By Seth Troutt, TGC.
“No one really knows me.” Two-thirds of American men aged 18–23 agreed with this statement in a 2023 report titled “State of American Men.”
The male loneliness epidemic has been written about almost ad nauseam, and for good reason: “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day,” wrote the U.S. surgeon general in 2023.
Is the church helping or hurting this trend? Samuel James recently observed that evangelical women’s groups tend to be described with words like “encouragement” and “fellowship” while men’s groups are often described with words like “accountability” and “sharpening.” The implicit assumption: Women need friends, but men need monitoring and correction. Sounds fun.
Is male connection only a means or an end? Is friendship for men merely instrumental? Or is it something good to be enjoyed in and of itself?
Do Men Need Friends?
C. S. Lewis once said, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
Friendship certainly gives value to survival. But I’d argue it also gives survival. Frodo doesn’t make it to Mordor without Sam. David doesn’t survive Saul without Jonathan.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow” (Eccl. 4:9–10). “Fellow” here means a companion—someone who’s good company, someone with whom (com) you break bread (pan). As Jesus calls his disciples friends (John 15:15) because they know what he’s doing, so also his disciples are to be friends with one another (the word for friend here, philos, means kindly disposed, beloved, devoted). They’re to both know and appreciate what each other is up to, and that kind of awareness and involvement in each other’s lives can usually only happen with regular, meaningful, and joyful time spent together.