Keith Rogers is my best friend. We met when I was a sophomore in high school and he was a freshman. He had just moved to the area because his father became the pastor of a nearby church. Several close friends of mine had recently moved or transferred to a different school. Keith and I immediately connected. For the next three years, we were inseparable. We played high school sports together: soccer, basketball, and golf. We took classes together. We went on trips together. Keith’s family lived on a small farm, nearly 45 minutes from our school. During basketball season, we practiced or had games from 6 to 8 p.m. most weeknights, nearly three hours after school ended. Since he lived so far from home, and I lived close to school, Keith would come over to my house each day before practice. We played hours of ping-pong. We watched Keith’s beloved Chicago Cubs on WGN. We competed in basketball games in my backyard. We ate dinner together. We talked about anything and everything. Keith was at our house so often, my parents gave him a key.

The true depth of our friendship—which has endured for nearly a quarter-century—was forged during those long hours after school when we didn’t do much more than keep each other company. Little of what we did could be labeled productive, but in those hours together, Keith and I created so much shared history, shared memories, shared vocabulary, and shared perspectives on life. That happened simply because we were hanging out.

I look back on those hours of seemingly wasted time with great fondness. I thank God for them. They gave me one of life’s most cherished gifts—a close friend.

Today, Keith lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He married a wonderful woman, and they have three awesome kids. I live on the other side of the country—Los Angeles. My wife—who is way out of my league—and I have four healthy, wonderful children. Keith is a deacon at his church. I am a deacon at Grace Community Church. God has been incredibly kind to both of us. But each time we get together—about once a year—we find ourselves reminiscing about those days, and thanking God that we didn’t waste those hours in isolation. We thank God that we wasted them together.

I believe that what I just described was good for me and Keith because God has designed his creatures to waste time. I know that’s probably a controversial statement. Let me explain.

As humans, we have limits. We must sleep. We must eat. We must rest our bodies and our brains. Play is good for us. Hobbies edify. The ability to waste time is a sign that we are humans, not machines, a distinction that will certainly become more and more essential in the coming years. But there’s a strategy behind this unproductivity. I’m convinced it’s best done together. God has designed us to be unproductive with people. To simply exist in each other’s presence. To enjoy the spouse, child, family member, or friend God has brought alongside us. That’s what it looks like to be in a relationship. And relationships are at the center of God’s will for our lives.

When a Pharisee, trying to trip up Jesus, asked him which of God’s commandments was the most important, Jesus brilliantly summarized the entire law this way: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:37–40).

Here Jesus declares relationships—affection for others—as the centerpiece of life as a child of God. The creator of the universe wants us to love him. How do we do that if not by spending time with him? Getting to know him? Reading the same passages again and again? Praying the same prayers over and over? The principle applies to our relationships with people. God has called us to love others. How do we do that well if we don’t get to know them? If we never know what they like and don’t like? If we haven’t seen them laugh and cry? If we aren’t sure what their favorite meal is or what food they despise? And how do we do all that if we don’t spend unstructured, unplanned time together—time when we are not accomplishing anything, time when we can be ourselves and we can observe others being honest and authentic?

There are a lot of reasons friendship is in decline, and we are finding it harder and harder as a society to waste time with people, but I want to highlight three realities in particular. First, we live in the age of the grind. We are told to never waste time. We are told that every second is precious and if we aren’t squeezing as much production as we can out of each day, then we are wasting our lives. Second, our society has structured itself so that isolation is more normal than community. We highly esteem homes with privacy. We want as little contact as possible with neighbors. In the morning, we isolate ourselves in our car, drive far from our home, work on screens, then pile back into the car and return to our house far from our work. When we walk, we put in earbuds and lose ourselves in music or podcasts instead of talking to people around us. Then there is little overlap between our relationships at work, at home, and in our social life, which all makes it that much harder to spend large amounts of time with anyone, even family. And third, our ever-present phones and other screens are a constant siren call, urging us to escape into the digital world the moment we are obligation-free or there is any hint of boredom. We used to escape boredom and waste time alongside a friend. Now we escape and waste time alone, accompanied by pixels and images that mimic reality, but are far from flesh and blood.

What’s the solution to this? It’s the lordship of Jesus Christ. That means having his priorities. He commands us to love others more than ourselves. If we truly want to follow him, we must log off social media, call a friend, and ask them to join us for a meal. If we love Christ, we must take a Saturday to be with friends instead of working. And if we are in submission to Jesus, we must regularly be with his church. We should consider living close to the church, using our home to be with other believers, and taking every opportunity to spend time with those who share our love for Christ. And we must, at times, do all this without an agenda. We must be with people just for the sake of being with them. Let the work of time, even wasted time, have its good effect. Be patient. Watch Christ work through your meager efforts to love. The results might be more extraordinary than you think.

Earlier this year, Keith and I spent a week together on the Oregon Coast, playing golf, sharing meals, and talking late into the night. Our last night there, we talked about how much our friendship meant to each other. We realized that in those countless hours together, we had helped each other know Christ more. That wasn’t because we were godly. Far from it. But it was because we were real with each other, and in that authentic friendship, forged through wasting time together, we had learned to appreciate each other as fellow followers of Christ. And in appreciating each other, we gave thanks to the God who gave us the gift of friendship.