Daily Devotional

While studying at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan, I spent three years in an all-guys dorm, two of them as a resident assistant (RA). My dorm, Galloway, housed around 80 guys, giving it a similar feel to what a fraternity might be at a large state school… minus the booze and partying. (Hillsdale was an uber-conservative nerd school.) The men of Galloway were mostly studious, composed, even subdued… until Thursday nights at 10 PM.

Every Thursday night, a majority of the dorm would gather around our fire pit for an event we called FEAST. It was an hour-long fusion of rock music, grilled meats, and fireside conversation. The event included several rituals. First was the “call to arms” of a dozen guys running through the dorm blasting AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” while shouting “FEAAAST!!!”. Second was the 10:30 FEAST Run, a coordinated jog around campus to showcase our camaraderie. Third was the closing ceremony, where all the guys linked arms in a circle around the fire and sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”  The final and most important ritual, however, was that most of the guys participating did so sans shirts, regardless of the weather. Huddling with around a fire in sub-freezing temperatures with other shirtless men was an experience I’ll never forget.

FEAST baffled many on-campus observers. Some might call it a display of “toxic masculinity.” Why on earth did we perpetuate this bizarre ritual? Why did I, an aspiring minister, participate in something borderline scandalous? While I was initially skeptical about FEAST, I discovered that behind the trappings of college boy stupidity, FEAST was really a celebration of male friendship. My closest college friends ended up being the fellow Bible study leaders in that dorm.

Male friendship is a lost art in today’s world. Women have “girl time” and “girl talk;” the male equivalent is rarer. Frankly, men are less likely to have deep friendships than women. This is evident in statistics; for example, a 2021 survey determined that only 27% of men had at least six close friends, compared to 55% in 1990. Conventional wisdom says that by middle age, men lose touch with up to 90% of their friends from their younger years.

Why has male friendship eroded culturally? Perhaps the American ideal of “rugged individualism” perpetuates to a twisted vision of the “real man” as one who never cries, never talks about his feelings, who has no one and needs no one. Perhaps in the digital age, it’s easier for men to spend time on TV or video games rather than building relationships with other men (or to substitute virtual, Call-of-Duty-lobby friendships for real ones). I would also argue that in our hypersexualized culture, men are afraid that relational intimacy with other men might be labeled or interpreted as “gay.”

But male friendship is biblical; God created men to need relationships with other men. The favorite verse of men’s Bible studies, Proverbs 27:17, says that “iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” Or consider the friendship between Jonathan and David. 1 Samuel 18:1 says Jonathan loved David “as his own soul.” David mourns Jonathan’s death by saying “your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26). Don’t mistake this relational intimacy for anything sexual. Jonathan and David had a deep friendship, one that all men would do well to imitate.  Finally, as the joke goes, the least-talked-about miracle of Jesus was that he had 12 close male friends in his 30s.

Women, are you encouraging the men in your life—husbands, brothers, sons, fathers—to form deep, meaningful relationships with other men? Men, are you prioritizing building relationships with other men, like David and Jonathan did? It’s one thing to “hang out” with other guys and do things together; to get to the point of loving one another “as your own soul” requires some intentionality. This should include accountability, which is tremendously important, but accountability is not the same as relational intimacy. I think all Christian men could use a little more celebration of male friendship… even if it’s not as outlandish an example as FEAST.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.