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I decided to write The Power of One when I realized how entertainingly uncomfortable we are talking about loneliness.

I started asking people about their experience of loneliness. First, that meant losing eye contact. Then they would tell a story of the strange, and supposedly lonely, behavior of someone else. Typically, they were referring to an incidence way back in the past.

“How interesting,” I thought, and began experimenting with the topic. It did not take long to notice the expressions of relief on people’s faces when I changed the topic to traditional taboos – like money, sex, or power. They would much rather talk about things of that touchy nature.

My conclusion? That loneliness is the biggest taboo of our Western civilized culture. It is such a well kept secret that we do not even call it a taboo.

And my most pressing comment about this conclusion? That nothing guarantees us against loneliness.

We can be married or single. We can identify as straight or queer. We can think of ourselves as religious or not. We can come across as anti-social, or as some variety of the average social butterfly. We can have children, parents, or siblings, or we can have neither. The reality is that we all have a loneliness story to tell.

How strange. We all know it. So, why do we not talk about it?

Whatever our reason, there is one extremely interesting thing about this loneliness mystery. It has to do with faith.

Consider faith in the Christian God who created us, redeemed us, and now sustains us. If we are in a relationship with this God, why does that not heal our loneliness? This question drives the book, The Power of One.

To be a little more specific, I had three kinds of loneliness in mind when I wrote it. Romantic, spiritual, and social loneliness. Let me formulate my concern this way:

1. If God created us to live in an exclusive relationship with one other person, why do believers still experience romantic loneliness?
2. If God came into the world as a human being, in order to have fellowship with us, why do believers still experience spiritual loneliness?
3. If God is now making us one with himself and with each other through the Holy Spirit, why do believers still experience social loneliness?

In short: Why does faith not heal loneliness?

I consider this the one, single most important question of faith. Why? Because it points us to the mystery that faith enables us to find joy in the suffering that loneliness is to us. And when we find joy in suffering , my friend, we find freedom.

We may be entertaining in all the funny ways we avoid talking about loneliness. The joy we can experience when we talk truthfully about it, however, is of an entirely different caliber. It is what we want.

But you have to read the book in order to see how this mystery of joy can turn our loneliness into The Power of One.