I Enjoy Being Alone — Is That Unloving?
00:00:00.000 | Well, we've addressed the challenges of being a Christian loner in APJs 109 and 212.
00:00:10.220 | A lot of helpful counsel can be found in that pair of episodes, APJs 109 and 212.
00:00:15.520 | A listener named Brian heard them and writes in to us with a question that complements
00:00:19.660 | what has been addressed previously in those two episodes.
00:00:22.120 | Brian writes this, "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:25.080 | What would you say is the difference between being a loner who is a Christian and a loner
00:00:29.320 | who fails to love the brothers?"
00:00:31.960 | As John puts it in 1 John 3:14.
00:00:34.480 | Is that the same thing?
00:00:35.740 | Is being a loner the same thing as being an unloving person?
00:00:41.320 | How would you work through this, Pastor John?
00:00:43.320 | Well, as often, let's start with a definition.
00:00:46.680 | We can't talk about what we don't know what we're talking about.
00:00:49.800 | So here's my definition.
00:00:50.800 | I'm just going to choose one of loner.
00:00:53.960 | A loner is a person who is quite comfortable being alone.
00:01:00.560 | He's comfortable reading a book in the evening with nobody else in the apartment.
00:01:05.800 | He's comfortable spending time on his woodworking in the garage with nobody else around.
00:01:11.440 | She's comfortable working in the kitchen or on her handwork or hiking in the mountains
00:01:16.540 | without any friends around.
00:01:18.940 | So that's what I mean by loner.
00:01:22.640 | Whether because of genetics or upbringing or experiences later in life, a person now
00:01:29.680 | finds himself or herself to be quite comfortable being alone.
00:01:37.240 | And so the question is, does being a loner mean that you are a person lacking in love
00:01:44.860 | for other people?
00:01:47.200 | For a long time, I've been fascinated by the fact that human beings are by nature so different
00:01:56.740 | from one another.
00:01:59.240 | And what they're prone to do, what they're bent is so various because of their innate
00:02:07.920 | personality.
00:02:10.280 | And I've been fascinated with what moral significance this has since it seems to be
00:02:17.240 | so rooted in our personality and doesn't seem to change essentially when we become
00:02:24.920 | Christians.
00:02:27.400 | So let me give an illustration from the Bible of what I mean and how this fascinates me.
00:02:32.980 | In Romans 12, verses 6 to 8, Paul gives some instructions about using your spiritual gifts.
00:02:41.820 | And it's an unusual list.
00:02:44.380 | Let me just give you the three unusual ones that provoke me and fascinate me and set me
00:02:51.280 | to pondering about being a loner.
00:02:54.560 | He says, "Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.
00:03:00.820 | Give service in our serving, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who does acts of mercy
00:03:12.240 | with cheerfulness.
00:03:14.460 | Service, giving, mercy."
00:03:19.460 | Now what's surprising about calling those spiritual gifts is that all Christians are
00:03:26.340 | supposed to serve.
00:03:28.180 | All Christians are supposed to give.
00:03:30.060 | All Christians are supposed to be merciful.
00:03:33.740 | So what is Paul saying?
00:03:36.220 | I take Paul to mean that even though these three traits should characterize every Christian,
00:03:45.740 | nevertheless some people are inclined to them in an unusual way.
00:03:52.740 | It's just what they're like.
00:03:54.060 | That's what they do.
00:03:56.340 | It's just part of them.
00:03:58.500 | It's part of them.
00:03:59.500 | They're giving service.
00:04:00.500 | They're just giving to it.
00:04:01.500 | Giving, giving, and mercy.
00:04:03.960 | So here's the inference that I draw.
00:04:06.940 | There are real differences between human beings, including Christians, in how naturally or
00:04:14.100 | how readily, dispositionally, we are given to or not given to behaviors that are real
00:04:26.300 | Christian duties for everybody.
00:04:30.340 | And this fact that we are less given to certain good things is not necessarily sinful.
00:04:38.860 | It doesn't mean we're sinful, that we're committing sin when we don't do those good
00:04:45.860 | things to the same degree or with the same intensity with which other people do them.
00:04:54.060 | So you could be more of a loner, or you could be more gregarious or more sociable, and in
00:05:03.260 | either case not necessarily be sinning.
00:05:09.660 | That's what I infer.
00:05:11.100 | And when I ask myself why God designed the world that way, there's an interesting part
00:05:20.000 | of the answer in the way Jesus spoke about himself and John the Baptist.
00:05:26.140 | Here's what he said.
00:05:27.860 | "To what then shall I compare this people or this generation?
00:05:32.040 | They are like children sitting in a marketplace and calling to one another.
00:05:36.780 | We played the flute for you and you did not dance.
00:05:39.580 | We sang a dirge and you did not weep."
00:05:42.620 | And then he explains, verse 33 of Luke 7.
00:05:46.660 | "For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He
00:05:52.340 | has a demon.'
00:05:54.020 | The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him, a glutton and
00:05:59.420 | a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.'
00:06:02.580 | Yet wisdom is justified by all her children."
00:06:07.180 | So here's the point.
00:06:08.940 | This is an unbelieving generation, and God has exposed their hard-heartedness by showing
00:06:17.000 | them that whether a person like John or a person like Jesus speaks to them, they still
00:06:24.060 | won't believe.
00:06:25.660 | John is one kind of person, a real loner, not a party person at all, likes the wilderness.
00:06:31.620 | And he spoke the truth, and you didn't like it.
00:06:34.180 | You didn't like the way he said it.
00:06:36.260 | And then Jesus comes along, and he's very different from John.
00:06:39.900 | He comes eating and drinking.
00:06:41.500 | He's sociable, gregarious, attending parties, and you don't like the way he speaks about
00:06:47.220 | it either, which in God's wisdom shows you can't blame your unbelief on the speaker.
00:06:57.260 | God's wisdom is seen in sending all kinds of different people into your life in order
00:07:04.320 | to show that your rejection of them is really owing to your rejection of the message, not
00:07:11.420 | the messenger, because he has sent so many different kinds of personalities to you.
00:07:16.900 | You won't have the message, no matter what kind of personality brings it.
00:07:23.160 | So I'm inferring that one of the reasons God has designed the world with loners and gregarious
00:07:29.940 | types, among many others, is to make sure the world hears the truth from different vessels,
00:07:38.980 | different voices, different forms, different personalities, to make clear what the real
00:07:44.020 | issue is.
00:07:45.680 | So my answer to the question whether being a loner means being unloving is this—not
00:07:53.860 | necessarily.
00:07:55.640 | And I would say exactly the same thing about being a mingler or a gregarious or sociable
00:08:01.160 | person.
00:08:02.160 | Is that person loving?
00:08:05.220 | Not necessarily.
00:08:07.000 | People can need other people for self-centered reasons, and people can love solitude for
00:08:13.280 | self-centered reasons.
00:08:16.020 | So the question then finally is what makes the difference between a loner who is self-centered
00:08:22.880 | and a loner who is loving?
00:08:24.760 | And I would just say two things.
00:08:27.120 | One, the loving loner seeks to purge himself of every form of fear of other people and
00:08:36.960 | every form of indifference to the good of other people.
00:08:42.160 | Everywhere he sees the motive of fear, he seeks to put it to death by the Spirit, according
00:08:47.560 | to Romans 8.13.
00:08:50.120 | Everywhere he sees indifference in his heart toward the good of other people, he seeks
00:08:55.440 | to put it to death by the Spirit, trusting God's promises.
00:08:59.520 | He trusts the promise that God will take care of him, God will help him.
00:09:04.120 | He doesn't need to be governed by any sinful motives like fear of man or indifference to
00:09:10.840 | people's good.
00:09:12.640 | And one of the ways that we detect and put to death sinful dimensions of our personality
00:09:21.160 | like that is by regularly stretching our comfort zone and acting contrary to our natural bent.
00:09:29.840 | Now, I don't mean we cease to be who we are or that we constantly live against the grain
00:09:37.680 | of being a loner or being gregarious, but I do mean we test ourselves from time to time
00:09:45.920 | as to whether we are merely justifying a sinful behavior by a natural inclination.
00:09:52.400 | That's the first test of how we know we're a loving loner or a selfish loner.
00:09:59.680 | Here's the second thing.
00:10:01.680 | What distinguishes a self-centered loner from a loving loner is that the loving loner recognizes
00:10:11.440 | his natural inclinations, and instead of trying to totally be a person that he's not, he
00:10:19.520 | seeks with all his might and by means of all prayer and faith and creativity to make his
00:10:27.560 | loner personality a means of love.
00:10:31.320 | Let me say that again.
00:10:32.880 | To make his loner personality a means of love.
00:10:38.020 | If he likes being in the garage doing woodworking all by himself, then let him dream and pray
00:10:47.480 | and work towards ways of turning his lonely woodworking into a ministry for the good of
00:10:53.200 | others.
00:10:54.200 | If she likes rummaging through historical archives in the library all by herself, let
00:10:59.640 | her dream of turning her lonely research into a ministry for the good of others.
00:11:06.400 | In other words, you don't have to be paralyzed by the hopelessness of becoming a non-loner
00:11:16.440 | in order to be loving.
00:11:18.520 | You just have to really care about turning your loner bent into love.
00:11:26.280 | Make the loner personality a means of loving others.
00:11:28.720 | That's a great word.
00:11:29.720 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:31.120 | And Brian, thank you for this excellent question.
00:11:33.400 | Thank you for joining us today on the podcast.
00:11:35.620 | You can ask a follow-up question of your own like Brian did, or you can search our Growing
00:11:38.880 | Archive or subscribe to the podcast.
00:11:40.400 | You can do all of that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:47.160 | Next week we return to address a sensitive Bible question, a controversial question,
00:11:51.880 | namely, did Bathsheba sin with David?
00:11:56.120 | Was she complicit or was she taken advantage of?
00:11:59.720 | Does the Bible have any clues here on what happened?
00:12:02.400 | Pastor John says, yes, we have the clues in the text, and he will explain on the other
00:12:06.080 | side of the weekend.
00:12:07.080 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:08.080 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:12:08.080 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:12:10.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]