FRIENDSHIP: THE LOST LOVE

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
John 15:15 (NIV)

                I have been rereading The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis as a part of my daily devotions. For the last several days I have been slowly working my way through his chapter on friendship. The Four Loves was written in 1960, but it could have been written today. Lewis saw the demise of friendship back then. It has almost completely disappeared from the landscape today.

                In our highly sexualized world of today, friendship has been squeezed out of the equation.  If two men are close friends, it is automatically assumed that they are gay. It is not so prominent with women, although it seems to be leaning in that direction. As Lewis has put it, “It's all love or sex these days. Friendship is almost as quaint and outdated a notion as chastity. Soon friends will be like the elves and the pixies - fabulous mythical creatures from a distant past.”

                It is easy for genuine friendship to get lost in the shuffle of life. Most people settle for acquaintances or pseudo-friends. (I have 1000 friends of Facebook) Genuine friendship gets lost because it doesn’t play an obvious role in the advancement of life. Lewis calls it the most unnatural of loves. Affection naturally springs up within a family. Eros needs little promoting to blossom. But friendship tends to hide in the shadows. Again, Lewis puts it succinctly. “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

                Ironically, we all sense the need of friendship, although we don’t always find it. One reason for that is that when we put our focus on finding friendship, we short-circuit the process. In many ways, friendship is the by-product of other endeavors in life. It is nurtured in the soil of companionship. But once it begins to grow and blossom it goes far beyond companionship. “Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).” (Lewis)

                In many societies, friendship is seen as a threat to the whole. Friendship draws a few people out of the crowd. It separates their relationship as different from the others. This is the threat to those who value uniformity or conformity. But friendship is not completely exclusive. In fact, friendship is always open to anyone who shares the same interest or passion shared by two friends. Friendship is enhanced when it is expanded to include three or four or five.

                There is a limit to the bounds of friendship. As Pastor Leith Anderson has said, we are all like Lego pieces; we each have a limited number of snap-on points. When our snap-on points are filled, we cannot add another relationship. We can always expand our circle of acquaintances, but our circle of genuine friends is limited.

                God designed us to live in relationship with one another. We cannot be fully who God created us to be without them. We are born into the relationship we know as family. Many of us will be privileged to enter into that exclusive relationship of marriage. What is missing for so many is genuine friendship.

                Jesus changed his relationship with his disciples when he called them friends. They became his friends because they shared a bond built out of shared experience and extended companionship. They had moved far beyond being mere acquaintances.

                Solomon highlighted our need for friendship in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

                We need to recapture the gift of friendship. It is a gift that God has given to us, and one that He wants us to share with others. We cannot be close friends with everyone, but we can be close friends with someone. Genuine friendship enhances our lives. It draws out aspects of our life that we could never discover on our own. It opens doors of opportunity to experience life in new ways.

                Cultivating genuine friendship takes time and effort. Not every relationship will blossom into friendship, and that is okay. But being intentional about sharing life with others will open the door for friendship to blossom.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 (NIV)

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24 (NIV)

“Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.
... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves