Far too often as Protestants we are guilty of theologically bowling alone. We think that we can sit down with our Bibles all by ourselves and figure everything out. It’s time wake up and smell the roses and realize that we don’t do anything in life like that. We can’t figure it out alone.

I have a friend who goes every week to the movies alone. That is, he goes to the movie theater and pays money to watch a movie all by himself. I’d never heard of such thing. I’m not a big movie-goer. But on the rare occasion that I do go to the movie theater to watch a movie, I always go with someone else.

That’s not to say that going to the movies by oneself is wrong. It actually makes sense. Watching a movie is, at one level, a fiercely individualistic act. Probably more than anything, my surprise about solo movie going looks back to a different age, a time when movie watching was a profoundly communal event.

It was what you did on Saturday nights. It was where you took your girl. There was always dinner and a movie.

Solo movie going reminds me of Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Bowling used to be the epitome of the communal. There were bowling teams and bowling leagues, and the gatherings all revolved around the bowling alley’s bar or restaurant.

But somewhere along the way, the unthinkable happened. People started bowling alone. And then that reminds me of the crazy story that Sebastian Junger recounts in his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging about the difficulty of repatriating those who had been taken captive by the Indians.

He quotes Ben Franklin:

“Tho’ ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in short time they become disgusted with our manner of life… and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods.”

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on corechristianity.com—however, the original URL is no longer available.]