Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. – Galatians 6:2
There’s a strange irony in the age we’re living in. We’ve never been more connected, and yet we’ve never seemed more alone.
Social media hasn’t helped. It promises connection, but what it delivers, more often than not, is curation. We’ve learned how to present ourselves, how to angle the photo, caption the moment, and trim away the rough edges. We don’t show people who we are – we show them who we want them to think we are. And over time, that performance starts to replace presence.
I recently saw a woman on Facebook who had over 8,000 “friends.” That’s not a friends list – that’s a phonebook! No one has 8,000 people who know their fears, their failures, or their story. No one has 8,000 people who would sit with them in grief, or show up when life falls apart. Somewhere along the way, we started calling acquaintances “friends,” and now we wonder why we feel lonely and unseen.
We text instead of calling.
We call instead of meeting for coffee.
We react with an emoji instead of leaning in and listening with our full attention.
Most of us don’t cultivate meaningful relationships anymore. Instead, we cultivate a following and manage connections. We keep things light, efficient, and safely distant. Because let’s face it – real relationships are sometimes hard and messy. They take time and patience. They require us to show up when it’s inconvenient and to stay when it would be easier to scroll on by.
Scripture paints a very different picture of friendship. Jesus didn’t collect followers at a distance – He walked with people. He talked and ate with them. He knew their names, their weaknesses, their questions. He loved them not from afar, but up close. Paul didn’t just write theology… he wrote about genuine relationships. He talked about hope and tears and struggle and encouragement. He shared his life with others. The early church didn’t grow because of a platform. It grew around tables in peoples’ homes.
“Carry each other’s burdens,” Paul writes (Gal. 6:2). You can’t carry someone’s burden from a highlight reel. You have to be close enough to feel the heaviness when someone suffers loss or is going through a really trying time.
Maybe that’s why loneliness is so rampant today. We’re surrounded by voices, yet we’re starved for presence. We’re known by many, but truly known by only a few. And deep down, our souls remember that we were created not for audience, but for relationship and communion.
We don’t have to discard our social media apps. But I think we do need to reclaim something sacred that we seem to have lost. To sit across a table. To listen without multitasking. To risk being known instead of just being merely noticed. Real friendship isn’t built by broadcasting our lives. It’s built by sharing it.
Perhaps the most countercultural thing we can do today is be a real friend and not just a distant “follower.”
Former Blackout Artist 