Community Part I

You've got a friend in me...

"Woody once risked his life to save mine, and I couldn’t call myself his friend if I wasn’t willing to do the same." — Buzz Lightyear

This week, Time Magazine named AI the 'Person of the Year.' As if we are living in a Stephen King film. What we made is now making us.

I’m not surprised. When people can’t find what is real, they run to what is artificial. And nowhere is this more obvious than in our hunger for community.

Man was made in the image of God; thus, he was made for community. This is not sentiment. It is doctrine. From eternity, God has never been alone. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit have forever existed in perfect union and mutual glorification. God is the first community, the OG of brotherhood. Before there was a world, there was communion. So when Scripture says we are made in His likeness, it means: You and I were crafted for connection because we come from a God who has never existed without it.

You are wired for brotherhood the way lungs are wired for air. This is why isolation wounds a man at the level of identity. It’s not just loneliness—it’s a violation of design. The man cut off from community is a man cut off from the image he bears. John Owen said it clearly: "To dwell alone is to dwell against God." A man may survive [for a while] in isolation, but he cannot grow there.

And here is what Elon, Sam, and Mark won’t admit: When a man substitutes artificial community for real community, he is reaching for a shadow of the Trinity.

Digital companions. Curated intimacy. AI conversations. Parasitic relationships. Manufactured brotherhood through avatars, algorithms, escapism, and TikTok celebrities. None of it is neutral. All of it is junk food, spiritual malnutrition. Thin, plastic sacraments meant to imitate something holy. We don’t chase these things because we’re broken; we chase them because you’re trying to satisfy a holy ache with unholy substitutes.

A God-shaped hunger demands a God-shaped table. Here’s the truth every man knows, whether he can articulate it or not: We are never more like God than when we are experiencing real, embodied, inconvenient, shoulder-to-shoulder community.

The Trinity is not theoretical. It is the blueprint for brotherhood. The fellowship of God becomes the formation of men. When men share life—when we confess sin, carry weight, forgive wounds, speak courage, lock shields, and stay in the room, something divine happens. Something Edenic returns. God made us in His image. He made us for fellowship. Brotherhood is not optional. It is ontological.

That’s the why.

But you already know this.

Did you know my writing helps support my family and ministry? I make it a point to put nothing behind a paywall. Everyone should enjoy the wild rumpus, but I am grateful for those who subscribe.

I don’t have to tell you that a man needs a friend[s]. You feel that ache before you have words for it. I don’t have to convince you that you need brothers for the journey, that need thunders in your bones. It’s the image of God in you [which is why, when we can’t find brotherhood in the physical, we turn to the simulated].

So no—this is not another article telling you that men need friends. You already know that.

What I am going to do is tell you how to make a friend. How to find one. How to be one. Because here’s the secret: if you learn how to find and make friends, eventually, almost accidentally, you’ll discover some. You won’t just end up with company. You’ll end up with brothers.

Everything below is simple—a handful of field notes and blunt tools. Flowers taped to a hammer. Keep what helps. Bury what doesn’t. Something will grow.

[Below is a revised and adapted list from the Existential Guide to Making Friends]

Go Where Hands Do Things

Talk builds acquaintances; shared labor builds friends. Bars are museums of conversation, but woodshops, gyms, pickup games, gardens, picket lines, choir rooms, soup kitchens, Settlers of Catan tables—these are the factories of friendship.

Men don’t bond by staring at each other. They bond by staring at a third thing: soil, song, steel, Scripture, a grill full of burgers, a shared problem to solve. Put your body where resistance exists. Resistance is where fellowship forms.

Make a Specific, Stupid Plan

"Let’s hang sometime" is the soft language of men who will never meet. You need to be specific: "Tuesday 7P at the ramen place that smells like a wet dog—in or out?"

Give the meeting a beginning and an end. The male soul opens slower than a vault door, and only when it knows it won’t be trapped.

Ask a Small Favor

Let a man watch your bike while you run to take a leak. Let him help you move a sofa or tune your guitar. It’s not manipulation—it’s trust on training wheels. You’re letting him practice caring for you in the small things so that you discern when you can hand him something bigger, heavier.

Tolerate Untelevised Time

Most of friendship is b-roll: food runs, wrong turns, waiting rooms, silence in the cab of the truck. If every interaction becomes a reel, you’re not friends, you’re performers. The real test: can you be boring together and still enjoy the room?

Practice Asymmetry Without Keeping Score

Text first. A lot. Then he will. Then you again. If you keep a ledger, you’re an accountant, not a brother. Love doesn’t balance; it just gives.

Speak Plainly When Hurt. Briefly When Angry

A clean cut heals. Name the wound without poetry. Offer repair without punishment. An apology should be a noun [i.e., "I was cruel"], not a philosophical essay [i.e., "things were said"].

Let the Phone be a Bridge, Not a House

Use it to coordinate, not to live. Share the knockout video, then go outside and be people again. Group chats are compost: throw crap in but grow oak trees in real life.

Offer One Vulnerability, Not a Landslide

A single true sentence: "I hate parties because I turn into a statue." See if they place a coat around it. If they do, the next sentence may be larger. Friendship grows by degrees, not leaps and bounds.

Be the One Who Convenes

Everyone is tired. Everyone is waiting for someone else to ring the bell. Be the bell. Host something cheap. Name the start and the end. Put chips in a bowl. Tell them, "The door is soft—leave when you need." Logistics, done swiftly, becomes communion.

Lose a Few on Purpose

Not every connection needs to be a covenant. Sometimes the chemistry is just smoke. Don’t autopsy the disappointment. Bless them quietly and move on. Even compost makes things grow.

Learn to be findable

Have a table you sit at, a lane you run, a coffee shop you haunt. Respond to invitations with clarity, not fog. Let your life have an open door. A man who hides cannot be found.

Remember the Metaphysics

A friend is not a contact, a cure, or a human hobby. A friend is a man who proves you exist when your own gaze slips. A friend is a witness, someone who stands beside you at the small trials of ordinary days and refuses to let the world have the final say.

And if you need a final nudge…

Text the nearly-friend. Not the perfect one. The adjacent one. Say, "Work out at 6:30A? Bring the stupid hat." Send it before your cowardice wakes up.

The rest is repetition. Tending. And refusing to rot alone.

For the King,

— Harp

---

Looking for a place to start? Nothing better than offering men clarity and community as you go into the New Year. Check out BetterMan today!