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October 7 - October 10, 2024
Without someone else to affirm our existence in the world, we stumble along unsure of everything, doubting the biggest and smallest decisions alike. What we usually don’t realize is that all that fear and anxiety is not the product of facing difficult circumstances, it is the product of facing those circumstances alone.
The “You too?” moment. “Friendship arises [when two] companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which . . . till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’ . . . It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings . . . they share their vision—it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.”
That’s what the beginning of friendship usually looks like. Two people fumbling to find something they deeply long for, can’t quite name, and even if they could, would usually be too embarrassed to ask for.
What I mean by loneliness is this: the feeling of being a person who used to have friends.
the hidden pain of being surrounded by people but known by none of them.
This is why you feel like the world is so right when you have friends.14 Because something is deeply right when that happens.
You are made for people in such a way that you will be lonely if it is just “you and God.”
It is crucial to see that our capacity to be lonely with God is not a sign of God’s insufficiency or lack. It is a sign of his unfathomable generosity: God designed us to need people. You cannot experience God the way you were made to until you experience him alongside others.
The route of the enemy is always to pull you aside and tell you lies about who you are and who God is. Because you are most vulnerable when you are alone.
The first thing that happens to Adam and Eve is that they hide from each other—they cover themselves up with fig leaves. And immediately afterward, they hide from God.
This hiding is spiritual before it is physical. It is the sense that we’re not quite right, not quite enough, not quite ready to be seen by others and God. Hiding begins as our unwillingness to be seen and then becomes our insistence not to be known—and that is the root of all loneliness.
But in the world of sin, we separate ourselves from God because we are not sure we are lovable, so we don’t want to risk being known.
The consequence of sin for Adam, for Eve, for Cain—indeed for all of us—is isolation. And isolation is death. Spiritually and physically.
Which means that to do nothing is actually to do something very significant—it is to accept the drift of modern life.
A true friend, after all, is someone who knows you that well and decides to stick around anyway.
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it. We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few “friends.” But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as “friendships,” show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philia [the Greek word for friendship] which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia [the Latin word for friendship] on which
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This means that to become more like Jesus necessarily means to become more and more like a friend. You cannot have a real life of faith without friendship.
In some sense, I was an eighteen-year-old college male being tempted by all the usual things. That was not, in itself, significant. What was significant was that I faced all these temptations alone.
When temptation meets aloneness, temptation wins almost every time.
Do you want to know the loneliest way to live? Living with sin and hiding it.
He showed me that friendship is the place you process your sin in real time. Not the place you go once you’re over it.
“People fall in private long before they fall in public.”
The grace of Jesus is nothing to rejoice about if we cannot first be honest about why we need that grace!
“If we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be ‘as gods.’ We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us.”
Sharing is what we do to update people on our lives. But vulnerability is what we do to let people into our lives.
The power to name is the power to create reality.
But after just a month or two of vulnerable friendship, he told me one night that if I didn’t learn to do the dishes then I’d be a bad roommate (he used more colorful language, as I recall) for the rest of my life, and even worse, I’d be a bad husband because I didn’t know how to serve anyone.
Grace means we can hear people out even if they’re not right.
My wife, Lauren, and I have an agreement about driving. We are always allowed to shout “Watch out!” or “Red light!” to the other, even though 99 percent of the time the driver already saw the danger or the red light. We made an agreement to say thank you for things like that because the one time it matters, it could be a matter of life and death.
I think the greatest forms of encouragement, however, usually do not come as mere compliments about present characteristics. I believe the deeper form of encouragement is calling a friend to a future possibility—to name a talent they have but at the same time to exhort them to steward and multiply it.
Too many questions can suffocate, but one good question plus a listening ear creates the soil of conversation where vulnerability and honesty can grow.*
J. C. Ryle once wrote that friendship “halves our troubles and doubles our joys.”
If covenant is the way we plan for the future, forgiveness is the way we deal with the past.2
To be friends with sinners is our only option. You should expect to be friends with people who are downright selfish, who don’t care for you exactly the way you hoped, who miss opportunities, and who let you down.
In a moment that has elevated the spirit of cancel culture and downplayed the beauty of forgiveness, it is no surprise that so many are drifting into the loneliness of resentment.
forgiveness is for us as much as it is for our friends who hurt us. In his parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus told of a man whose debt was mercifully forgiven, but then the man went on to mercilessly demand repayment from others.
The most important reason we forgive others is to reexperience the way Jesus has forgiven us. We learn it by practicing it.
Importantly, our forgiveness is not predicated on our friends’ apologies. We don’t forgive one another because of how good the apologies are, we forgive one another because Christ has forgiven us.
Christ bore our burden so we wouldn’t have to. It is also how friendships work.
If you seem to be constantly disappointed with your friends, the first thing to do is not to look for new ones or wonder why they are such idiots who don’t seem to understand relationships. The first thing to do is examine your expectations of relationships. Because it is very possible that our bitterness about the relationships around us speaks more to our pride than their flaws.
But the very character of Jesus is to be drawn to those who would hurt him and push him away. Our calling in friendship is the same.
A true friend will say, “I will walk with you, even though I may have to carry you.”
We mirror the Trinity and satisfy an innate need that we all have—to be invited into the circle. The reason human friendship is possible is because of the generous openness of the Trinity.
We ruin the goodness of friendship when we refuse to use it to bless others,
If you try to be friends with everyone, you will be friends with no one. As Lewis puts it, “To say ‘These are my friends’ implies ‘Those are not.’ . . . Friendship must exclude.”2
We build relationships that are strong enough to invite others in.
Think in open circles, whether you’re sitting around a fire or a table or in the corner of a room. Consider how you can arrange your bodies physically to suggest a relational truth—others are welcome to come and talk to you.
When you host or eat, consider the idea of an extra chair. Whether you plan ahead of time and invite someone new or are simply open to a last-minute guest, the habit of keeping an extra chair signals a readiness for new friends.
If you are hosting, make a point to introduce new people. I learned this from my father. When we have a newcomer to a family meal, my dad will inevitably at some point, usually before we eat, ask for everyone’s attention and introduce how our guest came to be here, explain why they should be honored as a guest, and thank them for coming.
Roosevelt’s famous quote, “It is not the critic who counts. . . . The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood . . . who spends himself in a worthy cause.”
