In Part I of this series of posts on discipleship and friendship, I described the desire of many Christians to replace discipleship with friendship or, as many say, spiritual friendship. Pitting discipleship against friendship, I wrote, is misleading, since there is a big, big difference between modern friendship and premodern friendship, as CS Lewis attested to. Discipleship is much more like ancient friendship, whereas modern friendship is, well, that's the subject of this post - Why Christians are Often Lousy Friends.
The sorry state of friendship in modern times is, sadly, one of the unintended consequences of Christianity. It is a sad irony that the type of relationship Jesus called upon to spread his teaching is precisely the relationship that was crippled by subsequent Christian teachings. Jesus never wrote anything nor did he tell anyone else to write anything down and he spent little time talking to large groups of people. He spent most of his time investing in a small group of people, to whom he told at the end of ministry, "I no longer call you servants, I have called you friends." When he finished his time with his friends he told them to "Go and make disciples".
Subsequent Christian teachings have weakened the ancient institution of friendship beyond recognition. Drawing on scriptures such as Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus replies to the question, "Who is my neighbor", by describing what a neighbor does, Christianity calls one to focus his heart on a universal love of humanity, making the exclusive, private attachments between friends appear suspect and unimportant. The other relationship elevated by Christian teachings is the family, which is the first relationship in scripture and is discussed extensively by Paul. As Christians have devoted themselves to loving their enemies and the least of these, and to serving and strengthening their families, friendship has gone from a virtue that occupies 20% of Aristotle's book on ethics to a diversion, something quite marginal.
The only significant Christian writing on friendship was penned by the 12th century Aelred of Rievaulx. More typical of Christian teaching, unfortunately, is 17th century Bishop Taylor's Treatise of Friendship, in which he writes,
You inquire how far a dear and a perfect friendship is authorised by the principles of Christianity? To this I answer, that the word friendship in the sense we commonly mean by it, is not so much as named in the New Testament, and our religion takes no notice of it. You think it strange; but read on, before you spend so much as the beginning of a passion or a wonder upon it. There is mention of friendship of the world; and it is said to be enmity with God; but the word is nowhere else named, or to any other purpose, in all the New Testament. It speaks of friends often, but by friends are meant our acquaintance, or our kindred, the relatives of our family, or our fortune, or our sect, etc. ...Christian charity is friendship to all the world; and when friendships were the noblest things in the world, charity was little, like the sun drawn in at a chink, or his beams drawn into the centre of a burning-glass.
Bishop Taylor's explicit denigration of friendship vis-a-vis charity is held implicitly by most Christians, and it is founded on a crass reading of Scripture, as the action of the New Testament is, of course, as important as the words. Besides the words of Jesus cited above, the world-changing friendships of Jesus with his disciples, or of Paul with Timothy, are ignored by Taylor. The same sentiment, unfortunately, is held at the other end of the theological spectrum, by none other than Kierkegaard, who in his Works of Love gives friendship the ignoble label of 'preferential love'.
Christianity has misgivings about erotic love and friendship because preference in passion or passionate preference is really another form of self-love. Paganism has never dreamed of this. Because paganism never had an inkling of self-renunciation's love of one's neighbor, whom one shall love, it therefore reckoned this: self-love is abhorrent because it is love of self, but erotic love and friendship, which are passionate preferences for other people, are genuine love. But Christianity, which has made manifest what love is, reckons otherwise.
And this is precisely the driving thought behind Christianity's unwitting denigration of friendship - we learn about love from the New Testament, which spoke of charity and family but not friendship. No wonder we lack the resources to develop deep and lasting friendships. No wonder modern friendship is bemoaned by CS Lewis, as modern culture is so influenced by historical Christianity. No wonder Christians are often lousy friends.
Where can we turn to learn about friendship as it was experienced by Jesus and his disciples, and by Paul and Timothy. We can turn to the classical institution of friendship which was a given in New Testament times, and which shared nothing with modern friendship except the name, friendship. It is to this classical notion of friendship that we turn in the next in this series of posts.
Ken, I agree that Christian teaching is to blame for the spread of "friendship-lite", but I don't put the blame there. Rather, modernity is the one who has hollowed out all relationships making them, following Marx, mere opportunities for commerce. Christianity, in my opinion, probably just drank deeply from modernity's gospel and overlaid that upon its own, thus producing a "biblical doctrine" of friendship that is worthy of your criticism.
Posted by: Thom | September 20, 2005 at 11:26 AM