What Is Friendship?

 

What is friendship?

by Ariadne Lewis and Annie Dawson

with Dr. Robert Frazier, Professor of Philosophy

The two of us met at a football scrimmage the first day of Welcome Week. Neither of us was very impressed. One of us saw a girl wearing sport shorts and talking to some guy about football and decided she was probably a jock and we probably wouldn’t be friends. The other saw a girl in a very formal dress who looked rather out of place in the bleachers and thought she was very homeschooled and no fun. Fortunately, friendship does not depend solely on first impressions, and we overcame our initial prejudices. Over the past two years, we have encouraged and changed each other, pointing each other towards virtue and ultimately towards God. As all friends do, we shape each other and transform each other’s’ actions, opinions, and thoughts.

From left to right: Ariadne Lewis, Dr. Robert Frazier and Annie Dawson

And as friends, we often think about the nature of friendship. It’s something of a hot topic in college. Sometimes it seems as if the only thing college students do outside of class is start friendships, build friendships, destroy friendships, and try to patch friendships up again. Becoming a hermit starts to seem like a valid option. However, friendship is necessary to human life--and particularly to our life as Christians. While it does not feed our physical bodies, it is necessary for our minds—perhaps even for our souls. As the ubiquitous C.S. Lewis says, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art [. . . .] It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

If we think friendship is that essential, our choices become more difficult—choices between getting enough sleep or discussing important issues until 3 a.m.; between doing your homework or talking through your roommate’s difficult exam; between telling someone the hard truth about the pain their actions have caused or remaining silent in surface-level serenity. These choices shape our friendships, which means they shape us.

And since our friendships shape us, it is worthwhile to ask whether, as Christians, it’s possible for us to become true friends with unbelievers. The answer may depend on our definition of friendship. James 4 says, “[D]o you not know that friendship with the world is hatred with God? Anyone who chooses to become a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” James seems to say that we have two mutually exclusive options: to be the friend of God or to be the friend of the world. Yet while we are told not to be of the world, we are still to be in it. Where should we draw the line?

In James 2:23, Abraham is called, not the world’s friend, but God’s friend. If we are to be friends with God, do we need to somehow be equal with him? Aristotle says that friendship is more likely when the parties are equal in some sense. In a friendship of utility, the relationship centers around a common task. In a friendship of pleasure, the relationship works because of a common interest, like a sports game. And in a friendship of virtue, the most meaningful of his three types, the relationship builds off of a common set of beliefs and pushes the parties to become more virtuous together. In each of these cases, potential friends are unlikely to meet unless they are equal. That makes James’ concept of friendship with God still more shocking.

C.S. Lewis also says that we are more likely to be friends when we inhabit similar spheres or contexts, which he calls the “matrix of friendship.” For instance, although the two of us didn’t think we would be friends, we moved in very similar contexts—we both lived in Clarke, we both auditioned for the Genevans, and we shared a close mutual friend. We couldn’t help but see each other often, couldn’t help but talk to each other, and couldn’t help but experience what C.S. Lewis describes when he says, “Friendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought I was the only one . . . .”

Our own experience of friendship as college students cannot be placed neatly in two or three levels—or even into “Four Loves” or “Five Love Languages.” Yet regardless of our philosophy of friendship, we would be wise to consider both how our human friendships shape us and how our friendship with God impacts our relationships with others. Although we are clearly unequal with God, even Aristotle says that unequal friendships are possible: they can occur, he says, when the superior person shapes and lifts up the inferior person. Is that perhaps what happens with us through God’s grace? If so, nothing can ever be the same—least of all what it means to be a friend.