Isolation

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  Psalm 23:4  NASB

With me – Paul Tournier gave us some important insights into the modern disease of isolation:

“Most of our contemporaries, dragooned and drowned in our mass society, caught in the vortex of speed, find themselves isolated in unbelievable spiritual solitude.  They have no one with whom to share their secret burdens.  Everyone is in a hurry, caught in the superficiality of a mechanized society.”[1]

“How many people have confessed to me that at certain moments in their lives they have been afraid of themselves, afraid of the forces at work within them, of their instincts, their desires, their feelings, and of the action of which they felt themselves capable!  It seems, then, that if these forces had in fact been less powerful, those people would have been more ready to let them show themselves.  Excessive reserve may be a sign of excessive ardor.”[2]

Perhaps you’ve had these experiences, those times when you’ve felt that no one, not a single living person, really understands who you are.  Perhaps you’ve felt that you don’t even understand yourself, that there are times when you’re shocked by things you’ve thought or done, as if you were really someone else on the inside.  Paul tries to express these feelings in that famous passage in Romans 7.

“For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate”  (Romans 7:15 NASB).

A statement like that sends chills through us.  Why? Because we so easily identify.  We want to think better of ourselves, but in the dark we confront the stranger in us.  And we don’t have anyone to talk to.  We’re afraid of what we might say.

Tournier digs deeper into this morass.

“We are controlled by feelings, not by logic, though we fondly imagine that we are being guided by our reason.  What happens in fact is that reason supplies the arguments with which to justify our behavior.  We appear to be logical, but are thoroughly illogical.  That is one more contradiction.”[3]

Now we know why Psalm 23:4 is psychologically important.  The valley of the shadow is within.  We can’t avoid walking through it.  And what we need more than anything else in this valley is the assurance that He is “with me.”  ‘immādi’—a combination of an assumed root (ʿmm) and the personal pronoun ʾănî.  In my view, the importance of this word can’t be overstated, not only because it directly addresses the spiritual solitude so rampant today but also because of its derivatives, namely, ʿimmānûʾēl and ʿam (kinsman).  To be “with me” is to be in the presence of a Redeemer and a kinsman.  That’s what we so desperately need, not just another person but rather someone who has the heart of a savior and who shares our same cultural DNA.

Topical Index: ‘immādi’, with me, shadow, Tournier, isolation, Psalm 23:4

[1] Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, p. 38.

[2] Ibid., p. 44.

[3] Ibid., p. 52.