Friendship for God’s Sake

Social psychologists have done a good deal of research on interpersonal attraction in general. They have done little, however, with the specific topic of friendship. We can sympathize with their reluctance to tackle this subject: friendship is something that everyone feels he knows all about but that few people can describe with precision. For me, several years of research on friendship have been well worth the effort; the rewards have more than justified the difficulties of conceiving and carrying out systematic studies.

C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves argues that friendship is the most nearly spiritual form of human love. He develops the point that this “nearness by similarity” is the reason why friendship is seldom the scriptural analogy for the relation of God to his people; the very similarity weakens the essential contrast between human and divine love. While specific biblical references to friendship between God and man are rare, the few we find are significant. They give the clear impression that being called a friend of God (or of his Son) depends upon complete obedience to him. God’s act of reciprocation is a deep revelation of his works and his nature to the man he recognizes as a friend (John 15:14, 15; James 2:23; Gen. 18:17–19).

Some biblical references to friendship denote deep affection combined with a willingness to act unselfishly and sacrificially on behalf of another person (e.g., John 11:5–11; John 15:13). Often the term friend is used in passing as a form of address, connoting little more than respect or cordiality (e.g., Matt. 20:13). The classic friendship between David and Jonathan reveals, by implication, that friends react to each other as total persons rather than as “things” or mere role occupants. It would have been easy, even natural, for David to see Jonathan as nothing more than heir apparent to the throne of a man who was trying to destroy him, and for Jonathan to see David as nothing more than a pushy peasant threatening his father’s kingship. Instead, they saw each other in breadth and depth as individuals, and their relationship is widely cited as the epitome of friendship.

Let us look at friendship from the perspective of secular social psychology. Please think of this analysis as a partially substantiated theoretical model. The validity of the general approach has been supported by research, as have some of the more specific ideas. But some of the ideas are educated guesses awaiting confirmation from field and laboratory studies. After reviewing the model, let us then explore some facets of the relation of evangelical Christianity to friendship.

Characteristics Of Friendship

The first point to be made is that friendship is a voluntary relationship. Writers from Montaigne to C. S. Lewis have stressed this, and they have been joined recently by sociologists interested in friendship as a social institution (e.g., J. G. McCall, Social Relationships, Aldine, 1970). Voluntary interdependence seems to be one identifying mark of a strong friendship. It is not merely that two people are willing to spend time together—circumstances may compel them to do so—but that they make it a point to spend time together without outside constraints. In effect, they allow their lives to overlap. The plans, decisions, and activities of one person are to some degree contingent upon those of the other. We may regard voluntary interdependence as the behavioral component of friendship. Usually, but not always, the greater the voluntary interdependence, the stronger the friendship.

Second, friendship is a reaction to a person qua person. Friendship is perhaps the least role-bound, the least normatively regulated, the least legalistic, and the least “programmed” of all interpersonal relationships. In the absence of normative definitions or formal trappings, friendship depends for its very existence upon the way the persons involved “see” or “interpret” each other. Thus friendship, more than more clearly structured relationships, has a strong and seemingly necessary phenomenological component. The partners must feel they are reacting positively to each other as individuals or as whole persons rather than to any particular set of characteristics. That is, each person reacts to the other as a person.

What does it mean to react to a person qua person? This concept has an existential ring, and seems to bear some kinship to what Buber was trying to convey in his description of the I-Thou relation (I and Thou, Scribner, 1958). Such concepts are interesting and provocative, but too nebulous to suit most data-oriented social psychologists. The person-qua-person concept becomes more tangible, however, if we think of some specific implications. Reacting to a person-qua-person implies reacting to his genuineness, his uniqueness, and his irreplaceability in the relationship.

A person may behave in stereotyped ways to fulfill role requirements, social expectations, or a particular kind of “image.” If so, it is difficult to react to the person qua person; we do not have the kind of information we need to ascertain what is genuinely “him.” However, when he departs from norms or expectations, when he behaves in situations permitting flexibility and freedom of choice, or when he talks frankly about his attitudes, ideas, and feelings, we regard these revelations as genuine and hence as a basis for reacting to the “person behind the act.”

On the other hand, we often fail to react to what is unique about a person even when we have the appropriate kinds of information. We tend to “economize” by thinking of our acquaintances in terms of classes and categories. But to react to a person as a member of a class does not do justice to him as an individual. To react to what is unique or at least out of the ordinary is to react to the person qua person.

Finally, to the degree that we react favorably to an acquaintance as genuine and unique, we are likely to find him irreplaceable as a companion. Irreplaceability is another aspect of reacting to the person qua person, and is an important part of the way people see each other when they consider themselves friends.

A third characteristic of friendship is that it involves identifiable benefits. By and large, writers have done a more convincing job of extolling the “fruits of friendship” than have social scientists. The essays of Francis Bacon and Emerson are especially insightful. Humorist-philosopher Charles Schulz carried his cast of Peanuts characters through a charming series of episodes that illustrate some of the values of friendship (I Need All the Friends I Can Get, Determined, 1964).

The classes of benefits or direct rewards of friendship that have been useful in research are stimulation value, ego-support value, and utility value.

Some people are valued as friends because they are interesting and stimulating; they have a knack for introducing us to new ideas and activities and for prodding us to expand our knowledge and perspectives. Some people are valued as friends because they are encouraging, supportive, and comforting; they have the ability to help us feel we are competent and worthwhile. Some people are valued as friends because they are helpful and cooperative; they are willing to use their own resources and abilities to help us meet our personal needs and goals.

It is sometimes said that friendship means different things to different people. This means, in part, that different people seek different kinds of benefits in their friendships. One person tends to become friends with highly stimulating people; another seeks out ego-supportive people. Moreover, a given person is likely to have different kinds of people for friends; he may be attracted to one person because of his ego-supportiveness, another because of his cooperativeness, and so on.

These different benefits may be expressed in a wide variety of combinations. In general, however, utility value seems to be the one most closely related to strong friendship. Also, women tend to consider ego-supportive value a more important aspect of friendship than do men.

A fourth characteristic is that friendship often requires patience and restraint. It is a mistake to assume that friends are invariably people with whom one gets along well all the time. Most friendships some of the time and some friendships much of the time are difficult to maintain. We have to spend a certain amount of time and energy soothing ruffled feelings, clarifying misunderstood actions or comments, and, in general, exercising patience and restraint to keep the relationship from breaking up. It is not unusual for friends to drift into situations involving conflicting goals, motives, or ideas, or occasionally to over-react to each other’s mannerisms or personality quirks. Sometimes the mark of a strong friendship is that it is difficult to maintain. This shows that the partners attach enough significance to the relationship to be willing to work at keeping it intact. They find ways of resolving or working around the tension and strain.

Human Nature And Friendship

What we have said so far helps us design research and organize information toward a better understanding of friendship. However, it says nothing about any particular philosophy of human nature. Let us think in terms of the increasingly familiar Greek words represented by our present catch-all word love—eros, philia, and agape.

Eros refers to self-centered love, love based solely on some need or desire of the one who loves. Love is extended only because the loved one is seen as capable of satisfying that need or desire. We would expect a friendship based on eros to last only as long as the loving person has the need or as long as the loved one is capable of satisfying it.

Philia refers to love based on mutual respect and devotion. It is extended to the loved one because of the particular person he happens to be. This love may be truly unselfish and self-giving, and requires only that the love that is expressed be in some way acknowledged and reciprocated.

Agape refers to unconditional love, a love that is extended to the loved one regardless of who he is or what he is like. It is love that emanates from the very nature of the loving person. It is, in a word, divine love.

Human friendship seems to be based on philia—considerably more than eros, but considerably less than agape. Much goes on in friendship that is motivated by one person’s truly unselfish interest in the other as a person qua person. It would do violence to a sizable body of data as well as to observations from daily life to say that friendship is based primarily on eros, self-centered love.

On the other hand, friendship falls far short of agape. Friendships sometimes originate in the partners’ common hatred or exclusion of another person or group. A popular and potent symbol of companionship and unity is the power salute, a gesture that clearly communicates the fact that the camaraderie within a group is based on its members’ alignment against a common foe. Aronson and Cope (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1968, 8, pp. 8–12) have reported experimental evidence strongly supporting the old adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Moreover, friendship can be cruelly exclusive. Friends often enhance their relationship by making it clear that certain other people are outsiders and cannot, in any sense, consider themselves part of “the group.” There may be a lot of love shared within the circle, but little is extended beyond it. There may be a lot of philia, but there is certainly no agape. The love is too exclusive to be so considered.

The rarity of agape is easy to understand if we take at face value what the Bible says about the nature of unregenerate man. For example, the words of the psalmist in Psalm 14 (“They have all gone astray.… There is none that does good, no, not one”) and of the Apostle Paul in Romans 3 (“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”), and the realistic outlook Jesus himself expressed in John 2 (“Jesus did not trust himself to [those who believed in his name when they saw his signs] because … he himself knew what was in man”)—all this leaves no room for hope that man, relying on his own resources, will ever be capable of expressing agape. This biblical assessment is shored up by the evidence of human history, by the continued hatred and violence on the contemporary scene, and by what anyone discovers if he is honest enough to look candidly at the balance of good and evil in his own acts and motives.

The “humanistic” psychologists (e.g., Rogers, Maslow) have rightly insisted on man’s need for what amounts to agape—unconditional love—but they have wrongly insisted that man has it within his nature to create a world where such love is possible. Agape is divine love, and is ours to give only as we abide in the love of Christ through obedience to him (see John 15 and First John 3 and 4). There is a striking parallel between the qualities listed in First Corinthians 13:4–7 and those listed in Galatians 5:22 and 23. The former passage refers to attributes of love and the latter to “fruits of the Spirit.” In a number of places Christian love is yoked, explicitly or by context, with the presence of the Holy Spirit; see, for instance, Romans 5:5 and First John 4:13. The conclusion is unmistakable: The ability to express agape is imparted exclusively to fully committed Christians through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

The Christian’S Mandate

Regardless of the hopelessness of human nature apart from the transforming love of Jesus Christ, Christians are commanded to love, not only their brothers, whom they know (John 15:12; 1 John 4:7), but also their neighbors, whom they often do not know (Luke 10:25–37), and even their enemies, whom they might prefer not to know (Matt. 5:43–48; Luke 6:35). Significantly, we are commanded not to love human nature but to love human beings. When we encounter a non-Christian, however sinful he may be, we are not facing someone in need of our condemnation—he is condemned already. We are facing a person for whom Christ died and who, for that reason, is completely salvageable. We are facing a person who needs God’s love. And the closest many people will ever come to experiencing God’s love is what they feel working through a committed Christian.

It is not stretching the point to say that Christians are commanded to be friends for God’s sake. Not only is the failure to be such a friend disobedient to specific scriptural commands; it probably is also one of the most serious threats to an effective evangelical outreach. Lenin is reputed to have said, “If I ever met a Christian, I’d become one.” And Nietzsche, famous for proclaiming years ago that God was dead, is also credited with saying, “Show me first that you are redeemed; then I’ll listen to talk about your redeemer.”

Because it involves an unselfish concern for another person qua person, friendship may well be, as Lewis says, the most nearly divine form of human love. But evangelical Christians must never overlook the fact that, in many respects, friendship is the most human form of divine love. New Testament exhortations to love are frequently exhortations to extend specific acts of helpfulness and support—to provide cups of cold water, to feed a hungering enemy, to assist a victimized stranger, to visit the sick and imprisoned, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. And “because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit which has been given unto us” (Rom. 5:5), Christians have the power as well as the mandate to be the best kind of friends anyone can have.

Paul H. Wright is associate professor of psychology at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. He has the Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Kansas.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.