So, how will we avoid that friendless future? This is something for us to think about now. It will require us to work — and work together, as friends and families and churches — to figure out how to resist the temptation to become isolated as we age. But the challenges facing such relationships shouldn’t surprise us. The hardest things to attain often are the most important things.

Some 1,600 years ago, Augustine said, “In this world two things are essential: life and friendship. Both should be highly prized and we must not undervalue them.” He’s right, though based on behavior, it seems many men undervalue the latter.

Studies are confirming what many of us already know by observation and experience: As men grow older, they typically lose close connection with male friends. By the time they reach middle age, many men in Western cultures (including Christian men) have few or no close friends — friends who really know them. It’s a troubling trend. We have a growing population of lonely older men, and we’re discovering that loneliness is as damaging to our health as smoking.

But this trend is troubling not primarily because of its deleterious health effects. As Christians, we don’t view friendship as a mere health benefit like nutrition and exercise. Friends are more fundamental to our inner being — to who we are. The Bible teaches us not only that we are made for friendship (Genesis 2:18; Ecclesiastes 4:9–12), but also that we are made by our friendships (Proverbs 13:20; 27:17).

A man, likely more than he knows, owes who he has become to the friends who helped make him. And if he’s wise, he will not undervalue his fundamental need of friends as he ages, for he will need them every bit as much at the end of his sojourn as he needed them when it began.

Men Who Made Me

As I’ve reflected on how needed male friendships are to shape us, I can’t help but thank God for the men who made me. They remain a priceless fraternity extending back over five decades. God has used each of them to shape and sharpen me. Each has left his indelible mark. Each deserves honor. But to illustrate friendship’s fundamental role, I’d like to mention only a few men whose impact has been particularly immense.

Perhaps these examples will remind some of you of the many different kinds of friends God gives to build us up along the way. Perhaps they will also remind you how desperately we need friendships — and how important it is to fight for them.

The Boys Who Raised Me

I met my two best childhood friends, Brent and David, when we were preschoolers. We were brought together in an accident of geography: our parents all bought houses on Southridge Road. But as C.S. Lewis observed, such accidents are no accident:

Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” (The Four Loves, 114)

Our tripartite friendship was forged through spending incalculable hours together after school, on weekends, during sleepovers (where sleep was rare), on long, lazy summer days. We listened to music, and played on the backyard football field and on the driveway basketball court and in the arcade. We schemed new adventures, talked about girls, biked all over the western metro, shared thoughts about God — all with plenty of fighting interspersed.

Through it all, we helped each other navigate the often tricky, sometimes dangerous, sometimes painful waters of childhood and adolescence, and helped each other love and trust Jesus. 

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