The Disciplined Heart - Chapter 4

This chapter on friendship begins with the task of trying to get to some definition of 'friend' from which to start. After all, it is a term we tend to use loosely, referring to everyone from people we see at work to the folks who were part of our past to our current intimate friends. How do we narrow it down? Simon suggests a starting point, outlining some features that are (ideally) part of a significant friendship: "A sense of equality and mutuality, concern for each other's welfare, willingness to help when needed, shared interests and activities, shared values and principles, shared history and memories, open communication, and intimate connection." (89) "Intimate connection" is an interesting one for me, as I don't have the luxury of physical proximity to most of my dearest friends. There is a short article in Philosophy Now  that offers a positive spin on how email/the internet allows friendship to grow and thrive in new ways. What do y'all think - how significant can a friendship be when you're only face to face once in a blue moon?

So then, how does friendship differ than neighbor love? Well, the use of imagination is markedly different, for starters. While in neighbor love we need not have " any clear idea of what his destiny is beyond the general Christian belief that it will somehow involve Christlikeness," (89) friendship requires knowledge of the other and an affirmation that their own vision of their destiny is substantially correct. In addition, it requires a commitment to help them achieve their vision, supporting them and encouraging them and in general becoming a source of strength for them. All of this implies that friends must not be "so completely fictions of their own making that they have not a clue of their own destinies." (96) They (and we) must be sufficiently self-aware.  We all engage in some degree of fiction-making about ourselves, but "[t]o the extent we [do so], we are strangers to ourselves and others." (107) This is true in our relationship with God as well as with other people.

If we take an affirmation of destiny (used here as God's intention for our lives, our "true story") as one of the central ways of loving a friend, does this mean that Christians can only be friends with other Christians? Or that non-Christians in general can't have true friendships? To this charge, Simon says no: "Spiritual or moral growth need not be the focus of a genuine friendship, but growth in the good will be its result." (103) This good could be a love of art, a passion for science, or whatever. Even in Christian friendships, it "need not look like two-person religious support groups. The friends may spend more time talking about literature or sharing the silence of a trout stream's banks than engaging in 'God talk.'" (103) Spiritual improvement is not the aim of friendship, but rather it is to help them fulfill their conception of their destiny. I think the "their" there is important. Friends have the difficult task of speaking sometimes hard truths into the relationship and sharing insight, but ultimately "one wants the story that one's friend lives out to be his own." (105)

So how do you respond when a friend's story begins to diverge from your own? Or when when you simply don't agree with a person's conception of their destiny? I'd be curious to hear thoughts about how to deal with these things... how to discern when to speak and when to maintain silence.

It seems evident, even from this very superficial overview (me, not the book), that, as Aristotle claimed, "a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not." (93) To have understanding and acceptance of the other person requires that you know them fairly well, and establishing trust and intimacy requires time - for some of us, a lot of time!

To end, a quote from The Great Gatsby, which is the novel she uses to illustrate friendship, in which Nick describes Gatsby:

He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. (91)