When Being Right Costs Too Much

With an election five weeks away and the holidays right behind it, a lot of us are already bracing for the family table.

In the fall of 2024, the American Psychiatric Association polled more than 2,200 Americans about family and controversial issues. One in five said they had become estranged from a family member (21%), blocked a relative on social media (22%), or skipped a family event (19%) because of disagreements over controversial topics like politics.

One in five. Look around the sanctuary on Sunday. Look around your Thanksgiving table.

We have taken something that should be secondary and made it primary. And it is costing us the people God gave us.

The Safe Place That Isn't Safe

I write about this in my new book, The Three Wounds. The third wound is Isolation, and it's built on one lie: I am alone. No one understands. No one is coming. So don't reach.

Isolation grows out of a low view of God and a low view of ourselves. God feels distant, or unreliable, or simply absent when it counted. And we feel like the flawed one. So we retreat to what feels like the safest place there is: alone. If no one gets close, no one can hurt me. If no one gets close, no one can disappoint me.

Politics hands that wound a respectable excuse. I'm not pulling away because I'm hurt. I'm pulling away on principle. When our identity gets fused to a belief, disagreement stops feeling like disagreement. It feels like an attack. I call that being emotivictive. The brother who votes differently stops being your brother and becomes the other side.

But isolation is never neutral. Loneliness is supposed to work like hunger or thirst, an alarm that drives us back toward people. Researcher John Cacioppo found that when that alarm goes off long enough, it flips. The lonelier we get, the higher the guard goes. We read rejection into a neutral face. We brace for the leaving before it comes. So we leave first. The U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on loneliness went so far as to compare the health risk of being socially disconnected to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

Isolation isn't just sad. It's dangerous.

What Does Scripture Say?

Before sin, before anything was broken, God looked at a perfect garden and named the one thing that was not good: "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18, NLT).

Then everything broke, and the very first thing Adam did was hide. "I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid" (Genesis 3:10, NLT). But notice: the fig leaves went up between Adam and Eve before they hid from God. Then came the blame. A man, a woman, and God who had walked together in the cool of the day, now scattered. Isolation was born in an afternoon.

Jesus tells the most famous family story ever told in Luke 15. We usually focus on the son who ran away. But there's a second son, and he's the one I think about in a season like this.

When the younger brother comes home, the father throws a party. The older brother hears the music from the field and stops. "The older brother was angry and wouldn't go in" (Luke 15:28, NLT).

Here's what strikes me: the older brother had a point. By every standard of fairness, he was right. His brother had wasted half the family's wealth. And being right is exactly what put him in the yard. Close enough to hear the music. Too walled off to walk through the door. He chose his position over the party, and over his brother.

Watch what the father does. "His father came out and begged him" (Luke 15:28, NLT). He doesn't wait behind the door. He doesn't settle the argument first. He goes out into the dark and says, "Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours" (Luke 15:31, NLT).

The relationship is primary. Being right is secondary.

And Jesus never tells us whether the older brother went in. He leaves that decision with the listener. With you and me.

Paul puts it plainly: "Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone" (Romans 12:18, NLT). Not agree with everyone. Live in peace with them. And the psalmist tells us how God heals the lonely: "God places the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6, NLT).

One honest word here. Some distance is necessary. If a relationship is abusive or unsafe, this isn't about that. This is about the brother, the aunt, the adult child you love and haven't really talked to since the last election.

A Practical Step Forward

In The Three Wounds, I describe the first move out of isolation as two simple things: a cry and a sentence.

First, the cry. Before you reach for anyone, be honest with God right where you are. You don't have to clean it up first. Something like: "Lord, I've let this matter more than my family. I can't soften this on my own. Soften me."

Second, one sentence. Pick one person you've pulled away from. This week, reach out with one honest sentence that has nothing to do with the issue. A text works. "I miss you. You matter more to me than any election." Not a debate. Not a defense of your views. Not a demand that they change theirs. Just the door unbarred.

If politics comes up anyway, you can say, "I'd rather keep you than win this one."

It won't feel like much. It's everything.

The Father is already out in the yard. The party is still going. The door is still open.

Next Step

The Three Wounds releases November 5. Want to know which wound has the strongest grip on you? Take the free three-minute quiz at tonyportell.com/quiz.

If you're carrying an estrangement that's too heavy to carry alone, our team at Helping Others Heal can walk with you. Book a free Discovery Call at tonyportell.com/discovery.