The Lost Art of Friendship

Kasey Olander: 

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Kasey Olander. I'm the web content specialist here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And today, we're talking about the topic of friendship. 

I'm joined by two excellent guests. The first one is Drew Hunter. He's the teaching pastor at Zionsville Fellowship in Indiana, and he wrote a book, it's called Made For Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows And Doubles Our Joys. Drew, thanks for being with us today. 

Drew Hunter: 

Thanks for having me, and excited to talk about this together. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm also grateful that we're joined by Rebekkah Scott. Rebekkah is the online course coordinator for the online education department here at DTS, and she's also a PhD student working towards a dissertation on the subject of friendship. Thanks for being here. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Yeah, I think it'll be a lot of fun. Friendship is one of those interesting things that I think a lot of us take for granted. A lot of us would say that we have friends, but we don't think much about it. We don't think very deeply about what does it actually mean to have a friend or to be a friend. Everyone has their own concept of friendship. Even children have a concept of friendship. They kind of know what friends are and have some sort of idea about what that's supposed to look like, but we don't always stop to think deeply about it. I think I want to open up talking to each of you about, how did you guys really begin reflecting on this idea of friendship? Why is it something that we should even take the time to consider? We'll start with you. How about you, Drew? 

Drew Hunter: 

Sure. Yeah. There's a few things that come to mind. One of them is, I think back to when this topic as a focus of study became important to me. It was about 11 or maybe 12 years ago now, and I've had good friends in different seasons of my life and moved around a little bit growing up, so I had to kind of and then maintain friendships like that, but I was just really grateful for close friends. But then, about 12 years ago, I was studying the Book of Proverbs to teach it, and I just sat down and read through the book and I was collecting the themes. I wanted to have messages on the themes that were most important in the Book of Proverbs rather than me just bringing topics to it to look for, and I was not expecting friendship to be one of the most important themes of the book. 

Money would be obvious, of course, wisdom and things like this, and maybe relationships in general, but I was struck by how many very specific and pointed things were said about friendship in that book. So then, that week that I spent studying that theme more deeply in friendship in Proverbs, led me to also think about John 15 and Jesus calling his disciples and us his friends. And I just realized, at some point that week, I don't think I've taken friends for granted per se, but I've never really stopped to think about, what is friendship? Why is it important? How much do I really value this? And then, to think of Jesus as a friend, of course, who knows how many times I had read that in the gospel of John, but I was realized I was not really relating to him explicitly, intentionally, consciously, in terms of friendship. 

So that week really changed my life because, ever since there, the topic, I just haven't been able to let go of it because it's just been such an increased joy to think about the value of friendship, and then, value my friends more and be more intentional about friendships and recognize the rich blessings that are in life because of it and talk to other people about this too. And then, of course, relating with Jesus on terms of friendship has been a life changer for me too. That was the week that it became really important to me to be intentional about thinking about friendship. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's awesome. I love that it was a surprise to you. You went to scripture not expecting to find that, but then, you were like, "Wait a minute. This is something that I actually need to really reflect on." 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that's awesome. What about you, Rebekkah? How did you start getting into this? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah, that's so cool, Drew. I like how your discovery of friendship came out of a study of the Bible, out of Proverbs and everything else it had to say. I think I came at it from the other angle of lived experience, more. As a child, friendship was very important to me. My friends were important to me, and that's acceptable in the context of childhood. But as I grew and I went to college and I became an adult, I started to grow very slowly in this awareness that was a little odd. I sensed, I intuited that friendship was something very important, very necessary, something that deserved to be invested in, but I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it, and neither did the people around me, it seemed. 

There was no ability to speak meaningfully about friendship, so I became frustrated. I wanted a deeper context for understanding what this thing called friendship is. And I knew I needed to investigate it theologically and biblically, and I needed to just learn and develop a way to speak of it. That's what started me investigating it more explicitly, when I came here to DTS, actually. I ended up writing my master's thesis on friendship, and I finished that, and I just felt like I wasn't done. There was more to say. And it's one of those topics that the deeper you dig, the richer you realize it is. It's not just a quick little investigation, a quick little study. This is something I honestly think it's going to take me the rest of my life to get to the bottom of. And the implications of it are just so broad theologically, but also practically so it's very worth investigating, and I'm really pleased and grateful that it came onto my radar. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. So you don't think we're going to totally plumb the depths in this 45 minute episode? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Stranger things have happened, but yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Okay, we'll try. Now that we've used this word several times, what is friendship? Can we define it? Does it have certain hallmarks? What do y'all think? 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, what do you think? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Me? 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Oh, my goodness. It was really funny. I was thinking about this question the other day, and I was remembering, remember Plato's dialogue on friendship? I think it's Lysis, maybe, it's called. And he goes on and on investigating what friendship is, what it isn't, really just at length. And he gets to the very end. And the last sentence is, and I wrote it down here even, the last sentence, the last half of the last sentence is, "But what a friend is, we have not yet been able to find out." So if Plato couldn't define friendship, I really don't think I stand the ghost of a chance. Actually, it's historically been very difficult to define friendship. Everybody's agreed, philosophers, theologians, it's tough. But there was this guy named Cicero, this Roman statesman, and he took a stab at it, and he called it, "Friendship is a complete accord on all subjects, human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection." That was a standard for a long time. And then, in the Middle Ages, this Cistercian abbot came along, Aelred of Rievaulx. You've probably read a lot of his stuff. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Great name. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

And he accepted name- 

Kasey Olander: 

Haven't we all? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah, I know. He's so popular. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, good old Aelred. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

It's basically Stephen King. But anyway, Aelred accepted Cicero's definition, but then, he sort of Christianized it and he said, "Friendship begins in Christ, continues in Christ, and is completed in Christ." We can start there. I think it's really difficult to define friendship conclusively. I think, at bare minimum, we have to say that it includes a common outlook on the most important things. It includes a concern for the other's wellbeing, and it includes a mutual commitment to one another, all in the context of a mutual affection. I don't know, but maybe Drew's got the final, the ultimate, the conclusive definition. 

Drew Hunter: 

I don't, actually. But yeah, I think the shortest definition, if I was just asked just by anyone on any day, life, what friendship was, I would say, it's a close relationship of truth and trust. My expanded version of that would be, it's an affectionate bond forged as we journey together with truth and trust. The idea is that there's a closeness, there's a bond that's forged, and it's mysteriously forged. Sometimes, it's instant. Sometimes, it takes time. Sometimes, it's expected. Sometimes, it's not. But there's an affectionate bond. It's not just being bound together abstractly, but there's a real love and affection that friends have for one another. David and Jonathan's an example of that. It's an affection. And then, it's forged as we journey together through life. There's shared experience. It deepens over time. We're journeying together toward the horizon of our future. 

And then, there's several additional ingredients in addition to affection and love, which would be truth and trust, and those are just essential. Speaking honestly and transparently about who you really are. The mask is gone. They know the real you. And there's trust. Trust is the foundation of friendship. If you remove trust, it's like the foundation of a home cracks, that home will eventually start coming down. You can't feel safe there. That's my working everyday definition of that. And I think that that works for me because it brings together some of the most essential ingredients of what friendship really is. And it's doable too. I've come across definitions. And then, someone will give a definition. And then, maybe you've read these things through history where someone's writing a few hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, and then they'll say, "I think there's maybe been three friendships in the whole world." It's like, okay, there's probably been a few more than that, so let's have a definition that can include most of us. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

There's morals. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

That's funny. I feel like each of you highlighted some interesting things. There's a mutuality there that it's not just one-sided. It's not like I can decide to be someone's friend who doesn't reciprocate. There also is a level of genuineness, the truth and trust, the going together that you guys have highlighted. And an opting in. It's not, "Oh, I was just born into this friendship." Friendship is something that occurs along the way, and there's a genuine love for one another, which is really interesting. 

Drew, you brought up David and Jonathan. I wonder, not just in scripture, because hopefully, we'll get to that, but I wonder how has friendship been seen throughout history? Is that the same as it's seen nowadays in contemporary culture, or is there kind of been a shift over time? Rebekkah, how about we start with you? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Oh, I think there's definitely been a shift. Drew, you should definitely weigh in here too, but yeah, the ancient philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, they thought it was the highest form of human love that could exist between individuals. They thought it was the foundation of the state. And then, you move into the medieval period, and we see a lot, well, before that even, the church fathers, they talked extensively about friendship. And later on, John Kristos, he said, friendship, the work of friendship was more important than raising the dead. And I don't know how you could speak more highly of friendship than that. 

In ancient philosophy, in the church fathers, and then, in the medieval period, we also see a lot of the language of friendship, especially in the context of monasticism. This is where Aelred of Rievaulx wrote his book, Spiritual Friendship, which is the book on Christian friendship. We also see it used theologically in Aquinas and stuff. And then, when we move into the Protestant reformation and into modernism, we see a diminishment in how often and how highly friendship is spoken of. And I think we're still existing in that space today where we've lost a heritage of friendship that our forefathers and our foremothers once enjoyed. Yeah, I guess that's where we're sort of today, unfortunately. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that we don't value it nearly as highly. I don't know anybody who would say that it's the highest form of human relationship. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah, that just doesn't even make sense to us anymore. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. We don't even have a concept for it. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, I think even the past few hundred years, there's been a significant shift. Even in the era of the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, it's not as commonly talked about in those exalted ways in the past, but there are bright spots throughout and people valuing it. Jonathan Edwards had some strong statements on friendship, not often, but when he did speak of it, he would use very lofty language. Of course, C. S. Lewis is known for his writings, and some of the writings that he had was directly on friendship. A well-known book of his is called The Four Loves, and he deals with friendship in there. 

John Newton, author of Amazing Grace that he would sing, he wrote about friendship a little bit. He made a few important statements in just various things he wrote. And then, he modeled it really well with William Cooper. That's a beautiful friendship to look into of, he and another member of his church that then moved away, and they were the closest of friends throughout those years. And it wasn't viewed mainly as pastor-parishioner, their friendship was mainly viewed as a friendship, so it's really beautiful. But then, even just these past decades, there's been a massive decline, not only in thinking about friendship and valuing friendship, but experiencing and practicing friendship. 

So then, there's plenty of studies that have been picking up to show this. It's become a really hot trend in sociology. One study showed, I think it was Cigna Health Insurance showed that something like 54%, and this is now even, this study's a number of years old now, within the last decade, I think, still, but still not as recent as some of the newer ones. They were still saying that over half of the people that they surveyed said that their relationships weren't meaningful. And 40% said no one really knew them at all, which is language of friendship, right? Is they basically are saying, 40% of people said, "I don't have a friend." And then, they studied this over the course few decades, and it was a sharp decline, and it's only gotten worse the past five or 10 years. So we're in, actually, a really unique situation where there's a decline in friendship. I think that's why I'm sensing, even the past five years, there's been an increased awareness of, we've got to talk about this, is because we're hitting a bottom here that's been going on for a long time, but it's kind of accelerated downward right now. 

So yeah, we've lost our heritage and we've lost this amazing gift, and it's there to recover. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that's true. It hasn't expired. It's lot like it's lost forever. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

No. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Did you have something add? Are you good? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

I don't know. I think Drew put it absolutely beautifully. Yeah, I think every generation seems to have their own tasks and responsibilities and opportunities, and if I had to identify one of those for our generation, I really do think it is the explicit recovery of friendship. We need to learn to see it again, talk about it again, to cultivate it in our lives together again. I think that's a huge opportunity and responsibility that we have. 

Kasey Olander: 

Which is really interesting, because it's not as though the term is lost. People still talk about friends, but a lot of times, people mean those as social media relationships. And it could mean somebody that I clicked a button, but I've never actually met, ever, or interacted with whatsoever. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

It means everything, and therefore, it means nothing. 

Kasey Olander: 

Right, exactly. People are like, "Oh, my friend," and they mean, really, somebody I don't even talk to. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Right. Yeah, and then, when they look for language to describe their closest relationships, it's interesting how people quickly move away from friendship language today. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

So they'll say, "Oh, these are, they're more than friends," or, "Oh, you're not a friend. You're like family." And it's like, well, that's fine. Family, that's a great metaphor too, pervasive in the Bible. But it just strikes me that's so interesting that people are so quick to jump away from friendship language when they want to grab language to express the closest of relationships, whereas friendship, understood rightly, actually, is exact exactly the right word to use in addition to to family kinds of language, but friendship for sure. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. We almost have it, it's almost pejorative like, "Oh, we're just friends." Friendship is like, "Oh ... " 

Rebekkah Scott: 

That's saying so much. 

Kasey Olander: 

Oh, they're demoted almost from these other things. And that's so interesting how the language we use, well, maybe it is informed by, or maybe it shapes the way that we think of friendship. It could, I guess, go both directions. 

Drew Hunter: 

Probably both, yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Mm-hmm. Could y'all speak to, how do you think that things like social media and technology, what impact has that had? Especially, because that's one of the new things, Drew, you're talking about, just in the last few years, that's one of the things that has become so pervasive. Drew, how would you say that that has affected our view of friendship? 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, I'll note a few things. I think we're going to be finding out over these coming years just how much it's affected relationships, but a few things come to mind. 

One is technology itself and social media has at a very basic level become a pretty big distraction in life. So in a culture where we already value this busyness too much, it's like everyone's busy and we think everyone's busy, so we don't want to bother them with friendship. We think no one has time for it. On the other hand, we're spending inordinate amounts of time watching Netflix and on social media. The average time that people engage with Facebook is incredible on a daily basis. We're busy, but we're doing these low reward activities rather than actually experiencing friendships. It's become a distraction in life and just filling our time that we could use for friendship with these other digital distractions. Another issue- 

Kasey Olander: 

Watching other people's friendships play out on the streaming services and on social media instead of actively participating in them. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. It's a distraction, but then you think, "Well, we're distracted by social media, but that's engaging with people and engaging with Facebook friends," but it's a shallower, more superficial experience of friendship. We're created, as embodied creatures, made for real experiences, life on life, face-to-face friendship, having experiences together, and merely looking at a screen at people's general posts to the world is not anywhere close to the kind of connection we could have. 

I remember John, the apostle John wrote, in Second John, he said, "I'd rather not write with paper and ink." So he's using modern technology of his time, and I'm glad he did because we have his writings, so he uses it, but he said, "I'd rather not, because," he said, "I want to come speak face-to-face so that our joy may be complete." There's a ceiling on our joy that we're hitting if we are only using this technology to connect, where face-to-face is where the fullness of friendship can be experienced. That's another way that it's affected us. 

And then, maybe a third one would be the way that we use the internet and social media and to communicate, it rewards and seems to attract really unhealthy ways of relating to each other as humans. I remember, even when email came out, my dad, he was a manager, so he worked in a corporate world, and he said pretty quickly, he's like, "People will say things in email that they would never say to your face." It becomes impersonal. And we've seen this polarization politically and socially with tribalism. And then, that creates this sense like you can't trust people. You think everyone on the other side's crazy. And then, you look at your neighbors in your neighborhood and you figure they hold views that they don't really view. And then, you just are only wanting to talk to the people that are exactly aligned with you in every way. And maybe those people are only found online. Those are a few ways that it's affected us. There's, no doubt, more, but that those are direct connections to affecting the way we relate to each other. 

Kasey Olander: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I like that you pointed out that we're still going to see the ramifications for years to come. These are things that we're already seeing, but also, that will continue, the more prevalent it is. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Do you have anything to add, Rebekkah? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Oh, no, absolutely, I completely agree with all that. I think things like Facebook, and full disclosure, I haven't deleted my Facebook specifically because I do want to retain some sort of connection with friends that I've made over the years, but ... 

Drew Hunter: 

I have it too. Yeah, I'm not dismissing all- 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

Drew Hunter: 

It actually has a unique role to strengthen friendship, used properly. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yes, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, I think, inherent in these platforms is a temptation to think that we can transcend our finitude and connect with everyone, when in reality, it's just not possible, as you say. If social media is distracting you from those embodied relationships that are possible, which are obviously going to be a few, then, I think getting as far away from it as is possible in this world is definitely a great idea. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. Ditto on everything you said. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And if we do elevate friendship to the definitions that you guys were describing earlier, where there's a real sense of mutual affection and not just, we shook hands one time, then, maybe we would realize that we can't literally have 1,000 friends. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. I really think we ought to choose alternate terminology for speaking of people we're connected with on Facebook. II have a few real life friends on there, but then, most of the people, they're acquaintances, and I value them, and that is important, and then, I'm not trying to diminish them by taking away the language of friendship and reserving it for something more special, definitely not trying to do that. But I do think we need to reserve the term friend for people with whom we do have that mutual affection, that trust, as you mentioned, those really meaningful connections in the real world. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, it seems like one of the ways we can recover friendship is by also recovering value of acquaintanceship- 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Exactly. 

Drew Hunter: 

... letting it be its own thing and not a bad thing. Right? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. It's okay to be just friendly with some people and not friends. 

Drew Hunter: 

Right. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

And not being offended. "Wow, that person only thinks of me as an acquaintance." Well, let's be real. That's what it is sometimes. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

It's not a bad thing. And if we were to become better friends, that would be a good thing. There's many possibilities involved in being an acquaintance. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, absolutely. I wonder, since you guys have thought so much about this, and we've talked about what it means to be human, we're embodied creatures, what bearing does friendship also have, if we have a robust theology of it, what bearing does friendship have on the way that we understand God? Drew? 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. It's been really helpful for me to think about friendship in connection with God and just the way He's made us. A couple things come to mind. One would be, on the first page of the Bible, we see God create a world for friendship. He creates the world, and the way it's ordered in Genesis 1 and 2 is over the course of this creation week. He's creating realms, the sky, the sea, the land. And then, He fills each realm with communal life. And then, when He gets to humanity, the purpose is to fill the world with communal human life, but He starts with two, Adam and Eve, and He makes humanity in His own image, and then calls them then to multiply and fill the world with society. So we just see, on page one, we see a God who is happy to bless the world with friendship. 

And then, even in Chapter 1, we get a clue as to why. And it tells us something about God because He says, "Let us make man in Our image." And then, He makes humanity, in the plural, Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1. And I know that some people debate what is the us going on? What does that refer to? I'm convinced that is a way of God referring to us as plurality that we find out as we keep reading scripture that he's a triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. This triune God is a unity in plurality, and He's an eternal communion of effusive love. This means that God did not create us or the world because He needed friends. He didn't create us because He had any lack in Himself. He created the world to share His blessings. 

The Puritan Richard Sibbes refers to God as having a spreading goodness. I love that. It's like a picture of Genesis 1. God has this fullness of communal life and love, and He overflows to spread it in a creation world where he then makes us in His image for friendships. So here, we have a God who's enjoying communal love, friendship, in a sense, and then, He makes the world. 

That tells us one really important thing about God, and that makes Him unique from any other worldview or religion or concept of God out there. He's not just this singular God in isolation and lonely, and therefore, has needs and he needs us. He's one in three. It means the Trinity is not so much just like a math problem to be solved. It's a wonder to enjoy. And that He would invite us to share in His communion, and that's really the purpose of the universe. He creates us, and just fast forward to the very end of the Bible, and we have a new creation of embodied joy in friendship with the Lord Jesus and all those who are united to Him. So from beginning to end, the Book of the Bible shows this God of love creating a world of friendship, and what a privilege to be a part of this. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. Anything to add? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

That is so cool. One of my favorite things about your book is just how you do lay out a biblical theology of friendship. And yeah, I think part of the problem with friendship, when you speak of it with regard to the Bible and theology, is that it's everywhere and it's so easy to miss the forest for the trees. And part of my struggle over the years has been trying to find ways to point it out and to articulate it in ways that help other people to see because it's everywhere. It's like saying, "Hey, look at the air we're breathing." 

Yeah, I think we just have to keep pointing out these cosmic themes over and over again until they're visible to our eyes. I was thinking about what this theologian, John Webster, he said that the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of creation, they're distributed doctrines, which means they inform and are informed by all the other theological topics. So salvation, humanity, eschatology, they're all tied into who God is and what it means to live in his creation. And I think, although I would not elevate friendship to the level of the doctrine of the Trinity or of the doctrine of creation, I think friendship functions in a similar fashion. It informs everything we understand about who God is and what He's doing and who we are. And it's just absolutely essential that we see that and allow it to shape our lives accordingly. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. I really love the way you put that, because in one sense, I think a lot of people would say friendship is nowhere. It's not in any of those doctrines, and it's really nowhere in the Bible, maybe a few places. But what you're saying is, once you see what friendship really is and notice where it's explicit, and then, see that it's very tightly tied other places and it's implied, it's everywhere. You could just walk through the doctrine of creation, as I was just sharing a moment ago, and the fall, what's the first result of the fall? It's hiding. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

It's relational breakdown. And then, redemption. What is redemption? It's God inviting us back into friendship with one another and Himself. Jesus came as the friend of sinners, calling His disciples His friends, and the night before He goes to the cross to die, He wants His disciples to understand what's about to happen, and He explains it in terms of friendship. 

He says, "Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends," so right there ... Actually, I think since writing the book, I've done a lot more thinking just over time about John 13 to 15 and what's going on there with love. And I'm thinking of it even more in light of what you said, because you have the doctrine of the church right there because He says, "A new command I give you." The new covenant command is to love one another. And then, He defines that. He ratchets it up, saying, "as I've loved you, you are to love one another," and then, He defines it in terms of friendship because he goes right on to say, "Greater love has no one than this that a man laid down his life for his friends." So what's the church? We're called to love one another as Christ loved us in terms of friendship. And that's according to Jesus's own teaching. What is the cross? It's a cosmic act of friendship where He gives His life down for His friends. Again, Jesus Himself, defining the cross itself and the atonement in terms of friendship. And of course, eschatology, the world of friendship to come. We could probably keep going, but you're just firing my mind with thinking through all these topics and showing how really it is integrated in everywhere. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

I absolutely love it. I really do. There are just layers to this. And you go back over the story again and again, and it just goes deeper and deeper. It occurred to me in the shower the other day. I was thinking about Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning. God created the heavens and the Earth," and just in that one verse, we have the seeds of understanding that God is a friendly God. He's created us and he's disclosed himself to us. So of course, your case for him being a friendly God is going to be strengthened if you go on and see the whole narrative played out as you've walked it out for us. But just right there, we have the makings of understanding that God is a friend. That's just tremendous. And then, you go all the way through the glorious story of redemption and everything, and you come to the church, and I was thinking about something that Eastern Orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky said, and he talked about how, at their pinnacle, siblinghood and friendship merge, they join. And I think that's what we see happening in the church as well. There's so much sibling language, and as you said, we're the community of God's friends, and it's all wrapped up in each other and in one another. It's one thing that God is doing. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

And it's just so cool. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. It's foundational for understanding scripture. You don't see David and Jonathan as like, oh, that's kind of quirky. They talk about this friendship a lot, so that's just one spot. No, it's like something that is woven throughout the entire narrative of scripture, and it helps us understand how we relate to God. The fact that Jesus calls us friends, if we do elevate the idea of friendship, is so much more meaningful and beautiful. I'm really struck by that, that Jesus would want to be friends with me instead of just thinking that as a casual click of a button. Oh, that's something that's so meaningful and rich, and I'm honored and humbled and yeah, I'm really struck by that. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. And I think it takes getting a growing understanding of the value and richness and thickness of friendship for the idea, the notion of Jesus being a friend to actually do land in a weighty way, right? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Because if we just take our current cultural understanding of friendship, which is pretty chum, buddy, pal, good if you have extra time in life, it's an optional thing. Oh, I remember that was nice in college or something, and then you say, "You know, Jesus is also your friend." It's like, "Okay, cool, I guess. Moving on." But once we realize just how rich friendship really is, then, for Jesus to define His cross as an act of friendship and to befriend us in love is a wonder, and we should regularly be thinking of him in terms not just as a savior and Lord, but also as a dear friend. And He authorizes this. It's his idea. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. And that's something we can marvel at instead of being like, "Oh, that's interesting that he would use that term." It becomes so much more wondrous if we take it that seriously. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

I think it's interesting. It's C. S. Lewis, I think, in The Four Loves, who talks about, he says it a lot better than I'm about to say it, but he says something along the lines of, it should be more noteworthy that we don't have these demonstrative expressions of friendship that are regular in our society today, rather than the fact that some people like David and Jonathan had it long ago, that we're the ones who are weird, not them, when we read these different expressions of friendship. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yes. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Mm-hmm. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, that makes me think too of just what's happened. This is obviously another related topic that's pretty wide reaching in itself, but just the sexualization of relationships. So David and Jonathan, there's tons of different articles and people writing saying that maybe there's more going on than just a friendship there, right? And that's just a completely modern interpretation. It was unheard of before a few decades ago. And that tells us more about where we are right now in our understanding of sexuality and friendship than it does, actually, about David and Jonathan. And there's a book I read called The Overflowing of Friendship by a historian named Richard Godbeer, not a believer, as far as I know, but he's just analyzing friendships in the founding era of America between men as you look at their letters to each other, and he found it to be filled with affectionate language for one another. 

And he says he reads what these guys wrote to each other to his classes today in college, and jaws drop. And they're like, "No way that's just friendship. There's more going on." And he's like, "No," but it's because we've just, especially for men, in our culture, we've taken this affectionate aspect of it and we've just sexualized it to say that that's either a feminine quality or it's for someone who's going to be in a sexualized relationship with another man, rather than recognizing that this is supposed to be a very normal, natural part of what it really means to be a man in friendship. Even how we experience these things, and like David and Jonathan, it should be way more normal, but we're in a unique time, and it's really helpful just to get that historical perspective and realize, we're off here, our default understanding of what friendship is and should look like, let's not assume that it's correct. Let's keep stepping back, and then, try to adjust to a greater vision. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's one of the tragedies of our day, that we use love, romance, and sex in this synonymous way, and we're no longer able to parse out the distinctions between them. And I think that's one of the benefits of really recovering a robust concept of friendship, is that we might be able to see the distinctions again. And we even say things like, "God is love." And I don't think we always necessarily know what that means anymore, just because of this habit we have of sexualizing everything. So to say, "God is love," it no longer makes sense because we don't remember what love is. I think, friendship, if we recovered that idea and that practice, it could actually help us understand what love is again. And if we were to say, like Aelred did, "God is friendship," that might actually be more accurate and closer to what the biblical authors or are the ancient theologians we're getting at than what we might mean today when we say "God is love." 

Drew Hunter: 

Right. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. So how do we go about recapturing this high esteem, this deep value for friendship? If our listeners are like, "Oh, okay, maybe friendship really is a big deal. Maybe I can't just throw the word around so frivolously," what are some things that y'all would encourage people to do as we seek to recapture the value of friendship? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Well, I think Drew's written a lot about this in his book, so I'm really curious to hear what he has to say. I think one of the first things that comes to mind for me is just, be a good friend. Before I go out looking for other people and wishing they'd be good friends to me, I need to learn what it is to be a good friend to other people. And we exist in a world in which we're not quite sure how to do that anymore. Somebody needs to be the first to say, "Hey, look, even if this is not reciprocated perfectly, I am still going to devote myself to learning how to be a good friend, regardless if that ever gets returned to me in this life." We need to begin patterning what friendship looks like in order to set other people up and future generations for success. That's just one thing. There's another zillion out there. Drew, you got any? 

Drew Hunter: 

Sure. Yeah. This is actually something that, since writing the book, I've done a lot more thinking about as well, just as I've tried to grow as a friend and I've tried to just pay attention to people who do it well. There's a few things, kind of categories that come to mind. One, I love that, just be a good friend because if you're just trying to find someone that's a good friend and you're not actually trying to be a good friend even if they're not, it's not going to work. You're putting so much pressure and expectations on people and you won't be the kind of friend that they'll want to be a friend of. 

Another category is just even thinking about Jesus as the truest friend. He is the ideal human, the true servant. He's the truest friend. He models for us what true friendship looks like. And even at the cross, He's defining it as sacrificial love. And calling us to love one another in terms of friendship opens up, really, all the areas in which the New Testament speaks of what love looks like together and the fruit of the spirit. Friendship isn't always explicitly mentioned, but that's how you are a good friend. So love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, bearing one another's burdens, forgiving one another, all those one another's, actually doing them and practicing them with other people builds friendship. And I remember Don Carson had this comment in a book he wrote on the Sermon on the Mountain on the Beatitudes, and he said something like, "We all love the beatitudes. And it seems like people, because they love them so much, think that they're actually doing them." I feel like it's a bit like that with friendship and these qualities. 

It's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love one another, forgive ... Bear each other's burdens." It's like, "Yeah, but whose burdens are you actually bearing?" And you can't do that, even as a church, you're by showing up to programs and events. This has to be a real everyday relationship. That'd be another category. 

And then, there's just a lot of specific strategies. I would just say, look for people that do this well and take notes. A few things that I've learned from watching and trying to implement it, one, try to be a connector. Or if you're not, look for connectors and honor them for being connectors. And by a connector, I mean someone who's good at connecting people. Some of my friendships, I've looked back on and realize that the reason why they're so strong is because one of the guys is always calling us together and getting ideas and reminding us to get together and initiating that. Let's learn from that kind of person how we can be a connector and introduce people to each other and create environments for friendship and honor those people and say, "You do such a good job with this. Thank you for strengthening my friendships by being that." 

Another thing would be getting some rhythms and habits in your life, or just scheduling friendship. If you think of all the essential things in life, the only way they become functional priorities in your life is if you schedule it. Being with a church family on Sunday morning, having a small group, eating with your family, if that's a priority, or a friend. Sleep, exercise, time communing with God and friendship through the word and prayer, all those things don't happen unless you schedule it and build rhythms. Going to work. So friendship, think of it as, okay, when can I intentionally build friendship into my weekly and monthly rhythm of life? 

Is there an evening a week that I want to reserve to just get together with people, invite people over, have a meal with someone, connect some other people together, maybe run a fire? Is there a morning breakfast where you can think, on Wednesday mornings, I'm going to meet with this friend every other week. Or I'm just going to have breakfast with somebody and I'll invite them to meet. I have some coworkers that might live near or work near me, and we'll just meet for lunch maybe on a certain day a week. Those are some ideas. 

Another one would be learning to just be a curious, kind question asker in conversation. Rebekkah, you kind of nodded on that. I'd love to hear what you have to say about questions. Why is that important to you, do you think? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Because we talk so much and we talk all about ourselves and we make assumptions about other people. And if you're actually going to enter into somebody's life as a friend, you need to know them, not as you perceive them to be, but as they actually are, and the only way you achieve that is by listening. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. Not as you perceive. 

Drew Hunter: 

That's a great way to put it, because if- 

Kasey Olander: 

As they actually are. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah, because that's going back to what we said earlier about the definition of friendship is, part of it is being known and knowing each other and trusting each other and being transparent, then, you have to ask questions to learn about them. And it also just helps conversations go more than superficial. I also think, actually, small talk's important for friendship. I think, if people stay in small talk mode all the time, that is really frustrating. That's really frustrating. But to dismiss it all together isn't good either, because small talk itself is a way of showing someone that you're going to be easy to be around right now. You care about them. They have an easy welcome mat into conversation with you. When you engage someone with small talk, you're making it easy for them to talk. Weather, sports, just something they can talk about it. They're set at ease. They're participating already. You're saying that you want to talk with them, and they're welcome here. 

And then, from there, ask good questions to go deeper. I have a few go-to questions that I always try to just have in mind to ask that work for me. Some can be awkward, but the ones I use are something like, "How have you been lately?" Right? That's not just, "What'd you do today?," it's, "How have you been?" 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

Or to think about how things are at work or family life or something like this or school, I'll ask, "How are things at work? How are things with school right now?" It's different than just asking for, "Are things going well?," or giving information of just what's going on, but just, "How are things going?" 

Or, I think, just the other day, I came across a new one on accident. I was just trying to think of a different question to ask someone. I think I'll use it more if I can remember it right now. It was something like, oh, "What are you enjoying in life these days?" 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Hm. 

Drew Hunter: 

It just gets talking beyond the normal things into what's important to the person. And then, once you ask some of those questions, just stay curious, ask follow up questions, genuinely love them. And then, of course, make sure you don't only go into question asking mode because you can react to the, well, I don't want to just talk the whole time mode, and then, you ask questions the whole time and they talk, but they didn't get to know you, then. There is a reciprocating skill that's needed to be learned here. I think those are key ways. There's a lot more, but those are good starters, I think. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, those are really helpful. I think that both of you are highlighting that friendship takes a measure of intentionality as opposed to just, "Oh, it might happen to me one day." No, it's not a passive thing that might occur, but rather, it's something that we need to be intentional about. 

And Drew, I think that was really helpful too. You don't have to go straight for, "What's your deepest, darkest secret?" We can do small talk and we can ask some meaningful questions that help people to feel at ease and feel comfortable. And I think that, hopefully, we get more practice over time, so we learn how to be better friends by trying to be better friends. And- 

Rebekkah Scott: 

That's the practice of friendship. Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that it's an art, not a science, but it's something, still, that we can excel at and get better at over time. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Mm-hmm. 

Drew Hunter: 

Yeah. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

That's good. And part of it too is just, it's so connected to just being an enjoyable human being with people. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Mm-hmm. Yes. 

Drew Hunter: 

You're not going to have good friends or friends that really want to be around you if you don't kill a tendency if you have it. I used to just be sarcastic or to be critical and grumbly. They're some basic things too. I just think there's no harm in overcorrecting and just being an encourager of people. Ray Orland, a pastor, says he's never seen anyone who's too encouraged, who will walk in a room over encouraged. We're in a very critical time period right now, where people are just critical all the time, so just encouraging people and reaching out in small ways, even using technology to send a quick email or text message, or if they don't answer, leave a voicemail and include things that are very specific that you love about that person, respect about them, and that you notice. 

There was even an article that I read about, it was in The New York Times, about the importance of small touchpoints and reaching out in small ways. And the study was interesting because it said, the thesis of this study they did was, people tend to underestimate how important it is to their friends to reach out in small ways. Just send a note saying, "Hey, I'm thinking of you." Or, "Hey, I was just driving to work, figured I'd give you a call. You're probably tied up with something, but I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you, I love you, and I hope you have a great day," or something like that. 

The study is saying that, basically, on the giving end, we assume our friends won't care or they're too busy or it won't matter to them, so we don't do it. And if we do, we think, "Well, it's not a big deal," but on the receiving end, we love to receive those. It's so encouraging, so strengthening. What we need to do, then, is learn the wisdom, as the giver, to just know and assume that our sense of the importance of this is not in tune with reality, so let's go over the top with even these small touch points, and then, infuse that with encouraging and honoring each other and saying "I love you" to people and making that non weird. Those kinds of things are really helpful too. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah, that's fascinating. And I feel like that goes back to what we talked about earlier, that if we feel awkward about something or we're like, "Oh, that's a little too mushy for me, that might be uncomfortable," well, throughout all of history, that's been so much more normative than we think about it, telling people that you love them or telling them something really specific about their character or about their personality that you just enjoy about them. If they're your friend, then, presumably, there's something that you enjoy about them. I feel like there's so much more that we could talk about, but since our time is about up, just real quick, are there some resources that you guys would recommend to people if people want to learn more about friendship. Obviously, I would recommend Drew's book, Made For Friendship. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. Yeah, definitely that. I have my copy as well. Aelred of Rievaulx, the old, dead, Cistercian abbot. He wrote Spiritual Friendship, which everybody should read it, a bit dense, but it's excellent and definitely worthwhile. And then, Victor Lee Austin wrote a book called Friendship: The Heart of Being Human, published by Baker a few years ago, and it's really good, and everyone should read that one as well. More accessible than Aelred of Rievaulx's Spiritual Friendship, for sure. Yeah. 

Drew Hunter: 

And I think not neglecting just looking for this theme in the Bible, so study Proverbs and look for what it says about friendship. There's some amazing things in there. And having this lens to read scripture with just noticing where friendship is noted or the qualities of friends are noted, and just integrating that into your thinking and application of the Bible. So as you read the Bible and it's a call to bear one another's burdens and forgive one another and love one another, just be thinking about how that's a resource to help you become a good friend and to pray for your friends. I think the Bible itself can be, perhaps, an untapped resource for this for some people. I think that would be a key as well. And then, Coleman Ford just wrote a great book that's on spiritual formation. Okay, what's the name of the book, Rebekkah? You're nodding. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

I'm just trying to think of it. I have it sitting in my room. 

Drew Hunter: 

Is it In His Image, or Formed In His Image? 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah, something to do with image. This is terrible. 

Drew Hunter: 

Okay. It's a great book on integrating just a lot of important aspects to spiritual growth and growth as a Christian that are often neglected. And he talks about the Trinity in there and union with Christ, and he has a chapter on friendship and the importance of that in community for growing as a Christian as well. It's an excellent resource as well. That's by Coleman Ford. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Have you seen his, he just came out with a whole book on friendship and in the letters of Augustine, I think, as well. 

Drew Hunter: 

I think I saw that. Yeah, that'll be interesting. 

Rebekkah Scott: 

Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Kasey Olander: 

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, this has been so helpful, Drew and Rebekkah, I really appreciate you guys being our guests today. And I hope that you guys, the listeners, will be encouraged to be intentional with your friendships, to take friendship seriously, and to elevate it as something that's significant, something that's given to us by God, and something that we can see all throughout the pages of Scripture. I'm grateful that you guys could be our guests today, and we thank you guys, our listeners, and hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.