True Friendship

by Vaughan Roberts

Marriage is certainly more than friendship, but it should not be less.

‘the great modern enemy of friendship has turned out to be love’.5 By ‘love’ he does not mean the care and concern for others which is essential to friendship, but rather what he calls ‘the idolatry of Eros’: the belief that true intimacy can only be found in the romantic sexual union of a couple.

Aristotle was surely right when he observed: ‘The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not.’

Paul Tripp’s words are uncomfortably close to the experience of many: [W]e live in interwoven networks of terminally casual relationships. We live with the delusion that we know one another, but we really don’t. We call our easygoing, self-protective, and often theologically platitudinous conversations ‘fellowship,’ but they seldom ever reach the threshold of true fellowship. We know cold demographic details about one another (married or single, type of job, number of kids, general location of housing, etc.), but we know little about the struggle of faith that is waged every day behind well-maintained personal boundaries. One of the things that still shocks me in counselling, even after all these years, is how little I often know about people I have counted as true friends. I can’t tell you how many times, in talking with friends who have come to me for help, that I have been hit with details of difficulty and struggle far beyond anything I would have predicted. Privatism is not just practiced by the lonely unbeliever; it is rampant in the church as well.1

‘A true friend stabs you in the front’.

It is vital that we learn to respond well to criticism from wherever it comes, and especially from those who love us, if we are to mature as people. One friend of mine suggests a three-point approach to criticism: Expect it: given our sins and weaknesses, we should be surprised we receive so little criticism. Examine it: we should resist the instinctive temptation to defend ourselves or attack the critic, but rather consider whether there is truth in what is being said. Endure it: even when we feel it is unfair, we must not be resentful.

There is a certain ‘niceness’ to a friendship where I can be, as they say, myself. But what I really need are relationships in which I will be encouraged to become better than myself.