Why Being Alone Is So Deadly

Where He Is

My family and I regularly fend off grizzly bears.

In our imaginations, that is.

We recently became engrossed in the hit TV series Alone. Let me recommend it, if you haven’t seen any of this extraordinary experiment in human endurance. The show involves individuals being dropped into a remote location simultaneously but separated from each other, and all given the task of surviving in the wilderness for as long as they can, completely alone. Each one receives a camera on which to record daily life. The environment might be stunningly beautiful, but it is also incredibly unforgiving, with grizzly bears, mountain lions, poisonous plants, and freezing weather the only companions. The person who survives alone for the longest time wins a large cash prize. Of course, you can guess what happens: one by one, in different ways, the competitors succumb to the elements, and the experience becomes too much, the dangerous adventure ends, and they radio in to say they cannot carry on. They are soon rescued and taken home to safety.

Part of my family’s enjoyment in watching is our poking fun at one another about who among us would be the least likely to win, for all sorts of reasons. Some of us are scared of flies, for instance, never mind giant bears; some of us are possessed of a sheer inability to not be talking all the time to someone else, unless asleep (and even then we’re not always sure the talking stops). We each think we would be the last one standing, and everyone else thinks we wouldn’t last one night.

You need to know, however, that the folks taking part in the TV show are first-rate survival experts. I get fed up if I get cold and hungry on a long walk in the park, but the Alone participants are not like me. These are people who know how to hunt, trap, kill, start fires, build shelters, insulate against wind and water and ice and snow, and survive against all the odds. And yet—and here is what makes the show so compelling—one by one, slowly, they all begin to unravel because of the sheer brutal effect of being in a dangerous place entirely alone. Some begin to revisit past griefs and talk to the camera about unresolved relational wounds; some even begin to look less and less human as self-care becomes almost impossible and they struggle to find food; all begin to talk openly about their loved ones at home. In the comfort of our living rooms, with our nearest and dearest, we get to observe the chasm that opens up in the human soul as a person grapples with the pitiless existence of being completely and utterly on his or her own.

The show immerses us firsthand in the fact that to be alone— really, truly alone—is one of the greatest hardships a human being can ever bear. A long-running study in loneliness conducted by Harvard University recently concluded that “loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”¹

This is why the confession of faith that comes in this middle section of Psalm 23 is so beautiful:

I will fear no evil,
     for you are with me. (Ps. 23:4)

David expand on some concrete elements of the shepherd’s presence that put strength into his heart (the rod and the staff in the shepherd’s hands), and these too are part of why he is unafraid. But for now, just linger with me in the riches of the simple fact of the shepherd’s presence.

It is an astonishing thing to be walking through a valley of deep darkness and to not fear it for the simple reason that you know you do not walk it alone.

Remember that this is one of the three great confessions in Psalm 23 that are its thumping heartbeats—“I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1); “I will fear no evil” (Ps. 23:4); “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Ps. 23:6)—and it is at this point, for the very first time in the psalm, that we move from hearing about the shepherd to speaking to the shepherd. We transition from the third person (“he”) to now addressing him directly in the second person (“you”). The meaning of the words, which I think we just intuitively sense, is that it is one thing to be able to say that someone is with me but quite another thing to be able to turn toward that individual and address him personally by saying, “You are with me.” If I speak in the third person, it is possible that I have known the benefits of the shepherd by being one sheep among many in the flock, and of course that is precious. But by speaking in the second person, aren’t we subtly aware of an intimate deepening of the relationship?

It is an astonishing thing to be walking through a valley of deep darkness and to not fear it for the simple reason that you know you do not walk it alone.

It is somehow as if all other sheep are not really in the frame at this moment. The individual relationship that has been presumed and implied all the way through now takes center stage for this central confession of faith to resound so clearly: this is between you and me, personally, and the deepest comfort I have is that you are with me.

The comfort of the good shepherd’s presence is all the more wonderful when we take seriously the reality of the darkness and the presence of evil. It is very important to be clear that David is not saying that the presence of the shepherd removes evil or eradicates darkness, as if being able to say “you are with me” means that the room is now somehow filled with light and happiness. No, the point is that because “you are with me,” I will not fear the very real darkness and the very real evil I am facing.

The comfort is the presence of the shepherd in the midst of the danger rather than the comfort of the removal of the danger. This is not an insignificant point. Here is one place where, with the greatest respect, we should differ with Charles Spurgeon in some of his comments on this verse. It might preach to say, as Spurgeon does, that shadows cannot bite or kill or destroy, and that for there to be a shadow at all there must be a light, a sun, creating the shadow—and so, “Let us not, therefore, be afraid.”²

But we should notice, of course, that this inverts the meaning of the verse. It is not helpful to deal with the meaning of the metaphor by explaining other things that might be true about the metaphor in general but are clearly at odds with this use in particular. Psalm 23:4 does not counsel that the reason for lack of fear lies in the true nature of shadows; on the contrary, its assumption, I think, is precisely that shadows can be genuinely terrifying places full of grotesque evil, maybe even catastrophic danger, and yet the reason for not fearing is precisely because of who is there with us.

David is not reflecting on the truth about shadows; he is proclaiming the truth about his shepherd. The reason for not fearing resides in who the shepherd is, where and how the shepherd leads, where the shepherd is, what the shepherd holds in his hands, how he welcomes, what he sends, and where he invites. This is the comfort of being in the presence of true strength that is now turned toward me with personal and individual attention to do me good by providing for my every need at every point on my long journey home.

It can do immense damage to frightened sheep to tell them that the presence of the Lord Jesus in their lives should mean the end of danger or the absence of horrifying shadows. John Calvin is a better guide here than Spurgeon. Calvin realizes that the confession “I will fear no evil” actually receives its beauty from the fact that, if left to his own devices, David would be very afraid. It’s a lovely point, full of profound understanding of the frailty of the sheep in the valley. Calvin looks ahead to the rest of verse 4 and reasons that if the shepherd’s rod and staff “comfort” David, then “what need would he have had of that consolation, if he had not been disquieted and agitated with fear?”³ Indeed, Calvin goes so far as to suggest the sense must be that David had been “afflicted with fear” but that what he is relaying here is his own personal experience of what it felt like to him to learn to “cast himself on the protection of God.”⁴ In other words, David has taken his natural fear to God. The picture is of the sheep trembling in the valley with danger on every hand, but then the sheep hears the shepherd’s voice and remembers the shepherd’s presence and feels the shepherd’s tools, and the sheep calms. Only then is it true that the sheep need not fear.

This article is adapted from The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host by David Gibson.

Related Articles