Finding a Band of Brothers: Why Men Are Stronger Carrying This Together

There's a line historians and veterans keep coming back to, decade after decade, war after war. Ask a soldier why men actually fight, not the recruiting-poster version, the real version, in the middle of it, and it's almost never country or patriotism. Historian Stephen Ambrose, writing about the men of Easy Company in World War II, put it plainly: soldiers wanted victory, but what actually got them up that hill was the man to their left and the man to their right. You fight for mom and apple pie in the recruiting office. Once the shooting starts, you fight for the guy in the trench beside you.

That's how men are built. We were never designed to carry the hardest things alone. We were designed to carry them shoulder to shoulder with someone who's in the battle with us.

Benefit #3: Men are stronger when they are a burden to each other

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow... though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him."

There's an old joke about a young man on the phone with his girlfriend: "Honey, I'd climb the highest mountain for you. I'd swim a thousand rivers. I'd walk a thousand miles just to spend one hour with you. There's nothing I wouldn't do because I love you so much." She's melting. Finally she says, "Awww... why don't you come over?" He pulls the curtain back, looks out the window, and says, "I can't... it's raining."

Isn't that just like us? We'll make grand speeches about heroic sacrifice, but get tripped up by ordinary inconvenience.

I think you're a real man. I think if the time came to fight to defend our homeland or our families, we'd give our lives for each other in the trenches. And yet, that same man won't tell his brother the truth about his own sin. He'll charge a hill with him. He won't confess to him.

The lie underneath it

We don't want to be a bother. That's it. That's the lie. It doesn't announce itself as unbelief or pride, it just sounds like consideration. "He's got enough going on." "I don't want to dump this on him." "Everybody's got their own stuff." It sounds humble. It is not humble. It's a lie that learned to dress up in humility's clothes so you never question it.

Bonhoeffer wrote about this directly, his point, in short, was that a Christian doesn't get to sidestep another person's burden the way someone outside the faith might. Bearing a brother's burden, letting him actually cost you something, is part of what makes him a brother at all rather than just "an object you manage from a comfortable distance."

You were built to be a bother to someone. And someone was built to be a bother to you. That's not a design flaw in the church. That's the design.

What the actual command says

Paul writes in Galatians: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Sounds nice, right? Sounds like a verse about being kind when someone's having a hard week. But look one verse earlier at what he's actually talking about:

"Brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness... Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

That command was never about casseroles and car trouble. It was written about this: about a man caught in sin needing another man to help carry it. If you're hiding what you're hiding because you don't want to be a bother, you're refusing to let another man obey a direct command of Christ. He cannot bear a burden you won't let him see.

Who's your brother?

I want to be specific here, because this gets misunderstood constantly. It's not your wife. We'll talk about confessing to her later this week, and that conversation matters, but she is not your accountability partner, and she was never meant to be. Your brother is another man. Someone in the fight with you, not someone whose heart you're asking to carry the weight of your sin.

The isolation of men, where nobody actually knows what's going on inside you, is a net loss. Not just for you. For the church. For your marriage. For every other man around you who assumes he's the only one losing this fight, because you've made sure he'll never find out otherwise.

Stop protecting your accountability partner or pastor from being your brother. Let him carry it. Let yourself be a bother, so he can be your brother.

Download the Accountability Partner Guide (Text Version)

This is Day 19 of Victory Over Pornography. Tomorrow: the fourth benefit, and maybe the most surprising one yet. Continue to Day 20 →