If solving emotional issues was as simple as popping a pill, we all would have been cured years ago. Pills work for some, but usually they mask the symptoms and they don’t deal with the underlying issues. We don’t need another band-aid, we need to go to the very heart of the matter, and that takes us back to creation of mankind in Genesis.

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. Genesis 2:18-20

God waited to create Eve to deeply impress on Adam just how much he needed someone. We’re not designed to do life alone. One of the very first eternal truths that God gives humanity is this statement: it is not good for mankind to be alone. 

I saw this vividly when I was in college. After I was finished with college I decided to serve overseas as a missionary. Through the organization I went with, I had a choice of where to serve. There were hundreds of job openings overseas and other than Antartica, I could pick my continent.

And at first, I thought I was going to Russia. Why? That was the first place I’d gone to overseas a few years back with my college. I spent a month in Russia, most of the time in St Petersburg but also in Moscow. It was a fascinating culture to me. And what’s even better, when we were in Russia we met a missionary, a missionary who was a college grad and in literally the same program I was about to do. And when I chose my overseas assignment, I literally could have chosen his assignment. But I never even considered it. Why?

Because when we went and worked with for a month, I saw how miserable and depressed he was. He was alone. Sure, he was surrounded by people, but there were no Americans in the town he worked in. He had to support, no community. He was isolated, and by the time we got there, he was clinically depressed.

And that always stuck with me. So when I chose where I went, I specifically looked for a place where there was a team of missionaries going too. I didn’t have it all figured out, but I knew enough that if I wanted to survive, I needed a team. I needed a family.

The aloneness that this missionary in Russia experienced was the same aloneness that Adam felt back at the beginning of time and it’s the same that inmates feel in solitary confinement. And to go back to what God said in Genesis: it’s not good for mankind to be alone.

But what makes this missionary guy different is that he was surrounded by people, but he was isolated because of language and culture. It is possible to be surrounded by a sea of people and still feel isolated and alone. Some of you reading this are surrounded by hundreds of other humans, and yet you still feel isolated and alone.

Many of us place ourselves in solitary confinement, but it’s not a prison solitary confinement, it’s an emotional solitary confinement that we’ve willingly placed ourselves in. I would make a strong argument that the majority of emotional issues and struggles that we face can be traced back to isolation and lack of community. It’s not good for us to be alone. When we’re alone, bad things happen. God never created us to live in isolation. We’re created for community.

That’s the one thing you need to know when it comes to emotional issues and struggles: we’re created for community.