loneliness and faith

There was a report recently that indicated that people are more lonely than before, and that people who are members of a faith community are more lonely than others. I suspect that there are actually three reasons for this:

1. Lonely people will be attracted to faith communities. They present themselves as friendly, open groups, and so will attract people looking for friends.

2. People who become involved in church are likely to experience the problems of such a community, and therefore find that the surface community is not reflected right through. This means that many people within churches are still lonely, because they become alienated from others within the community.

3. There is a related aspect, that within most faith communities, the surface sense of community is so important, that from within admitting to being lonely is considered a failure, and so something that cannot be admitted to. So people don't admit within the community that they are struggling, so the community does nothing about it.

The truth is, I believe, that loneliness is a very serious problem in the West today (I cannot speak for other cultures), and yet one that is not talked about. I suspect that it is even more of a problem than this survey indicated - that people are, in truth, far more lonely than they are prepared to admit, even within communities, relationships, families.

So what is loneliness? It is not about having no friends. It is not about having no-one around you - it is quite possible to be lonely with a lot of people around, and with friends. There is something deeper than that. It is about not having people - someone - who accepts you, who can tease you and challenge you, but will accept your decisions whatever, and support you. It is about acceptance, not people. And acceptance is something that is, I think, less and less available. We all want to fit in, to be able to define ourselves by something.

Some people find the definition in a faith organisation, a church or similar. To be accepted in such places, it is necessary to conform to the standards and norms of that organisation. For some, this is fine, but for many people - maybe most people - fitting in is the contrary to true acceptance. If I want to fit in, I have to be the person that I am expected to be. Challenging the conformity means I do not get accepted.

Most critically, I have found, within any community, challenging the perception they have of themselves is always a way of putting yourself on the outside. Telling a community they they are not as accepting as they like to think they are is likely to be a good way to prove it. Telling a community that many people within it are still lonely is probably not going to win you friends.

Loneliness is at almost epidemic proportions. The faith communities, who are in a good place to address this issue, seem not to be. The disruption of other communities that we have experienced in the West over the last few decades does not give much hope for anything else to replace this. I cannot see an end to this epidemic. I cannot, therefore, see an end to the 14 people a day who take their own lives. This is a crisis, and we are not really addressing it.

Anonymity and Pseudonimity

Recently, I changed my twitter handle to my real name. I did this mainly because of a small poll @VickyBeeching did about how much people trusted other tweeters who didn't use their real name. It made me think.

I should point out that I was technically pseudonymous, not anonymous, because I always posted from the same account, under the same name, and I tended to have similar Schroedingers Cat related names across all of the forums that I post on. I have never had truly anonymous accounts, because that is always suspicious. I am always prepared to stand by what I posted, and apologise if it is taken/expressed wrongly.

The reason I started being anonymous was twofold: firstly, I met some rather deranged people on the net, and I didn't want them to be able to identify me. I was also aware that by being anonymous, I could post my thoughts and irritations without people in my church or my work being able to identify me. It gave me a freedom to express what I wanted to without fear, and, in various places, I have.

I should point out, in light of recent events, that this does not include being offensive or abusive to people without them being able to respond, it just meant that I could be more honest. There was never any intention to hide behind my persona online, just to enable me to separate the online me from the physical me - I won't say "real" me, because both of them are really me.

The reasons I have decided to stop are various, but one is that too many anonymous people use their anonymity to be abusive and offensive. I wanted to stand up against this, I wanted to be open about who I am, so that no-one would suggest that I was hiding.

I was also made aware that some people find that they do not trust anonymous tweeters as much as those who tweet under their real name. I have no wish to make people distrust me (for any other reasons than being an idiot). I do not want to raise anyone's anxiety levels unnecessarily. If the simple act of being more honest and open about who I am can help this, then I will do this.

It is also true that, having left church, I no longer have to worry about what others at church think about my comments. Over the years, I have also learned that there are areas I should not touch on in any online forum - any criticism of work situations or colleagues. There is nothing that I post online that should cause me any work-related issues, because anything that might I should not be posting anyway. So anonymity is not so much of a problem anymore.


But the other reason that I want to be more open about myself is that I no longer have a church community - in truth my online community and friends are all I have, and it is therefore important to be open and honest with them, to varying degrees. I sat in the Jesus Arms at Greenbelt this year on the Friday night on my own, but knowing that there were probably others in there - maybe others I saw - who I knew on twitter or Facebook or through the Ship of Fools. There were probably others there who were sat thinking the same thing. It is one of the core problems with online relationships and community that it can be very lonely if you don't recognise others.

I will still take care of my online profile - that is something everyone should do. But I will become a whole lot more open about myself, in places that I have not always been so candid. I may regret it, but I hope not.