When we think of medicine and medical practice, diseases and injuries come to mind. Every church prayer list is filled with assorted afflictions typical of humanity. However, there is an affliction that we seem to forget, but which manifests itself medically more and more.
That affliction is loneliness.
As certain groups continue to beat the discordant drum of global overpopulation, the hard truth is that we are experiencing global population drops of a remarkable scale. While some countries, particularly in Africa, are still growing, they are growing more slowly than before. Countries that we were sure would burst at the seams are declining. China and India are in serious trouble, as their citizens are no longer replacing themselves. By some estimates, Japan may cease to be a country within the next 100 years, so sharp is its decline in birth rates.
The lessons here are stark. In America and much of the world, people are going to grow old alone. This already occurs due to the large geographic gaps between family members in our country. Seniors living alone or in nursing homes often have families across the state, nation or globe who cannot be with them. However, as more and more people have fewer and fewer children, that devastating isolation will be ever more pronounced.
What we see in the clinics and hospitals of the land are seniors who are unstable, who teeter on dementia, who may or may not be able to feed or clean themselves, and who all-too-regularly live nearly in squalor — despite the outward appearance of their homes, despite how well-put-together they seemed the last time they came to church.
These men and women fall and lie on the floor. Or, they have no way to get groceries or even go to physician appointments. They are truly in need of the attention of the church body. After all, we are called to “look after orphans and widows in their distress.” I suspect we could extend that to all the lonely and frail.
Of course, the other lesson is that those of us who hope in God and hope in the future should probably be more encouraging and supportive of men and women who wish to marry young and have families. This is not a failure, and it is not a sabotage of career and education.
Done at the right time, in the right way, it is a natural, healthy urge. It is also a necessity for the continuing function of our civilization and a ministry in the reduction of loneliness and despair. It helps allay the loneliness of youth (and too many young men and women long for spouses and children but delay those decisions more than necessary). The production of families is critical for the care of the aging, since their own children know them best and should (certainly as Christian believers) seek most to care for them in their advancing years.
Loneliness abounds. And it should be part of the work of the church to reduce it. How wonderful that one of the best ways we can do so is by growing families and loving those who loved us.