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Friendship
It’s a very lonely feeling standing in the playground waiting to
be picked for the football/netball/skipping team – I was always one
of the last – will they want me? Will I have friends in school, or
will I be alone?.
There’s a basic human need for community: ‘it is not good for
man to be alone’ (a woman would have coped by herself!!). We’re
born into a community, our family - nuclear and extended. But it’s
not enough to be surrounded by relatives – after all you don’t
choose your relatives (and sometimes wouldn’t want to!). You also
need friends.
The definition of friendship has two aspects. One is that of ‘co-operative
and supportive behaviour between two or more people’. E.g. when I
went to the theatre for an amateur dramatics group recently – you
can’t make a musical on your own, and you enjoy it much more together
(perhaps more than the audience!). We can achieve a lot together, side
by side involved in a common activity, where the focus of friendship is
in what we do, like in clubs & societies. Friends may be people with
whom you collect stamps or build steam railways or go shopping or play
games or sit in class, or who are good colleagues at work or school. And
it can stop there – with doing things with people who support you,
doing something where with more than one person you can feel better and
get more done.
Family can be like that: we can have good relationships wit hour family
as well as others, and do things together – but not miss them the
rest of the time when we’re not doing that activity. Would you want
to spend your time off with your friends at work? Do you want to have
your fellow coin-collectors round for a family meal? If you do, you’re
probably getting into the second and deeper aspect of friendship.
Friendship can be also ‘a supportive relationship which involves
mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection.’ Not just about doing things
together, but about being together, about emotional support – people
you can talk to, who like you for who you are, not what you are or what
you do.
(Oprah Winfrey):
“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want
is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
There are three particular areas to mention about friendship before God:
(1) Friends & family.
Family can be friends too, in the love/support sense. They don’t
have the right to be: your mother/brother can’t push in and assume
they will be your emotional confidant, and pushing in damages people –
but it’s great when your children can be your friends, or parents
your support and encouragement.
But – friendships can also threaten family life.
Jesus chose his disciples against his family at some points; at the cross
he brings John into the heart of his family, and his brother James became
lead apostle – it was a complex relationship.
Friendship often enriches family life – our children’s friends
have been part of our family and support network (even ex-boy and girlfriends!),
and friends of our age have supported them. We may have honorary ‘aunts
and uncles’. But do also have a Christian duty to honour our parents
and not give up on family even when it’s hard….
Just as knowing your family background tells people lot about you, so
do your friends. We choose people who we like – what do your friends
say about you? It’s important who friends as well as family are,
because we influence one another in our relationships. Our mutual encounter
changes us as well as them – so choose your covenanted/ intentional/deep
friends with care!
(2) Friends & others
The old advice to vicars in the parish was – have no friends. Choosing
some as friends means not choosing others, being exclusive – who
do you leave out? So leave out everyone equally! Which is terrible advice.
There are of course levels of intimacy: we can have lots of acquaintances
and a few good friends. Jesus had circles of disciples and a beloved disciple,
but he didn’t turn inwards. Having levels of friendship is necessary
as part of being human.
There’s a central myth in our society which results in a fear of
intimacy except with a boy or girlfriend. Why? Because our social myth
is that you’re less than fully human if you don’t have a significant
other. This is of course false – you don’t need a significant
other to be human, but you don’t become fully human without friends.
Community is what is vital for human well-being & wholeness. ‘It’s
not good to be alone.’ Friendship together with family are the main
was in which we experience community: community is about breadth &
openness to others, not being exclusive.
An exclusive relationship with a significant other is not enough to make
you human. It can indeed make you less human by being obsessive and selfish.
Good friendships and relationships look outwards and are open to other
people, not exclusive.
In popular western culture and society, friendship is seen as second best
to having a significant other; in Xian understanding, having a significant
other is a way of learning to deepen friendship with lots of people, a
way to learn how to love others inclusively – not with sex of course,
but with self-giving love and service and openness. Jesus says there’s
no marriage in heaven because all are one flesh – we will know everyone
there as closely as we can get to know a husband or wife. So we’d
better get practising on building friendships!
(3) Friends & God
Quote on friendship: “A true friend is someone who is there for you
when they would rather be somewhere else.” And that’s how God
is for us.
Jesus calls us his friends (Jn.15.15) because we know what he does and
why. We are taken into his confidence. Friends are those in whom you can
confide, can have confide-ence.
Jesus invites us to work with him – to become friends of God. This
is a huge incarnational offer… not to be God’s servants but
God’s friends, and to know that God is our closest and nearest friend,
who loves us entirely for who we are, not for how good we are or what
we do. That’s the fantastic gospel of Christian faith – that
God already loves us unconditionally, as a true friend does. The question
for us is how we’ll respond to that.
Benjamin Disraeli: “The greatest good you can do for others is not
just share your riches, but to reveal to them, their own.” –
which is what God does for us.
How? One key thing is to spend time with God. Spending time with friends
is good. But we can use our friends like radio/background noise to avoid
the silence, to avoid facing ourselves and God. We need to spend time
with God as a significant other – not just talking at him, but being
silent…
Because that’s one way you know who your true friends are –
that you can sit together in silence and be content in each others’
company. And that goes for God as well as anyone else.
We need community, friends as well
as family.
We need to practice friendship and be open to others on earth so we’re
ready for it in heaven.
Friends give us insight into God’s love for us – for God in
Christ is indeed our friend.
Think about these quotes as a description of how Jesus befriends us:
"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even
though he knows that you are slightly cracked. "
(Bernard Meltzer (US radio show host))
Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends
listen to what you don't say. (Anon)
A friend is one who walks in when others walk out.
(Walter Winchell)
Are we going to be friends forever? Asked Piglet. Even longer, answered
Winnie-the-Pooh. (Milne)
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