On friendship

I was going to turn this into more of a general post about friendship, but instead, here are some of my notes from Andrew Camerson’s lecture at the Centre for Christian Living on Friendship. I am not so sure about the protocols of such things – if there is a charge to attend a public lecture, should the notes be then posted on the internet for all to read? But, you do miss a lot by not being actually present, even if a word for word transcript was supplied, and there were some useful diagrams and tables and discussion that went with this, that I can't include (because that is to much technical challenge for me!).

So, the subtitle of this lecture was:

What makes friendships good and what goes wrong when they don’t work out?

John 21:15-25. Peter is asked three times if he loves God. There is full reconciliation after his denial (denied God three times). This gives us a clue that perhaps there is a way through the mess of broken relationships.

Jesus has a special friendship/connection with John. Peter is envious, and sometimes we can’t handle it when other people are friends or have a different relationship.

Friendship is an element of our created being. It has some notable elements.

1. Attraction

There is an attraction that is not always explainable. (Great quotes from Montaigne here from Of Friendship, 24-28)

For example,  David and Jonathan 1 Samuel 18-20, 2 Samuel 1:26. (Everything is sexualized in our culture and it can get uncomfortable. But, attractions are not always sexual.)

2. Sharing

Luke 6: 32-35. There is a natural reciprocity in friendships. Because of the last verse in (vs 35) some Christians think it is wrong to have special friends. But it is an observation that things don’t go far if all one-sided. The reciprocity can be quite different in content, but will be there.

So, what’s the exchange part of friendship? (referring to table where we had listed some friends’ names). We can think it’s crass to think this way about friendship, but there is a long history of viewing them this way. This can be warped into “what can I get out of this?” with sin, but frienship doesn’t have to function like that.

We are not comfortable with exchange, because we say we’re in the business of “grace” as a Christian (eg John 15:13). We know how to go beyond exchange to giving with no return. Yet, it’s fair to say that if the giving is all one way, it's not friendship. It’s still an expression of love, but not friendship. Friendship needs both people to be committed to the good of the other.

[I did want to applaud when AC said this, because so often you hear “if you have no friends, be a friend” and if you’re lonely, serve others, which is all very good and worthwhile to do, but it doesn’t equate to or guarantee friendship – and it devalues “friendship” and renders the term meaningless in making it too broad. Those relationships fall more into what CS Lewis calls "Charity" in The Four Loves.]

However, if you are constantly lonely you may need to ask yourself what it is you give.

3. Moral Scaffold

Your friendships rely on some shared agreements about what matters. Friendship is a shared moral community (Ps 119:63).

Some of the friendships that have broken down have done so because someone has changed their mind about what matters most. It can be hard to see for us, but it was obvious to ancient people.

(Great quotes here from Aelred of Riveaulx, who was trying to work out what friendship meant in a monastery.)

Comment here about how we can be too choosy about who we related to, and the shared moral agreements may not be immediately obvious.

4. Breakdown

Modern challenges

• Mobility – need face-to-face time
• Family – can be consumed with marriage etc. This is a modern development. Good households used to be communally engaged eg Proverbs.
• Shallowness – AC has an ambivalent relationship to facebook – need to be there but the problem is it can hoodwink us into thinking they’re friends, and it cheapens the currency.
• One-way relationships – the way people follow favourite actors/celebrities etc and put relational energy into such things.

The dark side

• Using – someone contributes nothing and/or our feelings of attraction are tangled up in what they offer us eg social standing etc.
• Lack of loyalty (and outright betrayal) – Provers 20:6.
• Breaking the rules – someone shifts on what matters most.

And it could be me being the user and breaking the rules.

5. Repentance

Australians can be shabby about friendship and loyalty. And we haven’t perhaps been good at the Jesus stuff of repairing broken relationships.

Matthew 18:15. Jesus is optimistic. He doesn’t go on about how there’s no point trying … Repenting is the only fuel by which a broken relationship can progress. (Good diagrams here, but I can’t reproduce them.)

Not all relationships can be reconciled, and not all reconciliations result in renewed friendships.

6. Reflection

What do I need to do differently to be a better friend?

What can I learn from past friendships I now grieve over, or am glad are ended?

Jesus doesn’t give away his trust easily – trust is earned and comes with a track record.

Things to read

Hugh Black, Frienships.

Kevin de Young, The gift of friendship and the godliness of good friends