My life is based on pain, passion, and purpose. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings
Find people doing well. Jason Young
You have to develop your imagination to a point that permits sympathy to happen. Wendell Berry
Humanity exists in community. Benji Davis
To acknowledge a difficult or even crushing truth is to step toward Beloved Community. David Dark
Friendship… has no generally recognized rights, and therefore depends entirely on its own inherent quality. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Friendship’s true glory: The exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility of this love. C. S. Lewis
Friendship… is born at the moment one man says to another, “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself...” C. S. Lewis
What is a biblical perspective on the necessity of friends? In Genesis, God proclaims this pretty lofty statement that makes it pretty clear that humanity is not complete without the presence of others (Gen. 2:18). Subsequently, God brings wild beings from the ground that Adam begins to deem animals, but these beings did not satisfy the need for a helper for Adam. Then God brings Eve from Adam’s body and things are well, but we screw up, separation, Exodus, serving ourselves as kings, some guy named David, Songs of Solomon, Jesus, his disciples, some miracles and then we are stuck with 1 Corinthians 13. Adam and Eve, the romantic love intertwined in the Trinity, Jesus as the groom to the Church (US); really sweet stuff but certainly this is not the only form of love between created beings who bear the image of God. God is dynamic. I will be pretty upset if my time spent with friends before and during marriage will come to nothing in terms of recognizing God’s love and God’s weight held in relationships.
For the sake of this time, let us look past the empty “love you”’s we have all given and received upon saying goodbye to people that we would consider friends. I say we because there is indeed a social pressure to say these things based off a somewhat insignificant feeling of love in a friendship. We are satisfied with a mere connection with folks and a jump is made. On the other side, there is some unhealthy stereotypes that come with friendly love, as shown in middle school or high school boys prefacing their love for a friend with the words “no homo.” This is a separate conversation altogether. I hope to dismiss most of our contemporary ideas of love outside of familial or romantic settings, arguing that God intended love to be held between all of God’s creation, and for it to be fully given and received as part of Christ’s love for us; through friendship.
One of the reasons we have a skewed view of love within friendship is simply that as a people, very few of us ever encounter this at all. It is not unavoidable. It involves some seriousness and vulnerability for it to mean anything at all. Or it involves being something we are not. We have accepted a very low form of relationship within friends. One could even say that friendship doesn’t bring anything of importance to one’s being. We don’t marry our friends. We don’t procreate. Our friends don’t earn us money. This leads me to Timothy Keller’s sermon on Isaiah 6:1-13 which has him speaking on the glory of God manifest within things we love, in particular: music.
Why are you doing that? What good are you getting out of it? Does it make money for you? Does it give you approval? Does it help you move your career ahead? You say, “No no no no.” Then what good is it? And you say, “What good is it, it IS a good in it of itself! It is satisfying in itself! Listening to that music is not a good it is beautiful in it of itself.” (Keller)
Friendship is a good within itself. This is the posture I believe Mr. Bonhoeffer, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Nouwen are speaking towards in their own separate works on relations of friends (loosely interpreted). You should read Life Together, The Four Loves, and Life of the Beloved as I am only going to briefly touch on some important sentiments mentioned in all. These authors echo a seriousness that is within lasting friendships, but not without remembering the humble beginnings.
Don’t complicate things before any connection is made. There are deep callings to friendships that will demand a new approach to being with people. Remind ourselves in the beginning, one of the basic heart-shouts upon creating a friendship is the simple connection of saying “What! You too?”Before performing actions for one another, we need to know what we are about in regard to the other. There are intimacies within relationships that take time to establish a space healthy enough to share. This is the time to contemplate whether or not we are in correct spaces to be with people. Beginning to run a race together as friends doesn’t have to mean we all starting at the same place, but maybe we ran past similar buildings and each got caught up in the weather along the way. Rep. Elijah Cummings’ remarks seem incredibly solitary, yet they encapsulate three dynamics of personhood that can be shared in experience: pain, passion, and purpose. These deeply intertwined intimacies and joys shared are means to a great relationship, but there is more for us.
We are made for so much more than the things we typically accept. That seems to be wrapped up in Jesus’ work always. We needed direction as God’s people, Jesus lead the way and also empowered us, beholding that we are loved. We want to be healed on the surface, Jesus not only does that but forgives the things that keep us anxious and up at night. Jesus answers our pleas and questions, then calls us daughters and sons of the most high. Jesus frees us from this world, in the name of love and for our own freedom. Jesus blesses our spaces with people we love, which we take for granted.
All of this, and more, reveal to me that there is so much more to be included in our friendships. We cannot trust in our own complacency for a relationship to continue, but that we must, “...pray for the fellowship so he will have to share the daily life of the fellowship; he must know the cares, the needs, the joys and thanksgivings, the petitions and hope of the others,” (Bonhoeffer, 63). The goodness that is necessary for our friendships to flourish involve prayer to the one who created said relationship, in order to sustain it. Prayer then moves into how we offer ourselves to one another. Henri Nouwen says, “the greatest gift my friendship can give you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it or myself,” (Nouwen, 30). Reminiscent of Jesus’ call for us to love thy neighbor, we tend to forget the second half of that command regarding how we love ourselves. How can I love you if I cannot claim love for my own being? If I love myself all too much, how might that be translated upon loving a friend? Calling out Belovedness is so much more than words of affirmation. We are shouting out the goodness of God, bestowing God’s truth onto one another, remembering the essence of who we are. This is love in friendship. These relationships are ways of opening ourselves to the God who fostered a friendship. It is such a privilege to say to my friends that they are God’s beloved, may we never take the each other for granted.
To reiterate a quote I had mentioned in my previous blog, “[n]one of us can be fully human on our own,” (Bartholomew, 35). This was intentional by God. This is redolent of the persons of the Trinity. And it is all to reflect back the glory of God, somehow. In friendship we are entrusted with seeking the kingdom to come, presently alongside another whose eyes are fixed on the same thing. We are too busy looking forward to get caught up in looking at each other (romance) or our selves (narcissism). This is yet another avenue that God has made worthy of God’s presence being known. In his book of collected sermons, German theologian Paul Tillich remarks on the Christian message for our time summed up into two words echoes Paul remarking on new beings. But, that which is opposite rings truth from Genesis, that, “[n]othing is more distinctive of the Old Being than the separation of man from man” (Tillich, 23). That’s it, right there. Whether we are in relation without love, or without relation altogether, we are missing the point of our embodiment of God’s image. We hinder God’s image when we are not fully present within friendships. The idea that I am beginning to grasp is that the magnanimity of divinity in friendships should not have to be forced. Upon seeking Christ in the other, the ease of enjoyment and gratitude for the other’s presence is known.
We cannot stand idle while people around us are struggling with loneliness. Take this as a charge to seek out others as if it were the greatest commandment. People will suffer if we are not willing to step into their lives just for the sake of being there. We have nothing more to offer them than the gift of knowing Jesus and his love. Or maybe shed some light on the friendships currently in your life. Push it further, pray for it, recognize the beauty of it. We are known in relation, no one is big enough to call one’s full being into activity. I bid thee farewell with a final statement from everyone’s favorite: C. S. Lewis.
Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. (Lewis, 62)
Peace,
Austin Spence
Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Londen: SPCK Publishing, 2017.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.
Keller, Timothy. “The Gospel and Your Self.” The Vision of Redeemer. November 5, 2005. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsuCQe7aVk
Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Inc, 1960.
Nouwen, Henri J. M. Life of the Beloved. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016.
Tillich, Paul. The New Being. New York, NY: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1955.