Which one of these men is you?

Greetings,

I’ll be honest with you about something.

When life gets hard — when things are messy and unresolved and I don’t have a clean answer yet — my first instinct is to pull back. Not to disappear entirely. Just to create a little distance. To fix things quietly before I let anyone in. To show up once I’m looking less like a work in progress and more like a man who has it together.

I’ve had to fight that instinct more times than I’d like to admit.

Because here’s what I’ve learned about that pull — it always has a good-sounding reason attached to it. I need time to process. I don’t want to burden anyone. I’ll re-engage once things settle. And underneath every one of those reasons, if I’m honest, is something less noble.

It’s self-protection and selfishness dressed up as wisdom.

I thought about that when I was preparing this week’s episode. Because the men I described — the consumer, the critic, the digital attendee — each of them has reasons. Real ones. The consumer is tired and overstretched. The critic has been genuinely hurt. The man watching online has built a life that leaves him no margin. None of those circumstances are invented.

But here’s what I had to name for myself before I could name it for anyone else.

The reasons are real. And they are still self at the centre.

The consumer has decided that what genuine engagement costs him — his time beyond Sunday, his willingness to be known, the inconvenience of being present in someone else’s mess — is more than he wants to pay. So he shows up faithfully, takes what’s offered, and keeps the rest of himself safely out of reach. He is surrounded by the church. He is not in it.

The critic has decided that his wound matters more than his assignment. That his pain exempts him from the people who are still sitting in those pews carrying their own pain alone. And the man watching online has found the most sophisticated way available to stay close to Jesus while keeping the people Jesus died for at a comfortable arm’s length.

Each of them has placed something — comfort, grievance, convenience — at the centre. And we have a word for whatever sits at the centre of a man’s life where God should be. It’s called idolatry.

None of this is an attendance problem. You can attend faithfully and still love no one. This is a love problem. You cannot answer that question with yes and then remain indifferent to the people he bled for.

The church in all her brokenness — and she is broken, I know this, you know this, every man who has spent real time in a local church has a wound to show for it — is still the blood-bought body of Christ. And the man who loves Christ will love her. Not because she is always lovable. But because he is.

Two questions. Answer them honestly.

Is there anyone in your local church who actually knows what is going on in your life right now?

Can you name one person whose life you are genuinely, actively, sacrificially invested in?

If the answer to both is no — that’s not a scheduling problem. That’s a love problem. And it’s worth taking seriously.