Friends We Can "Be Stupid With"

Overcoming imposter syndrome as we extend and receive the gift of belonging

Thanks to social media, we are more connected than ever.

We are also much lonelier.

Social media does have its benefits. Like steak, wine, and politics, it can enrich our lives when used in moderation. But, similar to those things, overconsumption can harm us. Multiple studies have found that as social media engagement increases, so do anxiety and depression. Rather than fostering genuine belonging, substituting screen time for face-to-face interaction can feed narcissism, gossip, comparison, low self-esteem, and isolation. This is not surprising, as digital likes, follows, and fans are poor imitations of real, in-the-flesh friendships. Though they promise to cure our loneliness, they rarely deliver. Instead, they can deepen our sense of isolation.

But this loneliness we feel is not a flaw. We aren’t lonely because something is wrong with us. We are lonely because something is right with us.

Any loneliness we feel reflects the image of our Triune, communal God within us, calling us to connect, to know and be known, to love and be loved, to befriend and be befriended. Loneliness urges the withdrawn self to engage. It calls the online persona to become a person again. It invites the impostor to find healing through authenticity.

Loneliness begins to fade when the image-conscious self-editor, the retreater, the hider, and the poser in us begins a transition toward transparency. But transparency can be fearsome and disorienting.

In the movie Zelig, Leonard Zelig undergoes therapy and reveals a deep, underlying motivation for his chameleon-like behavior. Zelig changes personas based on the people he is with, blending into any environment, because he desperately wants to feel safe and be liked. This profound need to adapt and fit in reflects a longing for acceptance, a desire to be known and loved without fear of rejection.

Zelig’s (and our) insatiable hunger for safety and approval taps into the image of God in us and our longing to be known and loved, to be exposed and not rejected. It also taps into our fear of being cast out, excluded, diminished, and forgotten by the people we let in. Because ours is a world that includes judgment, isolation, and fear—because we have reasons to assume the world is not always safe—we are tempted to become social chameleons, blending into the colors and textures of whatever environments and communities we inhabit. We have a chameleon self for each situation—our work self, our party self, our church self, our at-home self, our Internet self, and many other selves that we “put on” to self-protect.

Like the chameleon, we can live our lives in chronic adaptation mode, tweaking our external colors and textures to blend in and belong and to ward off potential predators. Sadly, this destructive strategy appeals to our frail and fearful hearts.

We want to be vulnerable, to love and be loved, but we are afraid to risk exposing our true selves.

Yet, as C.S. Lewis wisely observed, to love at all is to be vulnerable. When you give a piece of your heart to another person, your heart may be wrung and possibly broken. And yet, says Lewis, the only place outside of heaven where you can be completely safe from all the dangers of love…

…is hell.

How can we find healing for loneliness? Where can we turn in our search for connection and a safe space to know and be known? In an age of church shopping, church critiquing, church splitting, and church leaving, it seems we have forgotten Jesus’ vision for the church. The church is not a social club for well-dressed posers; it is a hospital for the sick, and Jesus is the Chief Physician. The local church is meant to be a detox center for addicts—those addicted to drugs and sex, as well as those craving their next hit of porn, gossip, power, recognition, greed, or retail therapy.

Like any good recovery program, the church exists for intervention. It also exists for restoration, rehabilitation, and redeployment. Jesus’ vision for the church as a purposeful, powerful, healing, and safe hospital for the sin-sick junkie in all of us stands in stark contrast to our all-too-common view of the church as an optional, shiny social club (with its requisite dress and behavioral codes) add-on to our lives.

Membership in a community that presumes to call itself Christian means joining your imperfect self to other imperfect selves to form an imperfect spiritual family that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey toward a better future together.

As Bonhoeffer reminds us in Life Together, the one who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself, with all of its weaknesses and frailties, becomes a destroyer of Christian community. When we dismiss the Bride of Christ, we dismiss and become destroyers of Jesus’ first and foremost love.

We often tell ourselves that if only there were a church resembling the church of the New Testament, we wouldn’t be so cynical about church. But we forget that the church at Corinth was divisive, arrogant, dysfunctional, litigious, and sometimes adulterous, racist, and unjust. Yet Corinth received more redemptive attention and energy from Paul than any other New Testament church. As Paul beheld the wormy caterpillar that was Corinth, he also envisioned the butterfly. He seemed confident that He who began a good work in them would be faithful to complete it.

How do we experience loneliness-slaying love in the midst of an imperfect, messy community? It has been said, “Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard, hidden battle.” As we limp toward transparency, community, and friendship with our own fears and insecurities, we recognize that we aren’t alone. We are all more afraid than we appear, more insecure than confident, more weak than strong, more unlovable than lovely, more irredeemable than redeemed. When we see that we are not alone, we can reach out to one another. Don’t underestimate the power of words. While shaming words can drain the courage from a soul, encouraging and affirming words can restore it.

When you offer critique to another soul, do it gently.

When you offer encouragement to another soul, do it fiercely.

“But,” we groan, “there are so many things that bother me about this band of misfits, and there are people within it that I really don’t like.” But moving toward people we don’t particularly like can offer us our best opportunities to love. Biblical love is meant to reshape us into the likeness of the One who first loved us when we were not His friends but His enemies. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We love, not in a sentimental sense, but in a gutsy, costly sense, because He first loved us. We do not have the resources in ourselves to extend such love. We are resourced by another, by Jesus Himself.

Emerson once wrote, “The blessing of old friends is that you can afford to be stupid with them.” With Jesus, we can afford to be vulnerable because He has taken our shame away by moving our judgment day from the future to the past. His death, burial, and resurrection have established us as His beloved Bride, as those He is not ashamed to call His sisters and brothers. We are and forever will be the cherished and kept daughters and sons of His Father, who is also our Father. We are not a consumer good to Jesus; therefore, we are not consumed. We are His forever family—fully known and fully loved; completely exposed and never rejected.

We can afford to be stupid with Jesus. When we are, He will love us just the same. And it is from this secure place that we are now free, if we dare, to be a true friend to those who need a friend most.