Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh, sitting in the co-host chair today, and we've got a great conversation lined up with a very, very special guest. Becky Harling is with us, and she has written a fascinating new book about what it means to be lonely in the culture right now. She's written a brand new resource on this called *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*. That will be the topic of our conversation. Becky is an author, a speaker, and a podcast host. She has written numerous books, and she and her husband Steve make their home right here in Colorado with four grown children and a growing number of grandchildren in tow. Becky Harling, welcome back to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

Becky Harling: Thank you, Roger. It's great to be with you guys.

Roger Marsh: It's nice to make the connection, especially with a local author, but someone that I've known for many years and have the great privilege of having conversations about these issues. This new book is called *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*, and you talk about one of the times when you had this kind of come-to-Jesus moment where you realized that it seems like we've got all these different devices that connect us. You and I are connected on an app right now as we're having this recording conversation. We've got phones, we've got laptops, we've got tablets, all these different ways. My wife has a watch now, one of those smartwatches, and so she'll get phone calls or text messages. I call it her Jetson's watch. That just shows you how old I am, figuring that's the way they do it.

But with all those connections, you realized that the world is also getting lonelier simultaneously, and you had an epiphany with Steve not too long ago. Talk about that.

Becky Harling: I did. Steve and I are both in ministry. We were traveling around the world speaking, and between over a period of four years, we hit 65 different countries. I wrote five books, and the schedule was ridiculous. We were always racing through airports trying to catch the next plane. We’d come home and try to connect with our kids and our grandkids, which are very important to us.

But I wasn't getting time with my friends, with people that knew me for just being Becky, not because I write and speak and all that kind of stuff. I really hadn't had great connecting time with Steve, even though we spent time on the airplane. We’d get back on the airplane and we were so exhausted it was like, who feels like talking? We're just dead. I realized I was lonely, and I realized for me the first step was I had to slow down because I am racing through life and I'm not giving enough time to people that I love and treasure. I want to slow down long enough to enjoy them.

Leland: That's wonderful and it's life-giving. We're made for community. Scripture is replete with examples of why it's important to have those relationships that aren't necessarily work-related per se. And yet, as you're doing ministry and you're doing God's work, you're beginning to realize—Becky, are you an introvert, an extrovert, or an outgoing introvert? Do you like being around people as much as you guys travel?

Becky Harling: I do. I love meeting new people. Steve always says, "Beck, I think you have a sign on your forehead that says 'Tell me your story,'" because whenever we're on a plane, somebody opens up to me and tells me their entire life story. So I love that, but I also need time for the deeper people that I'm connected with. I think Steve and I are both pretty in the middle. We lean extroverted, but we definitely need that time to connect more deeply.

Leland: It's interesting when you talk about having that availability and you have that countenance about you where people say, "She looks like someone I can trust." But you begin to realize at the same time, not only is that a great ministry opportunity, but it speaks to the deeper need that a lot of people have. We're all going places. You're on a plane with several hundred people. You're in an airport with several thousand people. You're at an event speaking and doing ministry in these different countries that you've been to, and yet you realize that you're in a room that's packed full of people who are all very lonely.

And that's not just anecdotal from what you and Steve have been experiencing in your ministry. You've got US Surgeon General data to back that up. Can you walk us through a little bit of the science, if you will, on why we're so hyper-connected and lonely all at the same time?

Becky Harling: In 2023, the Surgeon General came out with a health report on this. It's interesting because loneliness is as dangerous to your health as smoking 15 packs of cigarettes a day. We were designed, like you say, for community. And yet, according to the Surgeon General, we are now in an epidemic of loneliness. One out of two Americans feel significantly isolated every single week. They maybe don't have people they would call in the middle of the night for an emergency. Maybe they don't have people that they're connecting with on a daily basis.

A lot of people say, "Well, that must be the pandemic." No, this has been going back several years before the pandemic. The pandemic was really the great revealer. It revealed to us that we need community and we can't isolate, but our growing isolation has been growing for a number of years.

I think in part because technology has increased. You would think it would be the opposite, and yet I just read a really interesting book this summer called *The Anxious Generation*. It's by a New York Times bestselling author. He is not a believer and states that in the book. His statistics are crazy about what cell phones are doing to us, what online connections are doing, and what social media is doing. And so, though people may be connected through all these resources, they're not really connecting face-to-face like God has called us to be. They're not doing life together.

Leland: Becky Harling is with us today here on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. Her brand new book is called *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*. It's interesting as you mention that statistic, Becky, because I was thinking about Lisa and I. We're a blended family with six adult children. They're all either millennial or Gen Z, and I don't know if I had a dollar for every time I heard one of them say, "I'm kind of independent, I like finding my own." They find these restaurants or products or whatever that they use, and the thing that drives them is "I want to find it on my own," but then they've got to make sure it's got 5,000 five-star reviews.

They're looking for that sense of community, but the thought is "I'm doing this on my own." I can imagine that one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat mentality. At some point, you realize you're going to rip your trousers. You have to either be one place or the other and not both. No wonder this younger generation is being referred to as the anxious generation. I'm sure we as adults who have parented these kids—and now they're in young adulthood—are feeling that loneliness, and we're feeling their kind of isolation from us. It just has a ripple effect, doesn't it?

Becky Harling: It really does. The way God designed us, He designed us for relationship. Way back in Genesis 1:26, God says, "Let *us* make man in *our* image." And so you have us being designed after the image of a triune God who has lived in eternal community forever, in close community. Then He goes on to say in Genesis 2, "It's not good for man to be alone." While we often use that verse for marriage, yes, but it's not good for woman to be alone either. We were designed and created for relationship.

Sometimes here in America, we're a funny group of people. Now that I've traveled all around the world, I realize how iconic we are as Americans, and we value our independence. But here's the thing: nowhere in all of Scripture do we see God affirming independence. Instead, God affirms interdependence. In other words, we're supposed to be doing life together because that's God's design for us to grow and be more like Him.

Leland: I think about that in terms of something like the Apostle Paul saying it's better for a Christ-follower to not be married, to be completely devoted to God. I wonder how many people would look at that and say, "Okay, I'm supposed to live on my own, act on my own, have a few friends at church, that type of thing, but I'm really supposed to be this lone ranger for God." I love the point you just made, Becky, and I want to underscore it a little bit: the idea that we serve a triune God. God *is* community. So He created us to live in community. And yet as Christians, how many of us find ourselves literally with friends that we only know on Zoom and Google Meet and Skype? As long as I see you—you and I have worked together before, but we've not shaken hands. We've not had a chance to enjoy fellowship. It's a modern working friendship, but it's not the same type of thing that you're describing where you say there are friends that I'm friends with and friends that I'm deep with. What's it been like for you as you're looking at the decades and the generations that you're seeing this impact? Talk about your anecdotal but still well-reasoned take on how loneliness has evolved in the culture.

Becky Harling: I look back on my childhood. Every summer as a little kid, I went into New York City to spend a week with my grandmother. I would go to her VBS, and I loved her VBS.

Leland: Where did you grow up?

Becky Harling: I grew up in New Jersey, but I would go into Brooklyn, New York. Here's the thing about my grandmother: it was fascinating to me. The thing I remember is every afternoon at 3:00 PM sharp, Aunt Isabelle would come over. Now, Aunt Isabelle was not related to us. In fact, to this day, I don't even know her last name. But we all called her Aunt Isabelle. My grandmother and her had coffee and coffee cake every afternoon at 3:00. They would spend the afternoon together, and then Aunt Isabelle would go back to wherever she lived every evening.

I look at that and I think how our society has changed. Who has time to have a friend that you have coffee with every single afternoon? Because with technology, we've become busier and busier and busier. We've lost something about living an unhurried life and just enjoying each other.

And so I'm trying to bring that back in this book. I'm talking about things like embracing humility and letting go of a critical spirit. If we look at our culture today, everybody thinks they're the expert on everything. Very few people come into a relationship or a friendship with humility that says, "Hey, I just want to learn more about you. I want to understand you. I want to hear your story." We have to bring some of these qualities back into our relationships and get off our cell phones. I talk about that a little bit in the book, the power of distraction and all of those things. It's getting back to core discipleship issues like hospitality that was so big in the early church.

Leland: I mentioned hospitality, the H-word in our family. I'm an outgoing introvert, and I don't do hospitality well. It's really difficult to do. I knew I was not called to full-time senior pastoral ministry. The senior pastor I grew up under, he and his wife, people came over and they played cards and made puzzles every night of the week. There was someone at their home. I asked him, "Leland, how do you do this?" He says, "Well, it's hospitality. That's just how we're kind of wired." But I wonder how many more Christians would have a more effective witness and healthier relationships if we were more wired to say, "Hey, let's have the so-and-sos over for dinner tonight," or like you mentioned your Aunt Isabelle. My kids grew up with an Uncle Curt and Aunt Lisa. They still don't know their last names. They know they're not family at all, but they were just friends of their moms and they kind of grew up with the family. Having those kinds of extended relationships are so very important. In your book, *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*, you really challenge us to do two things: first of all, cultivate deeper connections, but secondly, acknowledge the fact that loneliness and attention are the currencies of the day. It's really important for Christians to pick up on that if we are especially going to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Talk about that if you would.

Becky Harling: I will. One of the keys that I bring in right away in the book is this idea of humility. That goes back to the introverted-extroverted conversation. Yes, we're all called to hospitality. For an extrovert, that might happen four or five nights a week. But part of humility is understanding your limitations. You have to understand, "I'm not wired to have people over five nights a week." I lean more extroverted, but I'm still not wired to have people over five nights a week. I can have people over and I can invite them into my home for coffee or for prayer, but I have to know my limits. I have to understand where I stop and another person starts.

How this plays out in relationship to heal our loneliness is often times, when we don't know our limits, we try to fix other people or change them or change their ideas. God doesn't call us to do that. He calls us to love them and give them the Gospel of good news. But we really don't have an opening to do that unless we've listened to understand them first.

Leland: That's interesting. Lisa and I moved into a new community a couple years ago, and we started church shopping. I had been at one church for half my life, so church shopping was a thing. The thing that I was really taken with in an area where there were lots of churches to choose from, it was amazing how many places we were able to visit and literally drop in, drop back out, and not really have any meaningful communication with anyone because the church wasn't really equipped for it. There was nobody in the greeting pool that looked and said, "I don't think I've seen you before."

I think back to something my mom taught me years ago where she was in between services at church. My dad was the minister of music, and a woman came up and asked her what classroom a certain Sunday school class was in. My mom answered the question, and then my mom asked the follow-up question. She said, "I'm sorry, do I know you?" And she said, "Well, no." She asked, "Are you new to the church?" And she said, "No, I've been going here for three years." My mom said it really convicted her in that moment because everyone knew who she was as the choir director's wife, and this woman felt comfortable enough—she must have had Becky Harling's sign on her face: "Come tell me your life story." But she said, "I felt horrible in that moment because it was very humiliating for this person to come up to me and I thought, 'This is our church. It's not that big. I should be more in tune with other people.'" This is something we have to be intentional about, isn't it, Becky? Our natural tendency is not to reach out and try to help other people. we really have to make ourselves do it.

Becky Harling: If we're going to move beyond our loneliness, we have to take initiative, and sometimes we have to change our narrative. For a lot of people, they think, "Why would somebody want to get to know me?" or "If they knew my story, they wouldn't trust me," or maybe "I've been hurt before, I'm not willing to take a risk again." Sometimes we have to sit with those narratives and say, "Where's the truth in this?"

The truth is, if you're in any close relationship, at some point you *are* going to get hurt. We're married. At some point in our marriage, my husband's going to hurt me and I'm going to hurt him, but we still love each other and we move beyond that. In any church you attend, there is going to be church hurt. You're going to feel overlooked or undervalued or overused or underused or a million different things. But the church is still the body of Christ. It's still the place of belonging that God has designed for us. And so we need to be a part of that. We need to change our narrative and then we need to take initiative. I think for a lot of people, they're afraid to do that. And so I like to encourage them: take one baby step. Maybe it's reach out to somebody you want to go deeper with and say, "Hey, let's get coffee this week. Let me get your cell phone number so I can call you or text you." And then ask them their story. Listen to them rather than just telling them all about yourself.

Leland: Listen without lecturing, I heard it put one time. I thought that is so difficult for us to do because you mentioned the cell phone—and you're very kind to refer to it as a cell or mobile phone. Most people call it a smartphone. If I'm armed with a smartphone and a college degree, boy howdy, you're going to hear my opinion because I'm right, and I can find a thousand other people on the internet who agree with me. Therefore I *must* be right. That leads us to another phenomenon in the culture right now. If you want to cultivate connection in a world of loneliness, and deeper connection at that, we have to acknowledge the fact that we have become rather dismissive with people that we don't necessarily agree with—downright vicious to some people. "Not only am I not going to have anything to do with you anymore, I'm going to attack you somehow because let me let you know how wrong you are," without—I think Jesus said something about a log and a speck. Talk about why it's important for us to take a step back and ask ourselves questions like, "Did I really need to be that mean? Was that really called for?" Sometimes we have to have tough love with people, but sometimes we just fall into that same trap just like the world does.

Becky Harling: We do, and it's disturbing actually. I think that as Christians, we've thought we have the message of good news and that means we can shout at everybody and we can scold people. And here's the thing: I have never seen scolding someone else ever change that other person. Most people don't respond to that. And Jesus was pretty clear on letting go of our critical spirit because He said, "Don't judge."

If you look back on Jesus' life, He actually spent a lot of time with people that we maybe would call sinners, and it was the religious people that were giving Him a hard time. I think it's important if we're lonely to step back and think about how I come across to people. Do I try to come across as the expert, like I know it all? Do I come across as argumentative? If somebody has a different opinion than me, do I try to persuade them that my opinion's right? Is that helpful for the relationship? Because there are a lot of things that you're going to disagree on, and that's fine. The early church disagreed on a lot of things. You can love Jesus and be on two different sides of an issue, and that's okay. You just extend grace to each other and let go of the critical spirit. We are never more like Satan than when we're criticizing and accusing somebody, because that's his job. He is the accuser of the brethren. He doesn't need our help. We're to be like Jesus where we're loving people and loving them into Christ-likeness and listening to them and comforting them.

Leland: Becky Harling, that is such a huge point of contention, I think, for a lot of Christians. It's a great point to make, the fact that when you see the example of Jesus in Scripture, when He was dealing with the Pharisees, the guys who are trying to keep the law right down to the jot and tittle, He had contempt for them when they were doing it wrong, when they were misapplying it and hurting people, even to the point of being sarcastic with them on occasion. But at the same time, when you see Him confronting the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, this, that, and the other thing, He never once backs away from the fact that they committed sin. But the way He approaches them is so different. I wonder how many of us, because we get in the social media world and we like to see people—what's the term they use?—dunking on other people online. "Oh, well you said this, but oh, they got you there!" It becomes a part of who you are, and then at the same time we're saying, "Gosh, I feel so lonely. No one really wants to hang around with me. Gee, I wonder why." Maybe we do need to hold up the Scripture as a mirror and say, "Well, let's ask that question." Becky Harling, what's a good first step for someone who's facing that right now and says, "I need to make some changes"?

Becky Harling: I'm going to suggest something that's going to seem very scary, but I'm going to go for it. I think ask the people closest to you. If you're married, ask your spouse. If you have a really good, close friend, invite them to be honest and say, "Do you see me being critical a lot? How do I come across to you? Am I a good listener or do I always need to state my opinion, and am I argumentative?" If you really want to get brave, ask your kids, because your kids will be blatantly honest. They'll for sure tell me if I ask them. And yet we have to know how we're coming across to people, and we have to make some changes.

One of the changes you can make immediately is focus on listening to people more than talking. Immediately, going into any coffee conversation, I go into a coffee conversation and on the way, if I'm meeting at like a Starbucks, I'm praying on the way there, "Lord, help me to be a good listener. Help me to ask good questions. Help me to find out as much about this person as I can. Help them to see Christ in me." If I'm inviting them into my home, the same thing: "Lord, help me to listen," because it's easy to talk. I do that for a living. But I've got to learn to listen.

Roger Marsh: That's great counsel. We're just getting started in this conversation here. Becky, I'm going to come to a halt here for today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk and ask if you can join us again next time when we'll continue talking about her book called *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*, which is up at drjamesdobson.org. Becky, thank you for being with us today. Can you join us again next time for part two of this conversation?

Becky Harling: Yes, I can. Thank you.

Roger Marsh: It's easy to scroll past a hundred faces or more per day and still feel like no one really knows you. But Becky Harling reminds us that God designed us for real, intentional connection. You're listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk in a conversation with our guest, Becky Harling. If you missed any part of today's program or if you'd like to send it to a friend, visit jdfi.net, and make sure you check out information about Becky's newest book as well. We've got that linked up on our website in addition to today's program.

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I'm Roger Marsh, and on behalf of all of us here at Family Talk and the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time as we'll continue the conversation with author Becky Harling, discussing *Cultivating Deeper Connections in a Lonely World*. It's coming your way on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.

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