the peril of aloneness

He called himself "Question Mark".

He often signed his class work with the symbol ?. His classmates said he never made eye contact. He avoided their attempts at conversation.

His Aunt told A.P. News, "He wouldn't answer me, he didn't talk, he was very cold."

His sister asked her friend Dianna Hong, a fellow student to watch out for him.

“The very first time we went to his dorm room, we were like: ’Hey, I know your sister ...’ But he just nodded, and that’s it,” she said.

Cho didn’t respond to further invitations and e-mails, Hong recalled.

“He was very alone. He didn’t talk with anybody,” Hong said, twisting her hands. “Maybe we didn’t try enough. I guess these questions come up in hindsight.”

By now you have guessed that I refer to Cho Seung-Hui, the 24 year old Virginia Tech student who killed 32 fellow students in what is now believed to be a premeditated murderous rampage against a society he believed failed him.

The aftermath of the worst mass killing in American history by a single gunman leaves many question marks.

How could this happen? How can it be prevented? How could so many who were around this very disturbed young man not see that he was a ticking time bomb getting ready to explode?

There will be many who will weigh in on these and many other subjects that will no doubt be spurned by such a profound tragedy. The question marks will continue long after this tragic event makes it's way off the front page headlines, cable networks and talk shows.

Over the past several days I have read several articles dissecting the various theories of what went wrong with Cho Seung-Hui- his family background, his awkwardness, his apparent depression and mental state, his feelings of powerlessness as well as the renewed conversation of the state of immigrants from Asian countries in the U.S.

One poignant issue stands out to me.

Cho Seung-Hui was alone.

We say it so often in our church it is becoming a cliche. The one thing God said was "not good" at creation was that man was alone. (Gen. 2:18 "Then God said, "it is not good that man should be alone"). Modern psychology and sociology confirm that one of the very worst things that can happen to a person is aloneness.

When a person experiences isolation he or she begins to fall apart. Literally.

According to this research, a person's feeling of loneliness augments the kind of physical changes associated with aging. Your blood pressure increases, your body stops functioning properly when you are lonely. You become unbalanced and un-eased. It causes emotional and physical dis-ease.

Friendship is a lot like food. We need it to survive. What is more, we seem to have a basic drive for it. Psychologists find that human beings have fundamental need for inclusion in group life and for close relationships. We are truly social animals. (Hara Marano, Psychology Today, August 2003)

Psychologist John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago has been studying the effects of loneliness for many years. A few year ago he performed a series of novel studies and reported that loneliness works in some surprising ways to compromise health.

• Perhaps most astonishing, in a survey he conducted, doctors themselves confided that they provide better or more complete medical care to patients who have supportive families and are not socially isolated.

• Living alone increases the risk of suicide for young and old alike.

• Lonely individuals report higher levels of perceived stress even when exposed to the same stressors as non-lonely people, and even when they are relaxing.

• The social interaction lonely people do have are not as positive as those of other people, hence the relationships they have do not buffer them from stress as relationships normally do.

• Loneliness raises levels of circulating stress hormones and levels of blood pressure. It undermines regulation of the circulatory system so that the heart muscle works harder and the blood vessels are subject to damage by blood flow turbulence.

• Loneliness destroys the quality and efficiency of sleep, so that it is less restorative, both physically and psychologically. They wake up more at night and spend less time in bed actually sleeping than do the nonlonely. (as reported in Psychology Today)

Of course, the tragic story of Cho Seung-Hui is terribly sad and cannot be reduced to simplistic answers. This is a complicated issue for many reasons. The totality of his problem was not that he was lonely. The world is filled with lonely people who do not buy guns and kill people. His problem was sin. His problem was the same problem all of us were born into and that is that he was unredeemed and could not find identity and hope in any of the worlds idols and material promise. His life was a question mark and he never found answers.

I understand all of that. I am simply making the observation that in addition to this, Cho did not seem to BELONG to anything. Very few people even knew who he was. Even the tight nit group of Asian students on campus said that they did not know him. What we saw in this tragedy was in my estimation the combined affect of a sense of hopelessness and seeming isolation that caused an isolated, lonely detached human being to come unhinged.

It is a powerful reminder to all of us that only in Christ do we find answers to life's question marks. It is only in Him that we find conclusions to the deep searchings of the human heart. God made us for community. We need each other. The Body of Christ should be a place where no one stands alone.

In our study this week in the book of Hebrews, there is a passage that speaks directly to this issue:

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:23-25)

The writer of Hebrews recognized a direct correlation between maintaining one's sense of hope and the ability to cultivate healthy relationships. This is what we mean by biblical community. It is the reason we use language like "connection" and "community". It is what we mean by the journey. It is living in togetherness in the kinds of relationships in which you are encouraged, challenged, and "spurred on" to love and good deeds.

Despite all of the question marks these last few days and this tragedy has caused, one thing is even more clear to us today than before-

it is not good for man to be alone.