What are friends for?

I wonder how many people you count as true friends. There is no doubt a difference to being friendly to having friends. To be friendly is to extend the experience of being warm to someone as if they are a friend. It relaxes someone and makes them feel special. No bad thing.

Apparently, if the sociologists are to be believed, we are in trouble as a society. They say that we are becoming more isolated as we often find ourselves working longer hours, travelling further away to find employment, which leaves us with little energy to anything else.

Some of us may boast a couple of hundred friends on FaceBook, but even the internet through its online social networks is, ironically cutting us off from meeting real people. Watching Friends reruns on TV is also a poor substitute to actually having friends to say “Hey you!” to.

In America a piece of research showed that people’s close circle of friends has dropped, on average, from three to two. That is a 50% deduction in people they can confide in. I suspect the picture in the UK is little different.

In contrast, I have noticed that people in the Bible seem to have a lot of friends. Jesus had a circle of 72 that followed him around. But there was a much closer relationship with 12 men, his disciples, whom he called his friends.

And there were three that he was especially close to - Peter, James and John; and one, the apostle John, with whom he seemed to be closer with than anyone. But Jesus, who modelled for us perfect humanity, had a substantial network of confidantes with whom he could disclose the things that were most important to him.

I wonder if that makes you envious. Why not take a moment to reflect upon your own quality of relationships?  Are they fulfilling, giving, equally weighted towards each other’s needs?

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle said, “Without friendships no one would choose to live, even if they had all other good things in life.”

CS Lewis, the Christian author and Oxford don wrote, “I have no duty to be anyone's friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

It’s these last words that get me, friendship is key to getting through life. That’s why in our church context we want to be more than a ‘friendly church’, but a church built on deep dependable friendships. Friendships that are there through thick and thin.

Over the years I have learnt that the best friends are those that love what you love. In church that love starts with Jesus. Out of that place he enables us to love others that, well, perhaps, we would not be friends with otherwise. That is a powerful thing, isn’t it?  

There is a maxim that says a friend in need is a friend indeed. People say to me the church is full of needy people. I hope so, because there is a lot of need in the world today. If the church cannot meet their needs, we are in trouble.

The truth is we are conditioned by our individualistic society to shun the public recognition of neediness because it is considered weak. Yet, it has been my experience that those who acknowledge their neediness move on in life quicker and get healed emotionally and spiritually along the way.

ASD