Some Reflections on Friendship

I've been blessed with many friends in my life, and during this season of reflecting on the gifts I've been given, I want to talk about the gift of friendship. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who got the human race started on pretty much everything, somehow found time in his busy schedule to write a treatise on the institution. In it, he describes two tiers of friendship. The first is defined by a series of mutual goals, desires, or interests. A shared love of golf, sports, or music creates pleasure for the interested parties, and a friendship begins. Writer C.S. Lewis opines that "the typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." 

Aristotle believed that there was another level of friendship, as well. While the first one rose and fell along with the interests and goals, and fell away when the mutual desires were met or discarded, the second was characterized by a deep and abiding regard for the well being of the other. This higher friendship wants what is best for the other for their own sake. He also believed that it took a certain kind of person to be capable of this higher form. He called such a person a καλὸς κἀγαθός (kalos kagathos), which means, roughly, "man of wisdom and virtue". 

His point was that it takes someone who is capable of selfless love to love selflessly. But while he believed that such love was off limits to everyone except the very best, I believe that all of mankind is stamped with the image of God, and can, as such, speak the language of love. Anyone who's spent any time with a mother of a newborn can apprehend this. 

I believe that friendship is a gift we're given. Here's Lewis again:

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”  

Let me encourage you to look at the friendships in your own life, and thank God for the people He's brought alongside you.