Living in Community With All Its Imperfections

I recently read a sad article about a recluse in Wayne, New Jersey was found dead in his home. The rub is that the gentleman, 80-year old Donald Domsky, was apparently dead for over a year, and nobody seemed to notice. Neighbors entertained a past curious thought about how a man who kept to himself was now never seen as opposed to rarely seen, and service and utility providers - ranging from mailmen to the water company - simply treated Mr. Domsky as a negligent account.

This isn't to peg all the blame upon those who didn't realize that Mr. Domsky was dead until a year after the fact. By all accounts, Mr. Domsky made absolutely no effort to integrate into society, outside from an occasional visit to a local restaurant. He was not connected with any social circles through a shared affinity to a hobby or sport, wasn't part of any sort of faith congregation and it seems that his relationship with his sister was distant, even though she lived relatively close. But it's sad that this man, who lived alone by choice, ended up dying alone.

Over the course of my life, I've encountered people who I might describe as 'difficult' and maybe a few that I would tag as 'insufferable'. But even the worst of these people deserve come kinship and friendship. There are few worse states than to be alone. Sickness and death are terrible, and people could argue that the sickness and death of loved ones are even worse. I'm not going to debate that. But there's a special place of agony for those who must endure suffering along and separated from the warmth of care and kinship. I waxed about how horrible loneliness was in a previous post, and I still feel this way. I'm the guy who gets sad when I think about the new kid at school who sits by themselves at lunch in the cafeteria. (This never happened to me, by the way, but I witnessed it and regretfully did nothing about it.) This is why in Amy Grant's song "Grown-Up Christmas List", she wishes that "everyone would have a friend" right up there with seemingly more cosmically important things like "right would always win", "love would never end", "no more lives torn apart" and that "wars would never start."

If friendship is so appealing, why does anyone make the conscious choice - as it seemed Mr. Domsky did - to opt of of it? I get that humanity is very imperfect, and the wounds and scars from people who love us and hurt us are plentiful. But it's tragic that anyone would opt for the emptiness of isolation instead of the joys of fellowship, even with all of the hurts and pains that come along with it.

To a Christian, your immerse yourself in community in part because God's commands us to do so (numerous references to engaging in the fellowship of believers and meeting together) and there's the hope that all of these relationships, while sometimes painful, are ultimately redemptive and part of God's broader plan. I can rest peacefully knowing that even the most painful relational rift is somehow going to be redeemed in God's perfect plan to make the me the man that God wants me to be and to ultimately shape the other person. This is why Christians can be (even though in practice it's still hard) "put themselves out there" and trust that God will work in friendships and relationships. It's only when fear overtakes that faith that we choose not to.