This fallacy strikes a feeling of loneliness, victimhood and myopia into our souls.
Myopia – short-sightedness – is a common consequence of the flesh’s work within us. It wants us to focus and obsess on those things which will sabotage our proper functioning for God. When we can no longer see the wood for the trees, the flesh has got us right where it wants us.
Elijah fell with this fallacy and it’s fascinating to see that it was active well before his depression (recorded for us in 1 Kings 19). At what we might call his highest point, standing on mount Carmel, having thrown down the gauntlet to the people of Israel, he betrays his otherwise spiritual prowess by announcing:
“I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men.”
1 Kings 18.22
He was already acting on this shaky basis when at his high point. Let that point sink in.
The contrast (between the overwhelming majority of godless men vs. the solitary, stand-out character of Elijah), makes for great rhetoric when you’re trying to make your point in a contest. So fine, go ahead Elijah. The problem was, it wasn’t just rhetoric. Elijah believed it to be true – and he was wrong. Operating from such a fallacious foundation, it doesn’t take much for our whole world to collapse in on us. And all it took for Elijah was a threat – and that self-imposed loneliness suddenly made him feel completely vulnerable. The realisation came crashing down on Elijah that whilst he had pulled off an amazing publicity stunt for his God, he had not and could not, change the hearts of the people of Israel. And when that realisation dawned on him, the same ‘I’m the only one’ mentality that fueled him to the top of mount Carmel, drove him into morbid obscurity on mount Horeb.
Depression hit him like a freight train.
Now here we have to be especially careful. Depression is a delicate subject and commenting on Elijah’s experience should be done with godly wisdom. Nothing negative should be inferred from the effort here, to observe the fallacy which Elijah bought into. He did buy into it, and at very least, it cannot have helped matters.
When he repeats his sincere belief to God on Sinai (1 Kin. 19.10), one can appreciate his conundrum. If the only remaining prophet of The Lord will have his life taken away, then what hope is there? He repeats his statement a third and final time (1 Kin. 19.14) and Jehovah’s reply is very poignant. He does not address Elijah’s mistaken belief directly, (more on that in a moment). Instead, He issues Elijah with three final assignments. The three assignments signal to Elijah that God’s plan is far grander than the endeavours of a solitary individual. And having issued the assignments, Jehovah then gently states the facts of the matter, contrary to Elijah’s persuasion. Elijah had no reason to be lonely. He had no reason to make himself a unique, isolated victim. He was one of 7000 others, who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
The flesh doesn’t take kindly however, to us pulling down its fallacious scaffold. So we might be tempted to push back and defend Elijah’s mindset. Ok so there were 7000 others. But where were they? Where was the evidence of their faithfulness? Why did they not join Elijah at Carmel? He was at least the only prophet of God to rally Gods people to the showdown, wasn’t he? Sort of. And that’s all it takes for mistaken beliefs to take hold within our souls. All they need to pass under our truth radar is the smallest amount of truth. All too easily we latch onto pea size bits of truth and shape our outlook on poorly balanced assessments of our circumstances. In which case, ‘I’m the only one’, ‘my circumstances are worse then yours’, and ‘nobody understands how hard it is for me’ will all stand.
To answer these objections which are sitting under the surface of Elijahs words back in 1 Kings 19.9, God choreographs a remarkable piece of theatre. It’s incredibly gracious of God to put this all on for an audience of one. But Elijah was loved and although he was finished with himself, God wasn’t. God had work for him to do.
Act 1, Scene 1: God commands the wind to tear into the face of the mountain, pulling rocks off its surface, no doubt creating quite an acoustic spectacle. Dramatic. Act 1, Scene 2: God orders an earthquake. Super dramatic. Act 1, Scene 3: Fire. All very Elijah. But God was not on stage during any of these scenes. Then Act 2: a still small voice. This time there is no special mention of the fact that God wasn’t in this scene. It begs the question, was He then? The scene also challenges Elijah to wrestle with the idea that God works in various ways, not always with the dramatic. Sometimes, the still small voice will do. And as if to make the point, Elijah’s successor – Elisha – would be just that. Perhaps the 6999 other faithful were just that too; quietly getting on with Gods business and doing so in community rather than in obscurity like Elijah.
Anyway, we’re digressing a little. The point of this is to show that Elijah’s beliefs about himself and his beliefs about Gods plans (or lack of) were misguided. Far from being the only one, he was one of thousands. And yet, as is the nature of fallacies, because he bought the notion that he was alone, he ended up being exactly that. Well almost. God never left him, and never would.
When you and I are tempted to overstate the extent of our circumstances, to presume with over confidence that the things that befall us are so overwhelmingly, exclusive to us, we need to turn ourselves over to God. We will likely be faced with the need to abandon our misguided ideas about the ways He is working His purposes out. We will need to concede that given the centuries of believers that have gone before us, we and our circumstances are not as special as we thought. And when we do that, we are not left feeling deprived of pity. Not deprived but relieved.
In the moment, when we are thinking ‘I’m the only one’ we have decided that the best way to dull the pain of our circumstances is to extend sympathy to ourselves. And it is true, or it appears at first to be true at least, that this is the best way of providing some therapy for it all. But this is not actually what is happening. They very pity that we engage in isolates us and injures us, compounding our already difficult circumstances and possibly injuring others around us at the same time. Whereas when we adopt a biblical perspective the opposite occurs. Thinking biblically about suffering and difficulty will help us to see that far from being alone, our suffering has brought us completely into line with the many myriads of other believers, who have gone before. We are now in community with them and their plight, and we share in their hope that there is more to life than this veil of tears. There is more to our existence than this mortality, this corruptible, this finality. More than that, the circumstances that prevail against us bring us into line with God Himself who endured the cross, despising the shame and is now set down at the majesty on high. Self-pity traps us, enslaves us, cripples us. Faith frees us, not from the circumstances, but from the fallacious lies that bait us with a way out only to switch in a deadly poison that is anything but helpful. The flesh wants us to brood and pout. To forsake the assembling of Gods people, to live out physically what our souls feel emotionally. But The Spirit calls us to do the exact opposite: draw near, hold fast and show love. Such things are a wonderful prescription for spiritual myopia. May God help us, by His marvellous grace to run with endurance the race that is set before us. To believe that we are not alone m, but are are joined with a veritable cloud of witnesses to look to The One who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that [we] may not grow weary or fainthearted.
