Stacy Long
AFA Journal staff writer
March 2014 – We live in an age with the opportunity for more connectivity than ever before, an age when social media sites, electronic devices and digital streaming make possible near constant communication and extensive networking. Yet at the same time, our culture is one in which loneliness is endemicand in which relationships have never been more difficult to maintain.
There is an explanation for this enigma – not that technology in itself is harmful – but coupled with deep-rooted and already existent emotional wounds, it can be misused, applied as a Band-Aid to assuage the loneliness caused by broken relationships. In that case, instead of healing or protecting the hurt, it aggravates the raw wound, leaving it to fester untreated and unseen.
For real healing, it is necessary to go beyond responding only to the symptoms of emotional brokenness exhibited in technological addictions (See AFAJournal, 10/13, P. 18.), high divorce rates or short-term, noncommittal relationships.
Losing one another: the struggle for relationship
Clay McLean and his wife Mary use their backgrounds in biblical counseling and psychology to help people heal from emotional scars and restore broken relationships. As McLean told AFA Journal, the widespread inability to maintain healthy, lasting relationships is undeniable.
“According to statisticians, most households in America consist of 1.5 persons,” McLean said. “This is because a large majority of the population of the United States can’t maintain a relationship long enough for it to show up on paper as two people living together.”
As McLean pointed out, this “creates increased loneliness, increased emotional instability, increased isolation. And electronic devices can become a means of avoiding intimacy.”
If technological addictions develop, meaningful communication is crippled still further; and the cycle of loneliness, silence and brokenness is exacerbated.
“The whole thing requires conversation, which we don’t allow in our culture,” McLean said. “So little by little, we lose one another. And as we lose one another, we become lonelier, and as we become lonelier, we degenerate into more perverse forms of self-entertainment – increasing the porn temptation, increasing addictive behavior – which decreases our humanity.”
Redeeming the broken: God’s manifold wisdom
There is only one way to correct the downward slide, and the solution involves more than dealing with just tech addictions, or even the restoration of marriages and families. It centers on, first, a person’s relationship with God, and then the view of self in light of that relationship. It is a concept that McLean applies wherever healing, restoration and comfort are needed, whether to the scars of abuse, loneliness and rejection; or even in the struggles of his own Christian walk.
“Loneliness, brokenness, can be overcome if we have a transcendent vision of who we are and why we exist,” he said. “And that can only happen if we believe in God. Then, loneliness can turn into solitude with God.”
When solitude and pain are shared with God, all that occurs can be borne, and even transformed, by the awareness that God is present and at work. McLean turned to Scripture and the story of Joseph to illustrate this concept:
“Joseph is betrayed, rejected, almost murdered and sold into slavery by his brothers. The coat of many colors is brought to his father covered in blood, and yet Jacob himself had a relationship with God that allowed him to endure even that agony. And then, Joseph emerges again and is instrumental in rescuing the nation of Israel from disaster. So that which was meant for terrible evil becomes a symbol of redemption and restoration.”
McLean continued to point out that this is a concept relevant not only to the story of Joseph, but woven throughout Scripture.
“Paul refers to this concept in Ephesians 3:10, when he says that the purpose of God is that ‘through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places,’” McLean explained. “The word manifold here is the same word used in Genesis to describe Joseph’s coat of many colors, and it’s the only time that word is used in the New Testament.
“This concept demonstrates that if we have a transcendent view of our life we can trust that God will take the most broken, dauntingly painful thing that we can go through – abandonment, betrayal, rejection, enslavement, near-murder – and He will transform it and use it to bring about a manifold glory in our life, not because He intended evil for its own sake, but to demonstrate His goodness in the long-term. Joseph endured short-term suffering because he had a long-term vision that gave him the power to endure terrible loneliness. And that’s how we must live to endure and redeem the brokenness in our own lives.”
Rejoicing through tears: a vision of hope
Of course that is not easy to practice in the midst of pain and trial, as McLean can relate from his own experience. Instead, faith must be tested and grown to allow for a vision that looks beyond present suffering and fear.
“Just recently, I went through a situation where I had a golden opportunity to complain to God and forget everything God has done for me, and I was tempted to do that,” he shared. “But instead, I found myself rejoicing even through tears because I looked back and remembered that every other time I had gone through pain, God had worked it out for my good and His glory, and I had to trust that He is doing it again.”
And so, McLean has found through counseling people in very real and painful situations – and in his own testimony – that no present odds will stand against God’s faithfulness and keeping power to heal, restore and redeem the broken. As McLean pointed out, that is the message in the story of Joseph, the message in the words of Paul and the message of the cross.
This is the wisdom and the hope that McLean brings to face the power that destroys families and individuals with loneliness, lack of communication and unstable relationships.
In removing Band-Aids that block out real healing, McLean suggested putting down phones and other means of digital communication and having real-life, face-to-face conversations. But above all, he said that any communication can be successful and redemptive only when relational wounds have been bound up with healing in the hope of Jesus and His power to bring good out of the most horrific evil. 
McLean Ministries and Conference
Clay and Mary McLean bring a message of healing to a large audience in Black Mountain, North Carolina, every August. In a five-day conference, they gather with a staff of 25 trained counselors and people from the United States, Europe and Israel. They also hold shorter seminars in several locations throughout the country.
“We talk, pray, worship, as we ask the Holy Spirit to come and meet people in their deepest pain,” McLean said. “People of all ages come; married, single, divorced; some struggling with homosexual attractions they want to overcome; some with depression or addictions – but all these emotional wounds are rooted in the same thing, and the answer to every one is the cross of the Lord Jesus and His resurrection power in us.”
mcleanministries.org
ClayMcLeanMinistries@pobox.com
828-322-5402
