The Idolatry of Modern Friendships
Followers of Jesus must have the highest value for relationships. People matter. Community is one of the highest expressions of the Kingdom of God on Earth and a biblical community is founded on loving relationships.
But there’s a problem today that makes experiencing real Kingdom community difficult.
We’ll call this the idolatry of modern friendship.
Friendship itself is a wonderful thing and something the Bible celebrates.
The problem starts because many modern western believers were raised in an artificial world of same-age groups.
School, sports, church groups, and dense neighborhoods have all put us in environments where we could find friends that are very close to our age. We naturally have a lot in common with those who are at our same stage of life. We associated this experience with the essence of friendship. Friends are those who are at my level, my age, my stage with my interests.
But the expectation, that I will find these kinds of friends, is a fairly recent idea. Think back to a time when people lived intergenerationally when those you’d spend all of your time with span the entire range of ages from infants to the elderly. Much of your relational experiences would be with those of different ages and at different stages of life. In this context, you have the relational skills to experience friendship with those who don’t share so much in common with you.
Today’s experience is exactly the opposite. We know how to relate with those who are our same age and stage but struggle growing friendships with those up or downstream from us.
Consider how Jesus approached friendship. Who was at his stage? Who could relate to what he was experiencing? We know his disciples were quite a bit younger than him because of a story in the Gospels where only Jesus and Peter were over the age of 20 and had to pay the temple head tax. Jesus was constantly teaching, training, correcting and working through the frustration of equipping these young apprentices. Yet at the end of three years on mission with them Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15).
“OK”, someone might say, “but what’s wrong with our modern expectation around friendship?”
Because it has the tendency to make the church sterile.
Let me explain.
Our mission is to make disciples and to equip those disciples in churches that multiply.
Those you disciple are not going to be at your stage of life.
Gathering believers in a community requires spreading out those who can host and equip new believers.
Small churches that gather in homes begin to look intergenerational like an extended family.
Both disciple-making and church planting require tough relational tradeoffs. When you prioritize discipleship and church planting, the mature members of the Body have less time to spend with those at their same stage of life. In short, you will lose time with what modern people would call your friends.
Add to that the time required to pour into your own family and it’s not surprising that same-stage friendships will take a hit.
This can feel like a crisis for those of us who spend our entire childhood in same-stage peer environments and suddenly find ourselves immersed into an intergenerational world of physical and spiritual children and parents.
“I thought community was getting to live life with my friends.” I often hear people say, with not a little sound of desperation in their voice.
Yes, but what if friendship is not what you thought it was. What if friendship is more about the bond formed by going on mission and less about sharing the same taste in music?
I know this is a hard pill for many to swallow but there is so much at stake here.
Demanding that community primarily be “doing life” with same-stage friends risks abandoning the call for the mature to pour their lives into the next generation. We must learn to prioritize seeking first the Kingdom over the selfish desires that make us sterile.
But there is still lots of good news for those seeking friendship.
First, if you’re married, you already have a best friend. Marriage is designed to be between those who are equally yoked and so you and your friend should have plenty in common. Giving attention to that relationship as your primary experience of friendship is achieving the win/win of strengthening your family while experiencing the intimacy of deep friendship that lasts a lifetime.
As a side note I think married couples need to be careful of exclusively seeing friendship through the lens of a virtual life-long bachelor like C.S. Lewis. I love Lewis but he spent most of his life choosing same-stage friendship in the artificial environment of Oxford over family life.
Second, you can enjoy deep friendships with those upstream and downstream from you. Parents can experience a growing friendship with their adult children. Disciple-makers can enjoy friendships with those they disciple as they grow into maturity. We need to bring back the experience of intergenerational friendship. This is an important element of life for those who plan to dedicate their lives to raising physical and spiritual children.
Lastly, it is possible to form a binding covenantal friendship with one other family at the same stage. This requires lots of attention to the relationship and is fairly rare but a David and Jonathan covenant between two families is something God may bring into your life. This is beautiful but we should not demand this from the Lord. I’ve seen many expect their friendships to be life-long only to experience frustration and resentment when the needs of the two families diverge so sharply they simply had to choose what was best for their family over what would create overlap with their friend.
In summary, community is about learning to show self-sacrificing love to a diverse body of believers, not a demand to surround oneself with what modern people will recognize as same-stage friends. This kind of friendship is a great experience but must be put in its proper place or it may become an idol. Our Father wants godly offspring (Malachi 2:15) and our King calls us to demonstrate our friendship to Him through our obedience (John 15:14). He will care for our relational needs through our family and through the Body as we follow His lead by making disciples and expanding His Church.