OPINION:
More than 1 million people talk to ChatGPT each week about killing themselves.
We’re facing a national epidemic of loneliness, depression and anxiety. Americans are in despair.
A lot of contemporary suffering is difficult to perceive, partly because of its causes and its symptoms. Our society makes it hard for people to like themselves. Many people, especially younger ones, have constant negative thoughts. Although these issues have always existed, the modern difference lies in the algorithmic function of social media, which pumps out endless messages that foster dissatisfaction and negative self-talk. This wrecks people and ultimately hurts society.
Relentless negative thoughts and self-perceptions can be erased through experiencing love from others and God, but they have to be seen and intercepted first.
That’s why loving our neighbors, and being loved by them, is tremendously important if we hope to change the future. Caring for your neighbor, in many important senses, looks exactly the same as it has always looked. It looks like what Jesus told us to do: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned, minister to the most vulnerable.
Thanksgiving and the holiday season in general are an exceptional time of year to make sure you’re aware of the people in your life and community, and then to act on that awareness to connect with and help them. By “awareness,” I mean an active, loving, intentional tuning in to the people around you, a responsiveness to their needs.
Pay attention. You’ll likely find new needs in your spouse, your children, even your neighbors. You’ll probably even discover your own needs, unmet and unrecognized.
This turn inward is important. The biblical injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself” is formulated that way intentionally. Loving others well requires intimate awareness and forgiveness of yourself. The better your relationship with yourself, the better your relationships with others.
Both loving yourself and loving others require deep awareness. When one is perfected, it improves and amplifies the other.
Set the phones and social media aside. Set your work aside as much as possible. Turn to the person in front of you and listen with your whole mind and heart. Make sure to spend time in quiet and prayer, seeking to be shown places in your community that need your time and attention — and places in your own heart that need time and attention as well.
Putting in the work on yourself and your own relationships has power beyond what most of us are willing to imagine. We can be the beginning of the end of the loneliness epidemic if we try.
If you know someone who is struggling, do what you can to help them. Listen. Respond. Seek to bear their suffering with them in whatever way they will allow.
The church where I’m privileged to pastor, Bay Area Christian Church, aims to cultivate a culture of awareness. As we paid attention to the needs in our church and community, we realized there were many individuals and families with disabilities who would benefit from not only inclusive church services but also opportunities to connect through social activities and sports. So we created spaces where everyone can belong and grow, because awareness should always lead us to love our neighbors.
Use this holiday season to reconnect with yourself, your loved ones, your community and the countless needs that get missed or ignored during the rush of the remainder of the year.
Grow in awareness. Grow in love. Grow in service. Help change the world.
• Russ Ewell is executive minister of the Bay Area Christian Church. A minister for more than 40 years, his teaching is rooted in providing hope for those turned off by tradition and is infused with vision for building the transformative church for which the 21st-century public hungers.
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