Countercultural - Pushing Back against Divide and Isolate.

(This is from my letter to my congregation today, 3 January 2024)

You may recall that late last year I made available an article I ran across from The Atlantic titled “Your Friends Don’t All Have to Be the Same Age”. It caught my attention because of trends that I have been seeing in the larger church, and even in our own denomination. It’s that we’re circling the wagons, limiting our relationships to those who are within our age group. “Most Americans don’t seem to have much age diversity in their friendships. A 2023 study found that, for a group of young adults ages 21 to 30, more than 80 percent of the people in their social circles, not counting relatives, were born within five years of them. Even looking at a broader age range, nearly 63 percent of adults don’t have any close friends who are at least 15 years older or younger than them…” One of the results is a growing social segregation and an ever-increasing isolation.

Then, on 20 December 2023, I was listening to The Economist as they summarized the news of the day. There was a piece called “2023 in Review: the Rise of the Hermit Consumer”. My interest was piqued. As I listened to this short article, the final statement deeply concerned me, “covid may have made people genuinely more hermit-like: people are spending less on social activities and more on solitary pursuits. Covid’s biggest legacy, it seems, has been to pull people apart.” (You can find a longer report from which the "Review" was taken by looking at "Welcome to the Age of the Hermit Consumer" at The Economist.)

Both of these articles point out indications that something is amiss in our society. There is a growing trend toward separation, and also isolation. And I have been talking about this trend for most of 2023 and beyond. Clearly, this is not a surprise. One of the immediate consequences of the Fall (Genesis 3) is just this: division and loneliness (Genesis 4). And when you fast-forward to the New Testament you find it is a major problem that the Gospel of Jesus breaks into and brings a remedy to. When Paul was writing to the Ephesians church, he mentions the seclusion and polarization of the day, how Jews and Gentiles were ripped apart and stood opposed to each other (sometimes violently). Then comes the Gospel, where “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:13-18).

Our Lord Jesus comes and reverses Genesis 3 AND 4 in himself. And this has consequences for us, it has remedial consequences, life-giving consequences, communal consequences. Where the trend of worldliness is to divide and isolate, Jesus draws us to himself together. He puts us on God’s good side (justification) together. He cleans us up and builds us up together. 

Some of the grace-empowered results of what our Lord has done is to help us push hard against a divisive, isolating culture that is pushing hard against us. This means we, by God’s grace, want to be together. We want to enjoy brothers and sisters who are different from us, younger or older than us. We want to get out of our natural groupings to be the people Christ saved us to be. We want to get out of our isolation – reinforced and reified as it is by suburbia and social media – and be involved and engaged with each other in person. So, part of being countercultural, we should be taking real, tangible steps to work out the effects of the Gospel:

• Take active steps to make friends with people in our church who are not in your age group.
• Nurture real friendships within our congregation.
• Play board games together, or go hiking together, or simply invite folks over to your house and share a fireplace together.
• Don’t sit around waiting for the others to take the first step but take the risk (all healthy relationships are a risk) and initiative.
• Invite someone beyond your normal group of associates out to coffee, tea, lunch. And simply get to know them. Ask them, “What can I pray about for you?” And then set up a follow-up time to see how things are going.
• Consider who it is in our congregation that you don’t know and jump in there and get to know them.

The worldly trend is to divide and isolate. By the grace of God poured out on you in the Gospel of God, push hard (together) against the divisive, isolating culture that is pushing hard against you.


Pastor Mike