ALONE

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the human to be alone.”

Have you seen Alone, the hit survival series on the History Channel, now in its eighth season?

Ten people compete for who can survive the longest in harsh wilderness conditions. They have limited supplies—rope, tarp, axe and bow— to build shelter and secure food with winter fast approaching. They forage edible plants, fish frigid waters and hunt quail, deer or rabbits, even musk ox, competing against predators like wolves and grizzly bears. Completely isolated from human contact, the person who survives the longest, usually 70 to 100 days, wins a cash prize.

Like all good drama, Alone welcomes us into each participant’s story; their family backgrounds; motivation for winning and how the prize will make life better. Video cameras follow every step, recording their thoughts and fears, their fight against loneliness, hunger and depression. We look on from comfortable couches, choosing favorites, making vicarious judgments; rooting for one contestant over another while scorning those who “tap out” early.

Alone combines uncertainty with danger, scarcity with urgency, turning Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need upside down from assumed self-actualization to physical necessity. Participants come skilled in wilderness survival, but few are prepared for deprivation, the stripping away of control, facing the fear of unknown—from what lurks “out there” at night to exorcising one’s inner demons. Each passing day depletes the will. Isolation devours the heart like starvation consumes the body.

Alone is a reverse Genesis story with the same conclusion: it is “not good to be alone.” On television, the deprivation of food clarifies the supreme value of relationship. Hunger for good intensifies one’s longing for family and friends. By contrast, every human need is met bountifully in the Garden save one: fellowship. No beast of the field or fowl of the air are suitable for human companionship. The human needs a “sustainer beside him,” fashioned in God’s image, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Genesis declares, “It is not good to be alone” because we are made for community, a reciprocal relationship between one another and the triune God.

Wilderness deprivation is found in the Gospel story as well. The Spirit descends on Jesus at baptism then immediately drives him out to the wilderness, a place inhospitable to humans and inhabited by wild animals. After fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus is hungry and alone. The tempter comes with propositions of food and power if Jesus will recant relationship, “if you are the Son of God. . . ” Jesus refuses. Angels minister.  God’s kingdom is proclaimed. Disciples are called, appointing twelve to “be with him” on his journey to the cross.

And I look on, from my comfortable couch.