The Cruciform Contours of Friendship
Author: Chris Castaldo, PhD
June 24, 2026
In recent years, the United States has experienced several widespread epidemics, including measles, avian flu, and dengue, culminating in a global pandemic whose effects we are still absorbing. But let’s not forget an invisible but massively debilitating social outbreak. I’m speaking of the loneliness epidemic.
Vivek H. Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, says that roughly 50 percent of adults in America have reported experiencing loneliness—and that’s aside from the pandemic that separated us from others for so long. The effects are profound.
“Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death,” Murthy says. “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity. And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.”
Men have been particularly hard hit. According to the 2021 State of American Friendship report, just 27 percent of men say they have at least six close friends. Fifteen percent reported having none, up from just 3 percent in 1990.
In today’s social media culture, friendship can be challenging, to say the least. Many of us try to maintain “friendships” through Instagram and Twitter, without any face-to-face contact. We “friend” and “follow” one another on Facebook, even though many of us have never met. We participate in online “communities,” even though self-disclosure is limited to the nice, safe bits.
The results have not been encouraging. It seems as if the more time we spend online, the lonelier we become. A recent Oregon State University study found that those in the upper 25 percent of social media usage frequency were more than twice as likely to feel lonely as those in the bottom 25 percent. Of course, these heavy users may simply be the people who are lonelier to begin with.
Perhaps we can learn something from earlier sources of wisdom.
The Challenge of Friendship
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was among the first Christian writers to highlight the challenges and opportunities of friendship. Near the end of his City of God, he writes, “There is no greater consolation than the unfeigned loyalty and mutual love of good men who are true friends” (19.8). But this gift of friendship, according to Augustine, is also challenging. He continues, “We become apprehensive… [that these friends] may fail us in faithfulness, turn to hate us and work us harm.” This fear sounds remarkably modern.
If we were to boil down the apprehension of Augustine’s portrait, we might use the word “vulnerability.” The truth is, the quest for genuine friendship always leaves us a bit exposed. Listen to how C.S. Lewis makes the point:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
Unfortunately, apprehension too often keeps us from the risk of vulnerability, which in turn impoverishes or precludes friendships. How do we cope with the sometimes debilitating fear of vulnerability? As a pastor, let me recommend that we turn our eyes away from how we might get hurt and toward the triune God who welcomes us, even when we’re at our worst.
Divine Friendship
As the late J.I. Packer observed, “There is tremendous relief in knowing His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”
This is a God unlike all the deities people sought to worship in ancient times. In the mythologies of Greece and around the Fertile Crescent into Mesopotamia, we find religions in which the relational impetus was driven by human initiative, a movement from earth to the transcendent deity. Despite the frenetic activity of priests working in temples and sanctuaries, the gods of the nations were recognized as aloof, distant, and generally unapproachable.
Israel’s experience differed dramatically. From the beginning, the Lord of Scripture was decidedly unlike the gods of the nations, existing from eternity past in three distinct persons bound together in perfect love—the supreme love of which our friendships are a mere reflection. For Israel, relating to this triune God was always a movement from heaven to earth, from God to humanity. It was by divine initiative.
In abundant grace and mercy, the Lord didn’t simply look down—he came down to his people: the Creator with the created, holiness with profanity. And although frightening in that holiness, God disclosed his character at Mount Sinai, describing himself as “The LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex. 34:6–7). And that was just the beginning of the self-disclosure of a God who seeks to lovingly embrace his people.
Cruciform Friendship
The New Testament reveals a depth of love and accessibility that takes one’s breath away. Here we find the God who spoke the universe into existence as a speechless baby, the embodiment of perfect love from the womb of a teenager, laid in a feeding trough. Perfect Man befriending disciples and loving men, women, boys, and girls without partiality. In tears at the side of Lazarus’s grave, washing his disciples’ feet, and ultimately on the cross, where he died for the sins of the world. Jesus expressed divine love through vulnerability.
The cruciform shape of Jesus’ life rebukes our apprehension to express love toward one another and inspires us toward genuine vulnerability. As the cross of Christ involved rejection and pain, so friendship calls us to risk a certain sorrow, an ongoing struggle to love another sinful person.
In some cases, our love will not be reciprocated; it may even be scorned. Nevertheless, we choose to love. Why? Because the Savior who calls us his friends has instructed us to do so: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
This cruciform shape of Christian friendship is, I would argue, the only sure remedy for the epidemic of loneliness—inside and outside the church. The cross that saves us also shows us how to love. And a community shaped by that love will never leave the lonely in their loneliness.
Chris Castaldo, PhD, is Lead Pastor of New Covenant Church in Naperville, Illinois. This article originally appeared on Chris’s website, www.chriscastaldo.com.
BACK