Why You Have No Friends

Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus.

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai.

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[marianhreads]

The fact you are preaching about this means so much to me. Many people I meet don't see me as friend material but as a mere acquaintance or (worse) a means to some other ends. But the few close, selfless friendships I have are so dear to me, truly an answer to prayer.

[ThisGuy]

Between the title and the thumbnail when I opened this video, I was expecting to get absolutely roasted, but I was encouraged instead.

[pepeinno]

The theology of mental health is very much needed. How do we combat things like personality disorders? I believe connecting the two will ring more bells and bring people to God.

[rolandovelasquez]

Well said. In fact, loneliness could be termed the psychological/existential "silent killer".
In medicine high blood pressure and diabetes are known as silent killers. In life, loneliness can lead to sudden death - suicide. We are in the middle of an epidemic. We need to pay attention. Especially as "the salt of the earth".

[jackrosenbaum]

I took a class at my school last semester called "Friendship and the Christian life" and it was so informative on what friendship has looked like through the ages and how it should look.

[nathaliavmonteiro]

Love this!! 👏👏👏

Also, you give massive Mike Winger vibes 😂 I love Mike, and so now I love you and your work too Hahahah 😂

[KM-znlx]

I have been enjoying your messages so much! Thanks!

[Ant]

I don’t know if you have time but if you could do a long form video on this it would be great, with practical ways of how to deal with loneliness.

[matthewgregory]

This is so true!! And these short videos are pretty cool 😁

[marcuswilliams]

I wrote two papers on this. One was to help parent's help navigate questions of the friendships of their children, another on Christian Brotherhood and Male Friendship. I drew a lot from Aelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship and C. S. Lewis's essay on Friendship. I also did a podcost with The Gottesdienst Crowd on this subject. It is SUPER neglected. I don't knoe why I never saw this short before. What video is it from?

[Veo]

I live in a city suburb area. The unfortunate reality is that the way our cities are built often creates more loneliness and it's affecting people in churches as well. Even church members often live either by themselves or just with their family units and each individual or family unit lives about a 20 or 30 minute drive away from each other through traffic. It can make it difficult to really "do life" with anyone. Church can help because it has Sunday morning worship, Bible studies, serving opportunities, and things like that to bring people together, but I've often found that people in church use those as their social time and don't make much, if any, effort to really see each other outside of those scheduled church events. For a long time now, I haven't felt like I'm "doing life" with anyone, I and everyone I know just lives on their own individual islands and we occasionally get together on the same island to meet up for a couple of hours or so a few times a week, then we go back to our own islands. We're just small parts of each other's schedules when it is convenient. There's also the fact that friends and family frequently move away from each other, so close-proximity relationships with people often end up being very brief overall. At least, it can feel that way.

[jordand]

People don’t realize how much loneliness is increased with all the online shopping being done (and therefore no more brick and mortar gatherings where people are shopping together, wishing even strangers a merry Christmas etc.). I’m really hoping people wake up to this reality and that something can be done about it. Just one part of addressing the overall loneliness in society that we are seeing, especially in the west.

[ThoughtDecoder]

Absolutely! This is what Jesus taught. "How shall they know that you're mine but by the love you show one toward another."

[georgechristiansen]

Friendship is the highest calling there is and yet gets zero emphasis in the church.

It is also why church discipline is a nonissue. I mean, what does one lose? Certainly not genuine fellowship.

[rmk]

Loneliness is such a huge issue and many people seem to complain about it. But I know a lot of people who have tried to remedy it, to make sure that nobody is left lonely, but find that they are rejected. Obviously you can't make people want to be around you, and really we're looking for a sense of connection rather than just company, but do you think you could speak to why this rejection might happen even when people are trying to put themselves out there?

[kiwisaram]

Lived in the city and country. In the city I didn't know who lived in the apartment next door, but in the country we knew everyone who lived within 5 miles of us.

[rickthestick]

This coming year I'm putting a big focus on reading all of C.S. Lewis works (I've read the most popular ones already). One that I'm really looking forward to is Four Loves. From my understanding it'll touch on this theme a bit.

[ProfYaffle]

A single friend pointed out to me that in our church we do not even have a system to invite singles to Christmas Dinner. Non-Christians invited her on Christmas Eve.
What are we playing at?
Interested to know if it happens in other Churches

[bryanwalters]

Catholic Patristic historian Mike Aquilina just released a book about friendship and the early church. You should get him on Truth Unites. It would be a great topic to dive into.

[demyrahall]

I thought modeling Genuine Love was the entire point of the "church"!?!?!?!🤔