Why We Fear Closeness

People who build close friendships experience great pain because it’s part of the package of friendship. When you build deep connections with people there is always the potential of being wounded by them, or the loss when they are gone. Every person we build friendships with will suffer loss because we all are destined to die. Physical death causes great pain if there was also great love connected with that relationship. It shows the value we attributed to that life. What’s worse is if the friendship we built over time ends up betraying our trust and then the loss is doubly painful.

The question, is why do we set ourselves up for such pain? The reason is because loving relationships make our lives rich and full. Without them we are less than God designed us for. We could play it safe and insulate ourselves from such pain, but then we would starve our selves from the very reason we live. We were made for relationship and part of that package is pain as well as great joy. It would be nice if we could only have joy from our friendships, but then that’s not reality but pure fantasy.

Over my years I have experienced great pain and sorrow over people I tried to build friendships with who ended up wounding me or betraying me. Such is the nature of building friendships. The good part is I value the ones who are still friends after many years; more because of the loss I experienced from others.  In it all God has made me a better person because of those wounds.

When you read the prophecies about the coming Messiah it’s easy to skip over the reasons for the definition of the type of experiences the Messiah would have, namely sorrow.

Isaiah 53:3

He was despised and forsaken of men, a “Man of Sorrows” and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Jesus was and is the total reflection of who our Heavenly Father is. One of the greatest events within the creation of humanity was man’s betrayal in his relationship with God in the book of Genesis. Although God provided for Adam and Eve a perfect life full of abundance they rejected his loving kindness for a lie. Satan lied about God’s intentions and they believed Satan, who provided nothing for them, and in exchange lost so much of what God had provided.

John 1:10-12

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. 

Scripture fully reveals the pain God felt over man’s rejection of his love when he was ready to flood the earth  during Noah’s day. Man had become so like their adopted Father Satan that scripture said the thoughts and intentions of their hearts were only evil. I don’t think we really comprehend the pain that God felt from humanity’s betrayal.

Genesis 6:6

So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them. 

By the time Jesus showed up there had not been a prophecy in Israel for 400 years.  That means the desire for relationship with God was so damaged it took a special, tangible human way for the “Broken Heart of God” to be revealed. That is why God sent his only Son. Isaiah the prophet was given a prophecy about the coming Messiah some 750 years before Jesus was ever born to try to prepare humanity to once again have true intimacy with God.

What seems strange to us, and the world, is that Jesus would choose twelve disciples to become Jesus’ closest friends. In doing so God was once again setting himself up for great pain. That’s why Isaiah prophesied he would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We are wounded most by those we become closest to.  We all know the disciples betrayal running from Jesus at his greatest need in the garden of Gethsemane. We often focus on Judas, but the other eleven betrayed him as well.

Matthew 26:36-38

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go and pray over there.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” 

These men who had walked with Jesus for three and half years would end up being the ones that wounded Jesus the most, creating the greatest pain for Jesus. That pain that Jesus was experiencing was multiplied because here were men who should have stood by him but did not. These twelve had experienced the best relationship on earth and yet in a brief moment of time threw it away because of fear. These men who had experienced the power of God because of their relationship with Jesus, the power to heal the sick and cast out demons, now wounded the one who believed in them the most.

Mark 14:50

Then they all forsook Him and fled.

If one of our close friends betrayed us the pain would be enormous, but to have twelve run from you at your darkest hour is unimaginable. Yet Jesus still chose to make them his closest friends on earth. Jesus saw the value these twelve would make in own personal life, and all those who would trust Jesus as their redeemer in future. That is one of the reasons we see the tremendous value in who Jesus is. He loved even when it would cost him dearly. He sacrificed for the sake of others knowing that his Heavenly Father would cause great good to come from building such intimate friendships.

When we read quotes of everything working for our good like in the book of Romans it is so easy to believe this verse protects us from harm but it does not. Love didn’t shield the Father when he built a relationship with Adam & Eve, and it didn’t shield Jesus when he chose the twelve. Neither will it shield us from the potential pain of investing in others as well. What we can hold onto is the promise that our Heavenly Father will make our life pay off in the long run. That allowing people to get close to our hearts and become our friends will yield great goodness in this world in spite of the potential pain.

Romans 8:28

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 

No one starts a friendship with others and hopes to experience pain because of it. No one has children with the hope of experiencing pain because of it. We build families and relationships because we were created to experience love, just like our Heavenly Father and like Jesus did. We build friendships because we embrace the purpose for which we were created and born, and in that design we embrace the belief that our investment in children and others will pay off in the end.

Don’t hold your love from others because of the fear of pain. Pain is part of life and is inevitable in many relationships. You can’t hide from it and you can’t run from it, but you can let it teach you the value of your investment just like God has done and continues to do with all of us each and every day of our lives.    

Questions:

1) Were you surprised when friendships hurt you? God promises us he will never leave us or forsake us when that happens if we trust him with that pain. (Heb 13:5)

2) Have you allowed the pain of past relationships keep you from building new friends? Don’t let the enemy of your soul keep you from your God given design to build friendships.

Pastor Dale