“There are many ways to destroy a person, but one of the simplest and most devastating is through prolonged solitary confinement.” These are the opening words of Lisa Guenther’s profound and challenging book, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives. Guenther examined the experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Solitary confinement undermines a prisoner’s sense of identity and ability to understand the world. They are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis. The confinement also adversely impacts physical health, increasing a person’s risk for a range of conditions, including fractures, vision loss, chronic pain, hypersensitivity to sounds and smells, and problems with attention, concentration, and memory. There may be hallucinations, paranoia, poor impulse control, social withdrawal, outbursts of violence, and psychosis. Yes, solitary confinement, whether in prison or in life, is very destructive. It is, as Guenther argues, a violent attack on the structure of being itself.
It is not only prisoners in solitary confinement that suffer the consequences of isolation. We live on a planet with more than eight billion people, and yet loneliness is a pervasive source of human suffering in the world today. Loneliness is so acute that the British government took the drastic action of appointing Tracey Crouch as the nation’s first Minister of Loneliness in 2018. According to research, loneliness damages your health by raising the levels of stress hormones and inflammation, which in turn increase your risk of heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, dementia, and even suicide. Whether in a maximum-security prison cell or in the crowded intersection of London’s Piccadilly Circus, isolation and alienation are ruling powers of this present darkness, a spiritual host of wickedness. Leaders are called to lead the way in overthrowing the dominion of loneliness by acts of welcome and embrace, and this is why Proverbs seeks to make you wise when it comes to friends, foes, and neighbors.
The fact that Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in 1936 and has remained to this day a perennial best seller illustrates our longing for friends. We humans are, above all things, social beings. Unfortunately, we have become proficient at categorizing and commoditizing our social networks and are poor at building relationships.
As a ministry leader, you do not get to choose who you lead… However, when it comes to friends, it is a different story. When it comes to choosing friends, you can be picky…
It is hard to overstate just how important your friends are. Their influence on your thinking and behavior shapes your character. Your friends can build you up or tear you down. They make you, or they break you. If you walk with the wise, you will become wise (Prov 13:20), and if you walk with fools and the wicked, you will follow the path of destruction (Prov 12:26). The quality of your friends makes you better or worse. One of the most powerful ways to change your life is to upgrade your friendships. You may only be a few friends away from the breakthroughs you need.
Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?
—Proverbs 20:6
J.R.R. Tolkien captures the beauty and strength of friendship in The Lord of the Rings. Every time Frodo tries to go alone in his quest to destroy the ring of power, his friends refuse to let him. At the beginning of his quest, he tries to slip out of the Shire unnoticed, only to discover that Merry and Pippin have conspired with Sam to go with him, and not only that, but they have also known about his secret ring for some time. Frodo did not know if he felt angry, amused, relieved, or merely foolish at this discovery. Sam reminded Frodo of Gandalf’s words that he was not to go alone; he was to take with him someone he could trust. Frodo replied, “But it does not seem I can trust anyone.” Merry responded,
It all depends on what you want. You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin—to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours—closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.
Faithful friendship is an underlying theme within Tolkien’s saga, whether it was when Frodo attempted to leave the Shire or when he broke away from the fellowship of the ring and Sam followed after him, refusing to break his promise of companionship, or when Éomer marshals the cavalry of Rohan with his stirring speech:
Now is the hour come, Riders of the Mark, sons of Eorl! Foes and fire are before you, and your homes far behind. Yet, though you fight upon an alien field, the glory that you reap shall be your own forever. Oaths ye have taken: now fulfill them all, to lord and land and league of friendship!
When Frodo and Sam are finally at the Mount of Doom, and Frodo is too spent to continue, Sam tells Frodo, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.” It is friendship that makes Samwise Gamgee the greatest hero among all the heroes in The Lord of the Rings.
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
—Proverbs 18:24
I ran my first marathon when I was 49 years old. I had taken up running because I needed some form of exercise that I could do consistently while also keeping a demanding travel schedule. After running for a few years, I thought, “I want to run a marathon.” Debbie and I lived in Athens, Greece at the time so I enrolled in the local marathon, “The Authentic.” The course is inspired by the Ancient Greek legend of Pheidippides, a messenger who is said to have run from Marathon to Athens to bring news of the Greek victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. It starts in the city of Marathon (yes, that’s where the name comes from) and continues for 26.2 miles (42.2 km), ending in the old Olympic Stadium in Athens. The course is uphill from the 6-mile mark (10 km) to the 19-mile mark (31 km). Yes, that’s 13 miles (21 km) running up a hill. It is the toughest uphill climb of any major marathon. I had made it up the hill, but I was hurting, exhausted, and barely moving.
Then I saw my friend Stelios yelling and cheering me on. At first, I thought, “Stelios, what are you doing here? Your wife is about to go into labor at any moment. Why are you here?” Yet, there he was, wading through more than 16,000runners, looking for me, just so that he could run into the street and give me a high-five and tell me I could do this, I could make it, keep going. Stelios cared enough about me to come alongside me and give me the courage to finish the race. His love and encouragement inspired hope in my aching body and weary mind. I finished the marathon, in part because of Stelios. He pulled something out of me that I did not know I had.
In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis notes, “In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole man to activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.” He goes on, “Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [J.R.R. Tolkien] reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.” Such is the power of friends. They illuminate facets of our lives that no one else can shine upon, and they make us better people because of it. This inspires hope that we are more than we can see in ourselves and that we are capable of change with a little help from our friends.
That’s what friends do. They inspire us; they cause us to dig deep, to keep going, to hold on to hope. True friends make you a better version of yourself, for “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Prov 27:17).
Ecclesiastes tells us:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Eccl 4:9–12).
This is from my new book, Following Wisdom, Leading Wisely: Proverbs as Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Leader. Available on Amazon or wherever you get your books.
Debbie and I serve as the FMI Global Associate Director for MENACA and Europe. We focus on cultivating disciples, leaders, and church planting movements.
