{"id":268,"date":"2017-05-10T12:02:52","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T12:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/?p=268"},"modified":"2017-05-10T12:02:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T12:02:52","slug":"one-thing-need-know-emotional-issues-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/nextsteps\/2017\/05\/one-thing-need-know-emotional-issues-struggles.html","title":{"rendered":"The One Thing You Need to Know About Emotional Issues and Struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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unsplash.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2019t deal with the underlying issues. We don’t need\u00a0another band-aid, we\u00a0need to go to the very heart of the matter, and that takes us back to creation of mankind in Genesis.<\/span><\/p>\n

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18<\/span>\u00a0The Lord God said, \u201cIt is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>19<\/span>\u00a0Now 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. <\/span>20<\/span>\u00a0So 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.<\/span><\/em> Genesis 2:18-20<\/span><\/p>\n

God waited to create Eve to deeply impress on Adam just how much he needed someone. We\u2019re not designed to do life alone.\u00a0<\/span>One of the very first eternal truths that God gives humanity is this statement: it is not good for mankind to be alone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

And at first, I thought I was going to Russia. Why? That was the first place I\u2019d 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\u2019s 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? <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0depressed.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t have it all figured out, but I knew enough that if I wanted to survive, I needed a team. I needed a family.<\/span><\/p>\n

The aloneness that this missionary in Russia experienced was the same aloneness that Adam felt back at the beginning of time and it\u2019s the same that inmates feel in solitary confinement. And to go back to what God said in Genesis: it\u2019s not good for mankind to be alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what makes this missionary guy different is that he was surrounded by people, but he was isolated because of language and culture.\u00a0<\/span>It is possible to be surrounded by a sea of people and still feel isolated and alone. Some of you reading this\u00a0are surrounded by hundreds of other humans, and yet you still feel isolated and alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of us place ourselves in solitary confinement,\u00a0but it\u2019s not a prison solitary confinement, it\u2019s an emotional solitary confinement that we\u2019ve willingly placed ourselves in.\u00a0<\/span>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\u2019s not good for us to be alone. When we\u2019re alone, bad things happen. God never created us to live in isolation. We\u2019re created for community.<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s the one thing you need to know when it comes to emotional issues and struggles: we’re created for community.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t deal with the underlying issues. We don’t need\u00a0another band-aid, we\u00a0need to go to the very heart of the matter, and that takes us…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[142,22,145,146,143,147,144,148],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-next-steps","tag-alone","tag-community","tag-depression","tag-emotional","tag-isolation","tag-issues","tag-lonely","tag-struggles"],"yoast_head":"\nThe One Thing You Need to Know About Emotional Issues and Struggles - Next Steps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The vast majority of our emotional issues and struggles that we face today can be traced back to an eternal truth we've forgotten from Genesis.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The One Thing You Need to Know About Emotional Issues and Struggles - 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