to know each other further?
(26:01):
Would you like to grab coffee or lunch sometime?
Because I'm looking for friends and let's take that deep dive.
That's way harder.
And that's where it begins.
It is so much more simple than we think.
We basically are swimming upstream in a culture that says you don't need anybody else.
You don't even want anybody else because you have all these other entertainment devices and all these other entertainment streams.
(26:24):
Friendships are at the least of your concerns right now.
It's such a simple thing.
We take it for granted.
But time and time again, you look at our mental health epidemics that are happening all across the world.
Loneliness undergirds all of it.
All of it.
Loneliness increases anxiety and depression and irritability and chronic anger and addiction, suicide and all sorts of other physical health issues.
(26:50):
It leads to greater risk of heart disease and dementia and sleep deprivation because of all the stress that builds up for you being in a flight or fight mode, basically.
But friendships, on the other hand, boost your immune system.
It increases your happiness.
It gives you a sense of purpose.
It even determines how well you perform at work and how much money you make.
(27:14):
Your friendships do that, not your skill sets, which certainly help.
But it's because your friends are what give you that sense of purpose where you're seen, you're valued, you're loved, and it makes you a better person, ideally, to where then you can thrive in all these other areas.
We never think twice, or we just never think about how our friends are the reason why we can actually succeed and thrive in this life.
(27:38):
And you can certainly get by and have all those other things, but how much better could your life be if you have friends at that level?
And all it takes is a moment of vulnerability to say, hey, can we grab coffee?
I want to get to know you.
Would you like to get to know me?
So we can have more of those you two moments, as you referenced, to find those commonalities and build upon perhaps the most important relationship we can have.
(28:01):
And as your book really points out, it is a God-given design for us to be in those friendships.
And I think you make that point well about so many people are waiting for that other person to come and say, hey, do you want to grab coffee?
And people say, oh, look, I could never make friends in this church or in this setting or whatever.
I wonder how many times it might be because they haven't been the ones prepared to instigate that and to be able to just say to someone, hey, do you want to grab coffee?
(28:30):
And if you get a no, you get a no, you ask another person, then maybe you do get a coffee that time.
And if that's all it turns out to be, I imagine it's not a bad start, is it?
For sure.
What's the worst that could happen?
They say no, then you're still at where you were before, you know?
But if they say yes, you could have a friendship that could be life-changing.
(28:50):
If people are wanting to get hold of the book or to connect with you, where's the easiest place for them to go?
Probably the easiest place to go for all that is the book's website.
You need friends dot com kind of gives you some of the flyover stats of loneliness and how we're designed for community and all those things.
And then it has links to the book, but also on the website, it includes some links to different teachings I've done on this topic.
(29:14):
There's some additional resources there, including some recommended reading.
If people want to dive in deeper, there's a sign on my book and that's where you can contact me.
Jake, I love what you're doing.
I love the fact that you are seeking to help people really reclaim the way that they have been designed to be in relationship, to be in friendship.
And I know that there's a whole lot more depth in that book than we've been able to cover today.
(29:38):
But I just want to say thank you for what you're doing and thank you for your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much, friends.
It's great to be here and God bless and make those friends.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
(29:58):
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Dozens more Bleeding Daylight episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
By sharing this and other episodes through word of mouth or social media, you'll ensure that others are hearing stories of hope too.
(00:37):
In a world that has more opportunity for connections than ever before, we're facing a global loneliness crisis.
How do we begin the journey out of loneliness towards thriving relationships?
Today's guest has been asking the questions and has found many of the answers.
(01:03):
Joining me today is Dr. Jake Thurston, a passionate advocate for spiritual friendship and community, who has made it his personal mission to help people overcome loneliness.
Jake is a lead pastor whose church serves a large number of college students and young adults.
His newly released book, You Need Friends, Reclaim Your God-Given Design for Community and Remedy Your Loneliness for Good, draws from his decade of research on how God designed us for meaningful connection.
(01:34):
I'm so pleased to have him here today.
Jake, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thanks so much, Rodney.
It's great to be here.
Now, the fact that we need each other to get through life should be self-evident, yet we're facing an epidemic of loneliness.
Where do you think it all started to go wrong?
Oh, my goodness.
I think there's so many factors.
(01:56):
In some instances, you start seeing the manufacturing and structure of homes shifting after World War II.
The front porch that used to be a social icon for many societies where neighbors would be able to interact with each other before and after work.
That's just where you gathered all the time with your neighbors on the front porch.
Well, now what's been replaced by the front porch is a large garage that's on the front for your individualized transportation.
(02:22):
And now the entertainment goes into the backyard with a picket fence so you can't even talk to your neighbors.
Literally, you can arrive at your home now and not even speak to the people you live beside.
Even that little change in how our homes are designed all the way through.
I mean, you flash forward to today through social media and just the constant drive for like we have to be entertained all the time and we don't want to talk to strangers.
(02:45):
So what do we do?
We can just whip out our phones to keep us entertained.
Whereas before you had to talk to the people who are standing in line with you.
It's been such a gradual thing, but I feel like it's really ramped up here over the last decade or so.
This is another thing and I don't have full evidence of it, but I think the decline of faith and religion across the board too, I think is also a big piece.
I don't think it's a coincidence that you're seeing the decline of Christianity in the West with an increase in loneliness as well.
(03:11):
Because a lot of people have always found their communities in spiritual faith communities.
It's a very unique part of that.
But the question then is are those who are leaving replacing it are finding similar depth of friendships too.
So there's a wild force of things that are really driving our loneliness from rampant individualism to our digital age.
I saw some research some time back that said that many years ago, as you've mentioned there, the center of community in a town or in a city would be the church.
(03:40):
And that's where people would most find their sense of community, their sense of belonging.
Stunningly, it said that people now find that sense of community at a big shopping center or a big shopping mall.
And that to me is frightening because most of the time when we go to a shopping mall or shopping center, we're not actually interacting with people.
(04:01):
We're surrounded by people, but have no connection to them.
Is that something that you've discovered as you've looked into it, that we can be surrounded by people, but we're not forming any connection?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
When I was doing my doctoral research, one of the things that came up is sometimes the loneliest people can feel are in crowds.
(04:21):
On one hand, depending on the public space that you're in, you know, maybe it's your favorite mall, maybe it's your favorite restaurant or something.
You go there for the connection that everyone is there for the same place.
That's called the public space of belonging.
I don't know anyone here, but I know we're here for the same reason.
OK, well, that might work well for some people, but you're connecting over just this honestly kind of surface level thing and you don't know anything else about them.
(04:48):
And so you might have some people who immerse themselves in those public spaces.
But a lot of times loneliness isn't just this image in our minds of someone just being friendless of having nobody they connect with.
I literally have no friends ever at all.
And that certainly is a severe case of loneliness.
But really, loneliness at the end of the day is a lack of connection.
(05:10):
You can be in a crowd surrounded by people, but if you don't have a connection with them, you're not seen by them, you're not known by them.
It actually proliferates that feeling because you'd almost rather be by yourself where you do confidently know yourself versus being surrounded by all these people who know nothing about me.
Or even if you do have a group of friends that you hang out with or connect with, whether those are coworkers, roommates, you name it.
You can still feel lonely because you're afraid to share the deepest parts of yourself with them.
(05:34):
You hang out, you go to the bar, you have all these activities, you share life together, but you never share the deep parts of yourself, your deep struggles, and you're not seen, you're not known.
That can actually proliferate feelings of loneliness as well.
How about this growing sense of tribalism that we see where in the past we had the opportunity to sit down with people who had different points of view to us and we could discuss that civilly and still in the conversation, shaking hands and going off and being friends.
(06:02):
It seems more and more that we are divided down thought lines, political lines, a whole range of different lines that we decide to part company on and we're seeking someone who has exactly the same ideas as us rather than in the past where we were more open to the person sitting next to us having a different point of view.
(06:25):
Yes, I actually talk a bit about tribalism in chapter three, and I think that's just evident of our increasing individualistic cultures that we live in because the thing about tribalism is that they're entirely designed to keep you safe and to find people who specifically align with everything you believe in and that you want to have affirmed about your life.
People in tribalistic groups tend to not tell you the hard things.
(06:51):
They're the complete opposite of community because they're not people you submit to, and they're not people who have been given the right to speak into your life and call you out of your shortcomings.
Again, the whole idea of tribalism is to continually affirm what you believe and to not challenge it and actually the people we're going to challenge and push back on are all the people who do disagree with us, right?
(07:11):
So you have no chance for growth, no chance for being expounded and perhaps being told that you're wrong.
One of the best books on tribalism and just kind of the general political climate right now why people are the way they are is called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Heights.
Blew my mind.
Completely changed my perspective of how these groups work because essentially what he's saying is the reason why we identify with people like that is all because of fear.
(07:36):
Our brains are hardwired and you got to get around people who are going to protect you and to affirm what you believe in because it's all about survival instincts at the end of the day.
And so the more and more we bulk up this image that the others are enemies, therefore they should be feared.
Therefore, we're going to surround ourselves with our people, our armies basically to protect us and therefore have more ammunition to fight against those who disagree.
(08:01):
That just completely kills any opportunity to befriend those who are different from us.
(08:41):
Mm hmm.
Hundred percent.
Absolutely.
(09:21):
There are exceptions to the rule that typically people don't post on social media.
I'm just having the worst day of my life right now.
Or sometimes actually they might be more prone to reach out about the worst days of their life or, you know, prayer or support or something.
But it's still just like, man, today's been really sucky and all this is going wrong.
And here's the other thing.
(09:41):
Even if you do and you're getting the likes and you're getting the comments, it feels like social connection because you're getting the dopamine hits from the notifications.
You think you're connecting with people, but it does not even come close in comparison to what your body needs when you connect with people in person.
Yes, you get dopamine, which is just a pleasure hormone your brain releases when you do something good or that feels good whenever you connect with someone over social media.
(10:07):
But someone over social media will never give you oxytocin, which is the cuddle hormone that you get when you get a hug or just like a firm, just like someone rubbing your back because you just need to be consoled.
You can't replace those things.
And there's a reason why people get exhausted after doing too many Zoom calls or FaceTime calls, because your brain is working on overload, trying to connect with this person through a screen who's not even there in person.
(10:29):
You know, we are hardwired to be gathered in person, digital connection, social media, all those things have done amazing ways for us to supplement our friendships, for us to connect with people that we otherwise would never be able to connect with again, meet people we'd never be able to meet, which is all super cool and amazing.
But social media is a terrible substitute for those relationships.
(10:50):
FOMO, beer missing out, that is definitely a thing that can cause more loneliness when you're seeing all your friends connecting on socials.
But the other thing about social media is it's becoming less and less social now and more just media that starts with looking at your friends content.
And then you get a real suggested on Instagram and then you start scrolling Instagram reels for 20 minutes, all while being exposed to ads that benefit their platform at your detriment and at your mental health.
(11:15):
And now you just wasted 20 minutes that you could have been clearing your emails.
So it's becoming even less and less social and more and more about just a new form of media consumption that's not really connecting us with our friends as it used to.
Social media is not necessarily the cause of this loneliness epidemic.
It's more a symptom of it.
And it's something that does exacerbate it.
So I want to jump back a few years and ask you, what was it that made you decide to jump in and research this whole idea of loneliness and connection?
(11:57):
So I naturally just see the people who are outside of groups or just try to get people's input and things like that.
I've always valued being a good friend.
That's just wired in my DNA.
I think God's just really wired me to be that person.
Because of that, when I was just doing some random research for a project in my master's program in 2015, I stumbled upon a phrase that America was amongst the loneliest nations in the world.
(12:22):
And that we're seeing a loneliness epidemic ensue in our nation, let alone our world.
That just really intrigued me.
How could that even be possible?
A loneliness epidemic?
What?
People are exceptionally lonely.
And this was in 2015.
This was way before it was mainstream to talk about it.
I feel like rampant loneliness is more and more talked about today.
And this was especially before the pandemic, right?
(12:44):
Before stay at home orders and all those things.
So that really intrigued me.
That was part one.
But in the same semester, I eventually stumbled upon another topic called spiritual friendship, which is this long lost ancient Christian practice that just articulates the possibilities of what our human connections with others, especially that are founded on the mutual pursuit of Jesus, can do.
(13:06):
There's a wide range of different church fathers and theologians who talk about spiritual friendship.
But the one that really stuck out to me was a 12th century monk named St. Alred.
He was an abbot of the monastery of Reveaux in England.
Reading his treatise just really opened my eyes to, wow, this is amazing.
So I had this thought, how can the local church remedy the loneliness epidemic through the rediscovery of spiritual friendship and trying to put that language back into the kind of bonds we can form with God himself, but also with others who claim that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, just to try to see those loneliness levels go down.
(13:41):
I guess when we start to see that this is the way that we have been designed, intentionally designed by a creator to have these sorts of friendships, to have these connections, it shouldn't be surprising for us that we also have an enemy who wants to tear this down.
So it's not as if these things just happened, but we do actually have someone who is forcing and pushing against us creating these relationships.
(14:08):
So how do we start to reclaim them?
Yes, there's so many different things that we could talk about, just really clear and simple steps.
You know, I outlined them quite a bit in my book, but I'll just start shooting at the hip.
Let's just see what comes up.
First, y'all need to go to church, not just when you feel like it, not when it's finally a rainy day and you can't go on your kayaking trip or whatever.
(14:30):
We need to commit to the local church because in first century Israel, they lived in a collectivist culture.
So we live in an individualist culture where our self reigns supreme, highlight yourself at all costs.
It's all about how we live outside of the social context.
But in collectivism, it's all about how you are integrated into the social context.
(14:53):
And this is the context that Jesus is ministering to and he's starting his church up from basically in a first century collectivist culture, which the majority of the world remains collectivist today.
The number one group that is the most important one you can belong to is your family.
Everything you decide about your life is about how can you support your family so that they can survive and thrive for the long haul.
(15:14):
Even marriage was about prolonging your family because it was about the alliance between two families.
And in a collectivist culture, the most important people in your life was not your spouse, but your siblings.
So brothers and sisters were the closest friends that you could have.
So when you see that Jesus starts his church, that's essentially the image he's communicating that you are being given a new surrogate family with brothers and sisters in Christ.
(15:43):
And we use that phrase all the time.
Oh, hey, brother.
Hey, sister in Christ.
But we use it just more of a metaphor for friends.
But that's literally how they understood the deep relational bonds with their communities in this first century.
How could we even come close to kind of capturing that same vision that Jesus had for his church today?
When church is more of just an extra service we can consume, especially with online services, you can stream whatever service you want, whenever it's convenient from the comfort of your home.
(16:11):
Well, I figured at the very least, we can try to start committing to a church weekly, attend weekly.
The service in itself isn't everything, but I mean, that's for sure where it starts.
And then just some other small things you could do, like get involved on a serving team.
There's a lot of teams that help make church services run, that you can help rub shoulders with other believers.
Maybe that's a first impressions team or a kids ministry team or a missions team, you name it.
(16:35):
Start coming early and start staying late.
You can get there 30 minutes before service starts.
A lot of Christians show up at like, you know, 10 or five, five minutes after the service starts and they leave five minutes before the service ends because they have lunch plans and they wonder, man, why don't I have more Christian friends?
It's because you're not making any friends, right?
(16:57):
So come early, stay late, start rubbing shoulders.
Small groups are often a really great way to at least start building those connections.
At the end of the day, though, from my research and what I found, if you want to deepen your friendships, because I believe the loneliness epidemic isn't coming from a lack of friends, but a lack of deep friends, people who are close to you that you feel comfortable to share yourself with at the most vulnerable levels.
(17:22):
That's what we're missing.
People don't know how to get close.
People don't know how to share the uncomfortable, vulnerable parts of themselves.
But again, from my research, what I found is that the depth of your friendships are determined by the depth of yourself that you're willing to share.
Honestly, if you want to grow in your friendships, you've got to find those few people that are close to you that seem like they have potential for getting close that you trust and just spill the beans.
(17:46):
What's hard?
What are some things that nobody else knows about that you're carrying by yourself?
And just talk about it.
Give yourself space to do so.
And it's so counterintuitive because we think that growing in Christian community means that that's just going to happen automatically when we read through a book of scripture.
And it's good, you're discussing content, but you're not sharing about the deep parts of yourself.
(18:07):
I've been in a ton of small groups, and the things that draw us the closest together aren't when we're studying an obscure passage from First Chronicles, but from when someone requests prayer for their cancer that's returned, and they've never told anybody about that, and we got to pray with them and support them in that moment.
Or someone shares about their infertility issues that they're going through, and we really get to support them in that.
(18:29):
That's what bonds you.
Studying scripture is just an extra benefit that can come with that.
And I'm not downplaying the study of scripture, hear me, but if we want to be able to grow in our friendships with others, that's really going to be a key practice for us is learning how to be comfortable with our weakest, most vulnerable selves.
In that sort of setting, we get those moments where we hear, oh, you too.
(18:52):
That we suddenly realize that we're not the ones that are alone in this struggle, but that others have gone through it, or they know someone who's passed through those waters, and so there's something that they can do.
But I think one of the other reasons that sometimes people don't want to commit fully to a church is that dirty word that you mentioned earlier, which is to submit.
(19:12):
In our culture, we don't like this idea of submission.
I think we've got the wrong idea that submitting one to another is, they get to be the boss of me.
We don't like that.
And yet when we're submitting to each other, it's more, in my mind at least, we're saying, hey, here's the idea I've got.
(19:33):
Can you test this for me?
And that other person does that, and it goes both ways, doesn't it?
Yeah, for sure.
I think a better word for it, for those who don't like the word submit, it's just service.
It's mutual service.
If a friendship is one-sided in that one person's doing all the work, and the other person's just on the receiving end, just simply benefiting it, and you're not like, that's a counseling relationship.
(19:57):
That's not a friendship.
So if you want to build community in the church or with others, yeah, you got to learn to not just rely on them for all of your issues, but then to give back and to support them and to hear them out and to submit to the things that they need to do.
We don't like the word submission or obligation.
We're our own bosses.
(20:19):
We control our own ways.
That's another one of the many reasons of this complex issue for why we're facing a loneliness epidemic right now.
And I know that there are a number of reasons that people cite for them not turning up to church regularly, not being part of a weekly service and meeting with people, and some of those are not great reasons.
(20:40):
But we also need to acknowledge that there are people that feel hurt within a church.
Where do we go when that happens?
I've spoken to people who, because of the hurt that has happened to them in the church, maybe abuse or something like that, they desperately want to get back in community with other believers, but walking through the door of any church is still a struggle for them.
(21:04):
How do we start to build friendships and community for people that are in that place?
For sure.
Don't underestimate the power of counseling, just as you have if anybody experienced trauma from a spouse, maybe abuse from a marriage that ended in divorce.
If you ever want to get married again and to defeat the cycle of what you went through to ensure that that doesn't happen, counseling and being surrounded by people who love you to help you overcome those hurts and to build trust in others again, your brain is wired to help you thrive and survive.
(21:38):
So if that happened once with a spouse, then it's going to say, okay, this is going to happen anytime I get close to people.
So then we can become distrusting of others in that very, very intimate relational category of spouse.
I mean, then that happens with any other group of people.
Even if you go to your favorite restaurant, right, and you get a terrible experience and you get food poisoning from the pasta, your body's going to protect you by saying, I hate pasta now.
(22:02):
I'm not going to eat that.
Same applies to church.
The other side of it is you have this big deconstruction movement right now that is almost encouraging people to not only to heal their faith, but just you're better off without it anyway.
But no one's saying like, well, I guess some people might advocate that, you know, just don't even don't even get married.
(22:22):
It's not good for you anyway.
So not only are people getting very, very hurt from the church and you name your scenario, which would require a lot of extra work counseling, really being exposed to a church that actually loves them and isn't their previous past.
But then there's this other huge cultural movement that's saying like, you don't even need it.
Don't even move on from it.
All churches are bad.
(22:43):
Faith in general is bad.
You are your own God.
So I think because there's this extra push from the spiritual level, it's almost encouraging people to not take that step to get healing in the church.
I think it's just remembering that not all people are like the spouse who's abused you.
All restaurants from your favorite chain are going to have that that that pasta given another chance is the same thing with churches, because that happened in one church.
(23:08):
It does mean it won't happen in others, but it requires hard work to overcome those hurts just as you would with any kind of relational damage that you would want to overcome.
So to work through those with someone that you trust through a counselor being exposed to a church that's not what you had before to then gradually ease yourself into possibilities of those spiritual friendships in that community.
(23:57):
I think a lot of people in the church have the relationships where you share a mutual pursuit of Jesus.
That's kind of the first big category of spiritual friendships, at least at how St. Howard talks about is that they're founded on the mutual love of Christ who laid his life down for his friends.
You know, and so we mimic a similar kind of life where we're submitting ourselves to them or laying ourselves to them to help them in all areas of their life, but especially in their growth and pursuit of Jesus themselves, right?
(24:24):
That's an essence of Christian community.
I think a lot of people are doing that, especially if you're involved in a small group, you're already getting there.
In fact, I hold to this.
I think a lot more people are in spiritual friendships than they think, but because they don't know what spiritual friendships are, they don't have language to put to it and therefore they don't know how to cultivate it even more.
If people even do have spiritual friendships, they actually stumble upon them haphazardly and not even know like that's the greatest good you could have on this earth aside from a relationship with Jesus.
(24:51):
So there's that.
But I do think the biggest piece that's missing is the vulnerability piece to really, truly support each other in our wrongs and our burdens.
That's the other big thing that St. Howard pushes is it's this deep support.
Those are really the main key things that I hit on in my book.
When it comes down to someone wanting to create those sorts of spiritual friendships that you're talking about, of course, they could grab ahold of your book, read through it and think, yes, this is what I want.
(25:19):
Can we actually read it ourselves and say, I can be the instigator and I can see this happen?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, Rodney.
I think the hard part about friendship is that everybody wants it, but no one wants to initiate it.
Everyone wants to be on the receiving end.
Everyone wants to have that person reach out and be like, hey, can we grab coffee sometime?
(25:39):
I just want to get to know you.
Like that makes us feel good.
That's fantastic.
Of course.
Yes, I've been longing for this.
Thank you for asking.
I feel seen.
But nine times out of 10, that's not how it works.
And because most people are waiting for that to happen.
And so it takes the one out of 10 people to actually muster up the courage to say, hey, would you want to get to know each other further?
(26:01):
Would you like to grab coffee or lunch sometime?
Because I'm looking for friends and let's take that deep dive.
That's way harder.
And that's where it begins.
It is so much more simple than we think.
We basically are swimming upstream in a culture that says you don't need anybody else.
You don't even want anybody else because you have all these other entertainment devices and all these other entertainment streams.
(26:24):
Friendships are at the least of your concerns right now.
It's such a simple thing.
We take it for granted.
But time and time again, you look at our mental health epidemics that are happening all across the world.
Loneliness undergirds all of it.
All of it.
Loneliness increases anxiety and depression and irritability and chronic anger and addiction, suicide and all sorts of other physical health issues.
(26:50):
It leads to greater risk of heart disease and dementia and sleep deprivation because of all the stress that builds up for you being in a flight or fight mode, basically.
But friendships, on the other hand, boost your immune system.
It increases your happiness.
It gives you a sense of purpose.
It even determines how well you perform at work and how much money you make.
(27:14):
Your friendships do that, not your skill sets, which certainly help.
But it's because your friends are what give you that sense of purpose where you're seen, you're valued, you're loved, and it makes you a better person, ideally, to where then you can thrive in all these other areas.
We never think twice, or we just never think about how our friends are the reason why we can actually succeed and thrive in this life.
(27:38):
And you can certainly get by and have all those other things, but how much better could your life be if you have friends at that level?
And all it takes is a moment of vulnerability to say, hey, can we grab coffee?
I want to get to know you.
Would you like to get to know me?
So we can have more of those you two moments, as you referenced, to find those commonalities and build upon perhaps the most important relationship we can have.
(28:01):
And as your book really points out, it is a God-given design for us to be in those friendships.
And I think you make that point well about so many people are waiting for that other person to come and say, hey, do you want to grab coffee?
And people say, oh, look, I could never make friends in this church or in this setting or whatever.
I wonder how many times it might be because they haven't been the ones prepared to instigate that and to be able to just say to someone, hey, do you want to grab coffee?
(28:30):
And if you get a no, you get a no, you ask another person, then maybe you do get a coffee that time.
And if that's all it turns out to be, I imagine it's not a bad start, is it?
For sure.
What's the worst that could happen?
They say no, then you're still at where you were before, you know?
But if they say yes, you could have a friendship that could be life-changing.
(28:50):
If people are wanting to get hold of the book or to connect with you, where's the easiest place for them to go?
Probably the easiest place to go for all that is the book's website.
You need friends dot com kind of gives you some of the flyover stats of loneliness and how we're designed for community and all those things.
And then it has links to the book, but also on the website, it includes some links to different teachings I've done on this topic.
(29:14):
There's some additional resources there, including some recommended reading.
If people want to dive in deeper, there's a sign on my book and that's where you can contact me.
Jake, I love what you're doing.
I love the fact that you are seeking to help people really reclaim the way that they have been designed to be in relationship, to be in friendship.
And I know that there's a whole lot more depth in that book than we've been able to cover today.
(29:38):
But I just want to say thank you for what you're doing and thank you for your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much, friends.
It's great to be here and God bless and make those friends.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
(29:58):
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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