Yesterday I shared an initial post about Justin Whitmel Earley’s Made for People.  It’s not the first book from Earley that I’ve enjoyed.  A few years ago, The Common Rule captured the zeitgeist of the “routines and habits” emphasis (that seemed to flow out of James K. A. Smith’s work in Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love).  Earley is a great writer: he knows how to turn a phrase and bring a sense of practicality to deep and important things.  I wasn’t sure about picking up Made for People, though, as there have been quite a few (Christian) books about friendship out these last few years.  But when I saw it was down at the local Barnes & Noble, I decided to take the chance.  I’m really glad that I did. (And I highly encourage others to grab a copy and read a copy.)

One thing Earley does particularly well is how he walks the line between personal life and church life.  The two are never far removed, even when Earley is at his most personal.  After setting things up in the introduction via America’s loneliness epidemic and Jesus as the ultimate model of friendship (in multiple ways), Earley moves on to very intentional ways to “fight for friendship.”  The first is vulnerability.  Two things from the chapter stand out most to me.  First: Earley asserts that no one should be surprised when someone reveals themselves to be a sinner.  That’s a significant part of what it means to be human and to need forgiveness and reconciliation.  Earley writes:

This gets to the essence of what it means to live as a body of believers: living with one another in a way that mirrors how we live with Christ.

Being a sinner around others Christians, though, is one of the most difficult things to do.  It often feels like most churches aren’t built for that: they are more about “getting things done” than anything else.  And we don’t always have a good way of talking about “how we live with Christ” either, especially if the Christian life is more about “getting things done” like Martha instead of sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary.

A second thing that I like from the chapter is Earley’s distinction between sharing and vulnerability:

Sharing is what we do to update people on our lives.  Vulnerability is what we do to let people into our lives.

What Earley calls “sharing” I often call “reporting.”  It’s much easier to share than to be vulnerable.  And you can’t be vulnerable with everyone (or just anyone).  But what Earley does so well is he calls you into the possibility of things.