MY friendsPosted by Rick on May 24th, 2011
Rachel’s post on friends has made me ponder my closest friends and think about what I value in those friendships. Many of my friends live far away and I hardly get to talk to them. Throughout the week, I have been talking with Rachel about the characteristics of my best friends, and there is some sense in which the people to whom I am attracted to for deep friendship have specific and rare characteristics. They are all VERY different, but these qualities are common to all of them.
“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” – Ps. 119:165
First on the list, is someone who is not easily offended. This characteristic is probably at the top of my list because I offend people so often! I have no excuse for that. I am sure I have angered a number of people on many occasions, but I have never been able to get close to grudge holders. It simply wouldn’t work out well for me. All my closest friends are with me in the mess – not as teachers, but as companions. People who hold grudges (with anybody) for more than a day always lean toward a law-based faith. I am not faulting people for this sinful leaning (I lean too far the other way), but my closest friends are grace-based people who lean closer to antinomianism than legalism. They have an acute awareness of God’s grace, and they are skilled at sharing that grace with others. I have found that I have little desire to establish deep friendships with those who get offended – probably because I have been burned a couple of times and my wife has been burned even more in this area. While I have tried to re-establish trust after situations like this (where they held grudges at me or another person), it has never developed. It’s one of those areas that personally skeeves me out.
“Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.” – Kahlil Gibran
“Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.” – Henry Ward Beecher
Another thing I highly value is an acute awareness of human sinfulness. My closest friends are the type of people who aren’t shocked when they hear a pastor they know has molested his daughter or that a mutual friend has recently come out of the closet or that someone has confessed a porn addiction. They know how to have compassion on both victim and perpetrator. They do not excuse the sins, but realize that there is a thin line between faith and apostasy.
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” – Mother Theresa
Many of my closest friends are intellectually driven, but their strongest driving force is compassion. As I think about my closest friends, they are the ones who feed the hungry, befriend the homeless, comfort the sick and dying. They have an awareness of the vapor of this life and they are committed to easing the pain of others.
“In the end we are all separate: our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similarities, but it is our differences we must learn to respect.” – unknown
My closest friends can separate people from positions. One of the things I love best about my wife is her ability to have a heated debate where we disagree vehemently, and when the debate is over, there is no animosity. I think of all the times we have debated in front of family, where someone has been saying, “Okay, guys, calm down” the whole time, not realizing that we are not mad at each other. One of the debates I remember most fondly was on whether soda and cardboard are food. It lasted a little over an hour, and the whole time, I think my mother-in-law thought we were going to get a divorce. We love a heated debate, but we recognize the difference between people and positions. As I think of my closest friends, they are the ones I can debate on finances, eschatology, or politics – even following our discussion with a blog post, and they don’t take it personally. They continue the debate!
“The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other’s dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him” – Cyril Connelly
My closest friendships are ones where I feel on an equal level. I do not mean a social, educational, theological, or economic level. I have close friends that have more or less money than me. I have close friends who have as much education as me and close friends who have not gone to college. Some of my closest friends are ELCA Lutherans, Charismatics, Catholics, and Dispensationalists. I do not feel the need to have those types of things in common. I am talking about an equal respect for each other – where I do not worry about them looking down at me and they do not have to worry that I am looking down on them. I have some friendships where I feel like I am always being parented. I have others where I feel like I am a beacon of advice. I get along with those people well enough, but those people will never be my closest friends, and I will never be theirs. Close friendship, at least for me, means being able to be stupid without being judged but also having the ability to open up and be serious.










