Adam wasn't lonely because he was imperfect but because he was perfect. The ache for friends is not the result of sin.

If you add anything to Jesus as a requirement for being happy, that's your real king.

Big cities have a lot of 'younger brothers' who have left traditional parts of the world and their families for a more liberal lifestyle. But cities are filled to the gills with 'elder brothers' too.

If you need something in addition to God to make you happy, that is your true King.

The Gospel is news of what God has done to reach us. It is not advice about what we must do to reach God.

[T]he main problem in life is sin, and the only solution is God and his grace. The alternative to this view is to identify something besides sin as the main problem with the world and something besides God as the main remedy. That demonizes something that is not completely bad, and makes an idol out of something that cannot be the ultimate good.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.