Playing Alone
By the late 1980s, it was clear that Michael Jordan would be one of the best players in the NBA. But, as good as he was, he was not a good teammate.He would dominate the court and try to win games on his own, not trusting other players with the ball during key moments.
Despite his talent, the Chicago Bulls were continually shut down by stronger opponents like the Detroit Pistons.
Jordan was good, but he was not a champion.
The turning point in Jordan's career came when coach Phil Jackson introduced the “triangle offence,” emphasizing ball movement and player spacing. Jordan realized that to win and fulfill his dream of becoming a champion, he needed to trust his teammates and get them involved.
This shift in mindset was crucial in transforming the Bulls into a championship-winning team and Michael Jordan into the Greatest Of All Time. Jordan's willingness to trust and embrace collaboration led to the Bulls' six NBA championships in the 1990s.
To become the greatest in the world, Jordan had to put the team before himself.
Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam, an American political scientist, has dedicated his career to studying the depletion of “social capital,”—meaning the bonds of trust and mutual responsibility that hold communities together. Through his research, Putnam noted a peculiar trend: in the 1990s, more people were going bowling than ever before, but fewer than ever were joining bowling teams. He published this and many comparable studies in his landmark book Bowling Alone.
Bowling Alone has since become a metaphor for sociologists to describe the rapid decline of shared activities, club memberships, and voluntary associations that once defined American community life. This atrophy of community is mirrored in the decline of marriage, family cohesion, and other forms of collective identity.
As of 2020, only half of American adults are married, down from 72% in 1960. More than half of those between the ages of 18 and 34 do not have a steady partner. More people are cohabitating rather than getting married, and the average length of cohabitation is less than one-third of the average marriage.
Living Alone
In the mid-1990s, the Secretary of State for the Environment in the United Kingdom, John Gummer, faced an urgent housing crisis. Demand had vastly outstripped supply, leading to a scarcity of affordable housing for large parts of the population.
Gummer took an unconventional approach.
He observed that a breakdown of marriages had led to a surge in single-person households, putting enormous pressure on the housing supply. In southeast England alone, 400,000 new units were needed. Attempting to address the root cause, the secretary gathered religious leaders from the communities and asked them, “How do we make marriage attractive again?”
Correct or not about the root cause, the issue wasn’t unique to the UK. In the United States, the proportion of single-person households has more than doubled over the past 50 years. The social implications are profound. A 2018 Cigna survey revealed that 46% of Americans feel “left out,” 43% believe their relationships lack meaning, and 54% think nobody knows them well.
Fewer children are living as adults close to their parents. One-third of Britons and Americans over the age of 65 live alone. That number climbs to 50% at age 85.
Struggling Alone
War is not new, but post-traumatic stress disorder among American servicemen is the highest ever in history. One curious part about this is that the vast majority of PTSD cases only surface months or years post-discharge.
In Sebastion Junger's book Tribe, he speculates that when a soldier returns home, they are moving away from the intense comradeship of the unit to the relative isolation of contemporary society. “A soldier returning from combat today goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses the collective good.”
“It is not good for a person to be alone.” (Gen. 2:18)
“The earliest and most basic definition of community, of tribe, would be the group of people you would help feed and defend. A society that doesn't offer its members the chance to work selflessly in these ways isn't a society in any tribal sense of the word; it's just a political entity that, lacking enemies, will probably fall apart on its own.” - Sebastian Junger
Selfishness and greed can be positive forces. These traits can drive significant results—but only when subordinated to a selfless purpose. If selfishness becomes the highest value in a community, that community is destined to fracture and fail.
The distinction is subtle but critical:
“We will build something great, and I will be rewarded in the process.”
“I will be rewarded - if we build something great.”
These two sentences may sound similar, but they embody entirely different mindsets. The former prioritizes collective success, with personal gain as a byproduct. The latter places personal gain above all else, jeopardizing the collective effort.
Praying Alone
Participation in church communities in America has been relatively consistent for most of the 20th century. Even through slight dips during the Roaring ’20s, the Great Depression, and the eccentric 1960s, the church generally held the interest of 60% of the population. The majority of Americans shared a moral code.
The first noticeable decline began in the early 2000s. By 2010, participation had dropped to 45%. By 2020, it had fallen to 30%.
But if participation in the church has changed, human beings have not.
Any student of history who searches the archives of thousands of years of civilizations will find that however different our cultures have been, there is one consistent: people have always sought God.
This is why modern culture often mimics the structure of religion in providing a sense of belonging and purpose. I believe the woke movement that has swept the globe over the last ten years is an example of this. Woke culture functions as a global community bound by shared ideologies and beliefs. While this can be positive, it lacks the selflessness that true religion demands - a tie to something greater than yourself, God.
A community without something greater than themselves leaves people serving themselves only - good, but not great - Jordan in the ’80s.
No Longer Alone
I have children. I know that lecturing my children has low utility. Children will rarely do what you say. But they will almost always do what you do. Parenting is about leading by example, not giving instructions.
Similarly, I will never know what is best for communities and cultures. I rarely know what is best for myself. But about one thing now, I have become very clear.
My keen readers, who have been with me for a while, likely know where I am headed with my last two letters. A direction I have been trending in for the last two years. I have, at times, written letters that read, “As you read this, I am presently suffering through a 100-mile marathon or taking the stage at my annual conference. Well, today, if you are reading this on Sunday afternoon, as you are reading this, I am being submerged in a frigid mountain lake, surrounded by my community, departing the self and committing to something greater.
Rising out of the water as something different. Something stronger.
Jordan in the ’90s ;)
Ok then. Have an epic Sunday.
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Jay
Jay, you touch on an important aspect of our culture. I will only address what I know best. I believe church attendance started dropping in the 2000s because the older generation started dying off. Unfortunately, the mainline Protestant denominations had long ago discarded much of the truths of Scripture and so lost the younger generations entirely. After all, if the Holy Bible isn't 100% reliable, why bother? Yes, some of the young go to "church" but those churches resemble clubs more than churches with their staged lights, pastor in jeans, singing choruses from a wall, and so on. It is designed as a "feel good" experience; rather than a life-changing encounter with Christ Jesus. Even some Bibles are suspect, as your quote from Genesis 2:18 has been made "politically correct" rather than translated properly. The term is "man" which makes total sense as only Adam was created at that time. He wouldn't even have understood the meaning of the term "person" as he was then the only one. Some "Bibles" try to make God male/female or supposedly emphasis Scripture geared toward certain groups. Marketing has run wild and where Christ here today, he would need to once again clear out the moneychangers from the Temple of God.
Seriously, Jay, thank you for your deep thinking about such a major topic. Not many writers, secular or religious, touch on some of the deep topics you tackle. It is much appreciated.
Jay, you cite a fascinating statistic that a stable segment of approximately 60% of the American population were church-goers for decades, then by 2010 that dropped to 45%, and by 2020 it had dropped to just 30%. Is there any other foundational and essential aspect of our culture that has changed so greatly in so short a time? I doubt it. This is a clear indication of something causing a sweeping change.
Recently, Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway cooperated to do a survey of thousands of people in the USA and the UK. They asked one simple question: "Does the Bible have ANY authority in your life today?" (This broad question allows for affirmative answers from even the most liberal of people who identify as believers... even those who do not think the Bible is infallible and those who think the Bible is just one of many paths to God... and other such heresies). Even with the question being phrase as broadly and forgivingly as that, the responses were abysmal. In the USA, only 30% of people responded affirmatively (which exactly matches your own 30% statistic as of 2020). In the UK, it was a shocking 5% ... only one in twenty UK citizens... thought the Bible had ANY authority in their lives today.
Jay, you are also correct in noting that "modern culture often mimics the structure of religion". Woke and Secular Humanist culture which worship Mankind - who is a creation, or hyper-environmentalist worship of the Earth - which is a creation, rather than worship of the Creator, are all "False Gospels" about which the Bible warns us. These are also a breaking of the first commandment, to have no other things as "gods" before the true Creator God.
The only issue I would take with what you wrote is the idea that in all cultures throughout time, "people have always sought God". In fact, the Bible tells us that no person ever truly seeks after God on their own... it is God who initiates the relationship and draws individuals unto Himself. What the vast majority of people actually seek is the perceived benefits of a relationship with the god they envision. This is generally a god who loves them unconditionally, and never condemns them for their sins, and never requires anything self-sacrificing of them. This is Humanity making God in their image (rather than God making Humanity in His image), and this is idolatry... though few have the discernment to see this in others, or in themselves.