Dr Paul Allen

We live in a lonely and anxious age. Major studies reflect the same dismal trend: people are increasingly isolated. A 2021 study by American Perspectives exposes the sharp decline in friendship in the U.S. over the past 30 years. They found that  10 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men report they don’t have a single friend.  The percentage of women with more than 10 friends has dropped from 28 per cent to 11 per cent. For men, from 40 per cent to 15 per cent.  We’re more and more isolated, and we feel it deeply. According to another report, 61 per cent of adults in America feel lonely, and the rates of loneliness are highest among younger people. In the U.S., life expectancy has decreased for the first time in many years. This context makes the words Jesus said to his followers shortly before his death more urgent: “By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have a love for one another” (John 13:35). These words have permanently been binding on t...

I n the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus, the rich man, suffering in hell, asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his five brothers to save them from hell. His attempt, though not the core teaching of the parable, reveals a general truth, i.e., when a grievous thing strikes us, our natural instinct is to warn others, especially our loved ones, so that they would not suffer the same fate. For one thing, the culture of the rich man — different from ours — tends to encourage such an effort. In that culture, a person does not exist as an independent entity, but as part of a larger group. Within the framework of a shared identity, social obligation always preempts the individual’s self-interests. In the case of the rich man, he is obligated to alert his brothers of an impending terrifying doom. He does so without obsessing with the possibility of being belittled as to why he has landed in the awful spot in the first place. For him, social obligation offsets how...