Three Lonely Lies That Are Destroying Us
A battle is raging for your heart
Source: alba via Getty Images use authorized to the author through Canva Pro
Loneliness is a bigger problem than most of us want to admit.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently issued a warning about the mental health of our nation’s youth. From 2009 to 2019, Murthy notes that one in three high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a 40% increase.
Suicide rates among 10 to 24-year-olds are up by 57% during that same time period.
In a 2019 survey, national insurer Cigna found what could be called a loneliness pandemic: 3 of 5 adults reported being lonely.
Loneliness is not only destroying our hearts and souls but also our bodies.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, notes:
“The heightened risk of mortality from loneliness equals that of smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic, and exceeds the health risks associated with obesity.”
Most of us feel embarrassed or ashamed of being lonely because it feels like personal inadequacy or deficiency.
What if there is a darkness behind what drives us to loneliness?
This blog is a written version of a sermon preached by the author on 12/5/2021
Don’t ignore your spiritual enemy
I am not one to look for devils behind every problem, though I do believe that evil is a logical corollary to good. Belief in the reality of a spiritual enemy we call Satan is no less logical than belief in God.
Jesus had no aversion to belief in the reality of Satan and forces of darkness.
He taught that there is an enemy that comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10).
I believe there are three lonely lies the enemy uses to destroy us socially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The sooner we unmask these destructive deceptions the better for our holistic health.
God delivers us from loneliness through relationship
Before I expose those lies, allow me to give you a glimpse of the Good News from a popular Scripture read during the Christmas season.
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). (Matthew 1:21–23, NIV)
In Matthew 1:21–23, we see that the heart of the human problem, sin, is deeply connected to an absence of a relationship.
The solution to human loneliness is a relationship: God with us. This is the very essence of who Jesus is.
God saves lonely people, not by some philosophy or abstract concept, but by being intimately close to us. In becoming a vulnerable, human baby, God came down to us to be with us.
Three lonely lies
Loneliness doesn’t always look the same. You can be in a room full of people and still be haunted by loneliness.
God’s dark enemies want you to believe the worst about yourself. There are three deceptions the enemy uses to trap you in loneliness.
1. You are undesirable
There is interpersonal loneliness that whispers in your ear: “You don’t have a friend or someone who listens to you, so there must be something undesirable about you.”
Every lie whispered in your ear has three basic tenets. First, a personal deficiency is suggested. Second, a sense of disgustis nurtured. Third, you are discouraged from any healthy social activity.
Consider how this strategy plays out with the lie that says, “You are undesirable.”
Deficiency: “You are neither special nor desirable, but forgettable and no one even notices you.”
Disgust: “Something must be wrong with me and I am ashamed of myself.”
Discouragement: “Don’t reach out or bother trying to make a friend because no one will find you desirable.”
Social media has a way of massively amplifying this desirability fallacy. How many of us believe the false hope offered in this maxim: “If I get noticed, I will prove desirable?”
Once this false hope is embraced, you will do what you must to get followers and likes.
Strangely, such attention-seeking encourages isolating and extreme behavior.
We become obsessed with posting on social media.
We obsess over likes, clicks, stats, and reactions.
And when no one reacts or seems to care, we are undone at a deep level.
Most of us have no idea that we are battling algorithms on social media platforms that at times even mystify experts. It seems that the algorithms fail to reward normal behavior but incentivize extreme actions.
The extreme stuff is what goes viral.
2021 saw the rise of TikTok’s devious licks challenge where students were encouraged to destroy large items in their school buildings and post videos of the destruction on TikTok.
Extreme behavior gets attention on social media’s algorithms because it drives viral clicks.
How many people chasing the desirability fallacy have pushed themselves to say things or perform on social media to garner attention in ways that they normally would not?
But getting clicks or likes because you do something extreme does not prove you are desirable. It just says you have figured out how to draw attention to yourself to get noticed.
Your personal desirability is not connected to the number of likes you have on social media. The minute you believe that lie is the moment the enemy has caught you in a deception that can lead to isolating loneliness.
The second lonely lie is a subtle distinction on the first.
2. You are unwanted
There is societal loneliness that whispers in your ear: “You have been forsaken and even abandoned. The people who actually took the time to get to know you found you so undesirable that they left you.”
It is one thing to struggle with feeling desirable. It is much darker to feel forsaken, abandoned, and rejected.
That you are unwanted is another lonely lie.
Consider the enemy’s strategy:
Deficiency: “Your presence brings misery to people.”
Disgust: “Other people hate me. Sometimes I even hate myself.”
Discouragement: “No one will ever want me, stay with me, but will only leave me. I can trust no one.”
I have a friend whose Dad rejected him and demeaned him as a child. My friend now believes everyone rejects him. I have to constantly convince him that I am his friend.
Neuroscience says our brains form neural pathways in our early years that shape the way we engage in relationships in the future. We learn to attach and attune to relationships based on these important early interactions.
Sadly, far too many humans have experienced being forsaken, abandoned, and traumatized by the very humans who should have shown them love and affection.
This kind of emotional trauma can encourage us to believe that all humans neither desire us nor are trustworthy.
That you are unwanted is also a lie, a very devious deception.
The final lie is perhaps the most devastating.
3. You are unnecessary
There is existential loneliness that whispers in your ear: “You do not fit in this world or have purpose or mission. You don’t matter. Your life adds no value. No one would notice if you were gone.”
Consider the deception strategy again.
Deficiency: “You offer nothing and have no purpose in this world.”
Disgust: “I am just taking up space.”
Discouragement: “I should just go away for good.”
In 2019, CDC data told us that suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10–34.
Sadly, far too many younger people have been deceived into the lie that tells them it would be better for them to go away permanently.
Senior citizens also struggle with this lonely lie. Years ago, an elderly friend told me that older people struggle living in what he called “loss mode”. He noted that young people are busy gaining assets: new relationships, improving health, money, careers, homes, rising investment portfolios.
As we age, he told me, we start to shed or lose assets. We have to disburse our retirement accounts. We lose our personal health and freedom to drive or live alone. We lose people we love. We spend more time alone.
Life morphs into loss mode.
Our elderly counterparts are often left asking, “What is my value?” Shame on us for allowing our elders to ever feel abandoned.
Your existence is not an accident. You are here on this planet by design. God put you here, numbered your days, and desires to fill them with meaning and purpose.
The lie that says, “You are unnecessary,” is straight out of the depths of Hell.
The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy you by convincing you to believe three lies: You are undesirable. You are unwanted. You are unnecessary.
If the enemy can deceive you with these three deceptive “un” words, then he can rob you of the full life God has for you.
God needs only one “un” word to destroy the enemy
Now that the lies have been exposed, how about some Good News?
God only needs one “un” word to dispel the enemy’s lies. That word is a relationship word.
Unfailing.
God’s love for you is an unfailing love.
What more could lonely people want than to be desired, wanted, and who discover their presence is necessary, even purposeful?
What is more, this is not just the perception of some human. God believes you are desirable. He wants your presence. Your Father has deep purpose on this planet for you.
God’s love for you never quits. His passion for you never runs out of energy. Love never falls down.
Isn’t it a comfort to know that God’s loving presence will never quit on you?
Jesus is “God with us.” In Matthew 28:20, Jesus says, “I will never leave nor forsake you.” (NIV)
Your trauma is not your testimony
Mandy recently shared her story with me. She grew up in a healthy home, but somewhere in her 20s and 30s she became lost. She described feeling depressed, unworthy, purposeless and stuck. In time, Mandy needed to go on depression meds, and eventually struggled with alcohol.
In the midst of her darkness, Mandy met a friend named Adam. He would call her after church and excitedly talk about what he heard about Jesus.
Adam introduced Mandy to Jesus. You might say that Unfailing Love found Mandy. She told me that finding a relationship with Jesus was like a dramatic light shining in her darkness.
The enemy’s lies are no longer convincing: Mandy feels desired by God, wanted, and necessary. She found purpose and is not afraid to tell you about how Jesus made her alive again.
Late in his 50s, another friend recounted to me how he suddenly melted down as his mind flooded with repressed childhood trauma. He recalled the hopeless loneliness of being rejected, abandoned, and alone as a child.
A wise counselor took him through an exercise of carefully reliving the trauma, but this time visualizing Jesus present with him, holding him.
My friend mysteriously realized Jesus was present with him to save him from the trauma. God began rewriting those dysfunctional neural pathways.
He found dramatic freedom. He wasn’t forsaken, but held by the Savior who was present yesterday and today!
His trauma is not his testimony.
Don’t ever mistake human absence and rejection as signs that your Heavenly Father no longer desires you, is absent, or has rejected you.
God’s unfailing love is a long, long, love for you that never quits. God’s love is incapable of quitting. Failure is not in God’s nature.
That love for you is an old, old love. God did not choose to love you on a whim.
1 Peter 1:10–12 tells us that the Holy Spirit stirring in the prophets “predicted the sufferings of the Messiah.” Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was pointing to the ways God would enter the world to suffer for His people.
God has been contemplating your rescue from loneliness from ages past.
I would encourage you to take the time to read Isaiah 53. As you do, think about the depths of loneliness that Jesus plunged himself into for your rescue.
He went to the darkest, loneliest depths to be able to catch you when you fall.
Why did Jesus go to the depths of loneliness and despair? To show you the way out of the enemy’s lonely lies.
