Valley of the Heroic

There was a season where I genuinely believed that consuming more content was making me a better Christian.

I had the playlist locked in. Deep theological podcasts on the commute. The right books on the nightstand. A steady drip of sermons and Bible teaching filling every gap in my day. I felt like I was growing. I felt sharp. I could hold my own in any conversation about faith and its influence on culture, explain Greek word origins (sometimes), and break down the cultural context of Paul’s letters.

But something was off.

When I actually searched for alignment with God, when I sat still long enough to ask myself if I was closer to Him than I was six months ago, the honest answer was no. Maybe even further. All that information had made me more knowledgeable, but it hadn’t made me more like Christ. I knew more about patience, but I wasn’t more patient. I knew more about humility, but I still got defensive when someone corrected me. I had memorized verses about surrender while white-knuckling control over my own life.

I had become what I now call a “Podcast Disciple.”

PhD in content. Kindergarten-level grasp on character.

And for a long time, I didn’t understand why.

The Difference Between Information and Formation

The word “formation” gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles, but most of us treat it like a synonym for learning… and It isn’t. Learning is about accumulating knowledge. Formation is about being reshaped. One happens in your head. The other happens in your life, usually through situations you didn’t choose and wouldn’t have signed up for if you’d known what was coming.

You can download information in seconds. Formation takes a lifetime, and it almost always involves friction you’d rather avoid.

The reason I felt stuck despite all the content I was consuming is that I had confused proximity to teaching with proximity to God.

I thought that because truth was constantly entering my ears, it was automatically transforming my heart. But information doesn’t work that way.

You can listen to a hundred sermons on forgiveness and still be holding onto bitterness. You can read every book on prayer and still not pray.

AND, here’s why this matters: content is safe.

A podcast cannot interrupt you when you’re lying to yourself. A book cannot look you in the eye and ask why you’re still doing the thing you know is hurting you. A sermon lets you nod along and then turn it off when the conviction gets too uncomfortable. I had built an entire spiritual life around inputs that demanded nothing from me in return.

And I think a lot of us are doing the same thing without realizing it.

Why We Prefer the Crowd to the Circle

Look at how Jesus structured His ministry. He spoke to crowds, sometimes thousands of people at once. He taught on hillsides, by the sea, in the temple courts. The masses got the content. They heard the Sermon on the Mount. They got the parables, the miracles, the public teaching.

But Jesus only formed the Twelve.

The crowds were fickle. On Palm Sunday they shouted “Hosanna,” and by Friday the same voices were screaming “Crucify.”

Why?

Because information can change what you think, but it rarely changes who you are.

The Twelve were different. They didn’t just hear the sermons. They watched Jesus eat, sleep, pray. They saw Him tired, frustrated, and moved to tears. They were corrected when they were arrogant. They were rebuked when they missed the point. They failed publicly, and then they were restored publicly.

They were in the circle of proximity, not the crowd of information.

We are a generation that is absolutely obsessed with the crowd and quietly terrified of the circle. We love access to teaching. We stream it, save it, share it, quote it in conversations to sound insightful. But the thought of actually inviting someone into the unfinished parts of our lives, of giving a real person permission to challenge us, to see the gap between who we claim to be and how we actually live? That feels like too much.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with consuming Christian content.

I literally make Christian content as part of my living.

Podcasts, books, sermons, they’re not the problem.

They’re tools.

The problem is when we use them as substitutes for the kind of relational accountability that actually forms character. When we treat consumption as a hiding place instead of a starting point.

The Friction That Formation Requires

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you cannot be spiritually formed in isolation. It’s impossible.

You can learn about patience in a room by yourself, but you will only learn to be patient when a real person is testing you. You can read about humility, but you will only become humble when you’re in a relationship where someone has the authority to tell you when you’re not being humble. You can memorize every verse in the Bible about love, but you will only learn how to love when you’re in proximity to people who are hard to love, including the people who find you hard to love.

Formation happens through friction. Real friction. Not the controlled friction of a well-crafted devotional that gives you a gentle challenge and a clean takeaway. The messy, inefficient, inconvenient friction of being in a relationship with people who see you, know you, and are willing to tell you the truth.

This is why discipleship in the New Testament was never primarily about information transfer.

When Jesus called the disciples, He didn’t hand them a reading list. He said, “Follow me.”

Come walk with me.

Watch how I live.

Let my life interrupt yours.

The content would come, but it would come embedded in relationship, in presence, in proximity.

We’ve reversed the model. We’ve made content primary and relationship optional. And then we wonder why we know so much but haven’t changed.

What Real Discipleship Actually Costs

I need to be honest about something. The reason I hid behind content for so long is because real discipleship is terrifying.

Inviting someone into the unfinished, messy parts of your life costs you your ego. It means admitting that you don’t have it together, that the version of yourself you project to the world is at least partially a performance. It means letting someone see the gap between your public testimony and your private struggles. It means asking questions like “why do you think you keep doing that?” and sitting in the silence that follows.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to feel like I was growing without actually having to be vulnerable. Content let me do that. I could feel spiritual without anyone seeing my inconsistencies. I could curate my own formation, picking and choosing which challenges to accept and which ones to scroll past.

But staying safe is what was keeping me stuck.

The Cave is a word we use at Valley of the Heroic to describe seasons of formation that happen in hiddenness, under pressure, away from the spotlight.

David spent years in a cave before he became king.

Joseph spent years in a prison before he became a leader.

The pattern in Scripture is consistent: God does His deepest work in hidden places, through inconvenient processes, in relationships that demand something from us.

Most of us are trying to skip the Cave. We want the character without the pressure. We want the transformation without the friction. We want to consume our way to Christlikeness, and it doesn’t work.

What This Actually Looks Like

I’m not going to pretend this is easy or give you a three-step formula that ties everything up neatly. Real formation doesn’t work that way. But I can tell you what started to shift for me.

I found one person. Not a group, not a community, not an accountability app. One person I trusted enough to be honest with. And I said something terrifying out loud: “I don’t want to do this alone anymore. Will you ask me the hard questions?”

That was it. No formal structure. No program. Just a willingness to let someone in.

The conversations were uncomfortable at first. Someone asking you “why do you think you keep reaching for that?” or “how are you really doing with that thing you told me about last month?” hits different than a sermon illustration. You can’t turn it off. You can’t nod along and move on. You have to actually answer. And in the answering, something starts to shift.

This is the part of spiritual growth that content cannot give you. It’s slow. It’s inefficient. It happens over coffee, not through earbuds. It requires showing up as you actually are.

But this is where character is built. 

If You’re Feeling Stuck Right Now

If you’ve read this far and something in you is saying “this is me,” let me tell you: you’re not broken. You’re not a bad Christian for feeling spiritually stuck despite all the Bible reading and podcast listening and book devouring. You’re just doing what most of us do. You’re trying to grow in a way that doesn’t require risk, and growth doesn’t work that way.

The next step isn’t another book. It isn’t another podcast, including mine. The next step is a person.

Find someone you trust. It might be a friend who’s a few steps ahead of you spiritually. It might be a mentor. It might be a pastor. It might be someone you haven’t thought of yet. Sit across from them, look them in the eye, and say this: “I don’t want to do this alone anymore. Do I have your permission to be honest with you, and can I give you permission to ask me the hard questions?”

That’s the invitation to the circle. And the circle is where formation happens.

Information is instant. Formation is a slow, unglamorous walk in the same direction, with people who see you and are still willing to walk with you.

You cannot walk that road alone.

— Eric