The dying art of friendship
Jeremy is in his late thirties, married with three children. He’s bright and engaging and has a highly demanding and challenging senior management position with a large company. His wife Susan has had a very successful professional career of her own. Both maintain strong Christian commitments and wherever they live, quickly make a sizeable contribution to the church they attend. However, Jeremy, by his own confession, doesn’t have any close friends, apart from his wife. What’s more, he has little or no motivation to spend time and energy developing his friendships with other guys. It’s not just a matter of lack of time, its a lack of need. He’s happy being self-sufficient.
Katherine has longed for intimacy for years. She is single and outwardly successful. But inside she is dying. Despite her best attempts she has struggled to develop any strong friendships. The closest Katherine came to a really deep friendship was several years ago, but the woman she got to know suddenly moved town as a result of a job transfer. Life in her church doesn’t help either. There doesn’t seem much room for you there unless you are married with children. She simply doesn’t fit.
Mary and her husband Steve move locations every few years because of Steve’s job promotions. Apart from buying a house, the first thing they do after moving is look for a church to get involved in. It’s not long before they are engulfed in a range of activities within the life of the church. They quickly develop a strong network of friendships, generally through involvement and leadership of a home group. However, every time Mary and Steve decide to move, their decision is made independent of the group of Christians they have got to know and love. In many cases, it has come as quite a ‘bolt out of the blue’ for many of their ‘closest friends’.
Warren is an easy guy to chat with – at least on the surface. He talks easily with his student friends about sports, current affairs and the weather. But anything deeper is nigh impossible. His friends know little about the pain in his life, or of his hopes and dreams, fears and struggles. Its not like he doesn’t want to share with others, its just that he doesn’t know how. Old habits die hard and the skills of drawing people in soon die when they aren’t used.
Can you identify with any of these people? They are representative of hundreds of Christians I’ve met over the years. The Jeremy’s of this world are perhaps the saddest cases, for they have no desire to build
close friendships. But there are many Katherines out there too – some who for a time have experienced the joy of true companionship, others who can only long for what others seem to have. Then there are the Mary and Steve’s. On the surface, committed relationships would seem to be an important part of their lives, but the hurt and confusion they cause when they just ‘up and leave’ suggests otherwise. While mouthing words about community, their independent actions speak something different. Finally, there are the Warrens – bound up by their own inability to open up, yet desperate for meaningful relationships.
My experience indicates that our churches are full of such people. But should this be the case?
How important is friendship?
Is it possible to follow Jesus and not be committed to building strong friendships? The answer is a clear no. In the New Testament there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. Such a ‘creature’ is a contradiction in terms. For a commitment to a relationship with God inevitably involves relating to his people.
When we consider God’s nature this is hardly surprising. He is a relational being. In fact, God invites us to share a loving relationship which has always existed between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (the Trinity). No wonder John’s letter defines God as love. One 12th century Christian leader even paraphrased John’s word for love, with friendship. God is friendship. It is his very nature. Friendship is not just a nice idea that God may or may not be interested in. It helps define the very character of our God.
And we are created in his image. So if we want to become like Jesus, we will learn to value and give energy to relationships. Growing friendships is therefore a very spiritual activity. It is an end in itself _ expressing God’s nature. When we build meaningful relationships with Christians and non-Christians, we are building the kingdom of God. [i]
Friendship is at the core of who God is. Therefore, if we are seeking to follow him it should be at the core of who we are, as well. True friendship, is an expression of God’s nature and should be highly valued and sought after by those who claim his name.
Lack of models, motivation and time
So if friendships should be a high priority for Christians, why do so few of us experience meaningful friendships and genuine community?
Clearly, one reason is the lack of internal drive to look for and develop such relationships. Sometimes this is fuelled by our activism. If you’re like me and thrive on working ‘for God’, its helpful to see the shallowness of a utilitarian approach – where relationships are secondary to ‘getting the job done’. The ‘activist bent’ needs to be balanced with an appreciation of the need to ‘be’.
Another is the pace of modern life, which tends to squeeze out time for significant relating. In this environment, if time for people is not structured in and made a priority, then it will probably only be a hit and miss affair (“if it happens that’s great, if it doesn’t too bad”).
A third is the growing lack of good relational models around us. When young people have only really seen and experienced dysfunction, pain, marriage breakup, shallow relating etc, they understandably become gun shy about committing themselves to intimate and caring friendships (whether that be in marriage or friendships). Like the Kiwi who has lost the ability to fly through lack of use, many human Kiwis have clearly lost the ability to build intimacy through lack of practice. Our capacity to experience deep friendship is severely stunted. This is not to say that most of us don’t have a circle of ‘mates’ with whom they chat, drink and watch sport together. It’s just that the depth of relationship barely reaches below the skin. Real hopes, fears, hurts and struggles all too rarely are able to be shared. [ii]
Unfortunately, the lack of intimate relationships is not just a problem with our unchurched neighbours, workmates and friends, but also within the church as well. So often, our churches are at their core, relational wildernesses, a mile wide in talk about ‘abundant life’, but only a few inches deep. How sad it is, that while we continue to sing and proclaim on Sunday mornings the abundant life that God brings, most of us walk out the church doors having experienced little intimacy with others.
Of things eternal
Sometimes I wonder whether things would change if we were all told that we only had a short time to live. Maybe it would give us a clarity of perspective which enabled us to give our time and energy to what is genuinely important – to those things which really count in the eternal scheme of things. Perhaps certain tasks we have given great energy to would suddenly become much less important. Other things, long neglected, might become strategic beacons, shining out before us the pathway to eternity.
Friendship would definitely be one of those things, for it does have deep and lasting value.
So how do we restore friendship to its rightful place?
Firstly, we must gain a glimpse of its eternal significance. If we are unconvinced that it is really important, it is unlikely that we will find within us the steely resolve to give it real energy. For many of us this will involve a paradigm shift which is unlikely to take place overnight.
Secondly, given the stunted nature of our relational development, having caught a sense of the importance of friendships, we may well have to look for help from others, to begin addressing the reasons for our lack of capacity to build such friendships, and to develop the skills we need to make intimacy a reality. We can have all the desire in the world, but without help to develop our relationship skills and to address the things that cause us to shy away from intimacy, little will change. Friendship is an art. While some of us have a natural ability in it, most of us will have to grow skills to become good at it. It doesn’t just come without some hard work.
Thirdly, we must be very intentional in structuring into our week, time and energy to develop friendships. All of us are full of good intentions, but few of us can convert them into reality without some structural assistance, unless it is our natural mode of operation. So where does friendship-building figure in our priorities? (not in our stated priorities, but in our real priorities – as evidenced by what is given time in our week).
Fourthly, if friendship becomes a priority, the time it saps will need to be found from somewhere. Most of us lead incredibly busy lives, so it is inevitably going to result in some hard choices about what and who we give our time to. Cutting back on other commitments will be a necessity. At this point the utilitarian in each us will jump up and shout, “It’s not productive enough. I should be spending my time on things that have real benefit”. Resisting the urge to think according to our surrounding culture’s values, will not come easy, but it can be done. As we remind ourselves that there is no greater investment than in that which will outlast death, we will be willing to make the hard decisions about how we spend our precious and limited energy.
Fifthly, we will then have to decide with whom we should concentrate our energy on. We cannot build intimate friendships with the whole world. Allowing God to help us focus on particular people will be critical. Depending on our bent, we may well be tempted to concentrate on other Christians, or on those outside the community of faith. But Jesus calls us to befriend both groups. Intimate relationships with other Christians (fellow journeyers) bring authenticity to our faith. We will need to work hard to find ‘companions for the journey of faith’, those with who we can share the joys and struggles of the walk with.
But strong friendships with those who don’t follow Jesus as yet will be important too. They will help bring perspective, opportunity and hidden reservoirs of richness. Either way, we cannot afford to think that friendships are a means to an end. Eventually our hidden motives will display themselves in manipulative and uncaring ways. [iii]
Finally, we will need to learn to be more flexible with our schedules, to hold our activistic goals a little less lightly. For frequently, often several times in a day, God will bring across our path people who need our time. These will be unique opportunities to serve, encourage, laugh with, cry with and open up to. Our journey of faith requires that we give priority and attention to the small things that God is doing in the lives of the people we come in contact with. Listening to their heartbeat, responding in friendship and love will not come if we are so focussed on achieving the ‘tasks’ we have set ourselves. We will likely miss the still, small voice, which calls us to take time and to give time for matters of eternal value.
SUGGESTED READING
Right Relationships Tom Marshall
[i] In fact, as caring, open relationships are built, rather than them being just an avenue to help us share information about God, they become the opportunity for others to experience God. The relationship itself becomes the message.
[ii] This is more significantly, but not exclusively, a problem for males.
[iii] A lot of teaching on friendship evangelism suggests that we need to form friendships with people so that they give us an opportunity to communicate the gospel. In other words, the friendship is simply seen as a means to an end. It becomes part of the ‘technique’ of evangelism.
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