The Ancient Answer to the Modern Loneliness Epidemic

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health epidemic. Shockingly, social disconnection is akin to smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of leading to serious health problems and even death. A year later, in 2024, a report from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education found that 21% of U.S. adults felt lonely. Among those 21%, roughly 81% reported anxiety or depression, while 75% reported having little or no sense of meaning or purpose. Additionally, 65% of lonely adults said they felt fundamentally disconnected from others in the world.

All this is reported while we live in a world of unprecedented access. Right in our hands, through our mobile devices, we can know what our family members did minutes ago through Instagram stories. We can even see what our friends are doing in real time with a quick livestream. And yet, with all of this access, there is still a real crisis of belonging.

Where do we belong? Where do we fit in? And what will we do to fulfill the desire to belong and fit in? This is not simply a social problem; it is a spiritual problem. And the Bible addressed it some four thousand years ago in the story of a man named Abram (later known as Abraham).

All these questions must have been running through Abram’s mind when God called him to leave everything he knew, give his allegiance to Yahweh, and follow the call of God into the land of promise. The invitation for Abram was to find his belonging in a new family; however, that invitation would come with a cost.

While Genesis 11:31–32 suggests Abram was called from Harran, Acts 7:2–4 and Genesis 15:7 teach us that Abram was first called out of Ur of the Chaldeans. This is significant for several reasons.

We will recall that in Genesis 11 we find the story of the rebellion of humanity at the tower of Babel. Interestingly, the people who gathered in the plain of Shinar desired to make a name for themselves. They wanted to find their belonging through their own achievement, rooted in pride. Instead, they were humbled and dispersed. In a redemptive reversal, God calls Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans — roughly the geographical designation of a Babylonian city. At Ur of the Chaldeans, and also in Harran, the people worshipped the moon god Nanna, for whom they built a ziggurat temple tower that served as the god’s home. In other words, the people of these cities associated themselves with the household of the god they served.

It is from this context that Yahweh calls Abram out of the epicenter of rebellion and offers him a place within the household of God — along with an invitation to be a winsome witness to the surrounding nations in order to draw them back to God’s household.

However, Abram would have to face the cost of the call. To belong to God’s household, he would have to turn away from the gods of Ur and Harran. This must have been a significant decision, recognizing that it would mean leaving his own father and brother behind.

In researching the biblical theology of spiritual warfare, I’ve come to understand, and argue at length in The Unseen Battle, that this crisis is fundamentally about belonging: two competing households vying for the allegiance of humanity. As Genesis 11:31 notes, while Terah may have had an initial desire to go to Canaan with Abram, when he arrived at Harran and saw the temple of his god, he relented and settled there, a land that provided him protection. In the ancient world, leaving the geographic area of your gods was extremely dangerous. People understood that divine protection was connected to those gods’ geographical boundaries. In leaving Ur and Harran, Abram left behind his family and abandoned the household of other gods, following Yahweh alone into the wilderness.

There is a lesson for us here as well. The call of Abram was more than just a call to go to a strange, unknown land. It was a call to belong to the household of God. This call had spiritual implications — perhaps akin to a declaration of war. Spiritual warfare is fundamentally about obedience. Will we follow the call of God and leave behind the safety and security of our “other gods,” whatever they may be? This is the question Abram faced: will he remain in the household of the familiar gods he knows, or will he follow this new God who calls him to a new land?

This is also the question we face today. We live in a world that constantly beckons us to find our identity and belonging in created things — in counterfeit households that promise fulfillment but leave us unsatisfied. The great deception is that the enemy preys on a good and honest desire to belong, but he directs that desire toward things that will not bring fulfillment but will bring deeper loneliness, anxiety, and internal chaos.

However, the promise God made to Abram is exactly what was fulfilled by the victory of Jesus on the cross. As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:19–22:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The Jew/Gentile distinction first emerged in the aftermath of Babel and the call of Abram. It was to Abram that a covenant promise was made that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Today, the same invitation awaits us. But it comes with a cost. It requires a transfer of allegiance. Just as Abram turned away from the gods of his family, we will face the same choice and must accept the cost that comes with it.

It will likely look different for each of us. It may mean maintaining boundaries with family members who are not believers. It may mean releasing friendships that are not drawing us into deeper godliness. It may mean that our commitment to Jesus challenges our political persuasions. Ultimately, the call to belong to the family of God requires us to rightly order our allegiances, placing our primary allegiance to King Jesus above all others. The household of God, the fulfillment found in the body of Christ, and the sufficiency of the Spirit are the answers to the desperate desire to belong. 

Joel Muddamalle, PhD Drawn from content in The Unseen Battle and the NIV Application Bible.