Stop Trying To Make Friends

Here’s a thing I bet everybody wants; friendship. Deep, real and lasting friendships. Well, almost everybody. There’s always that one person who just wants to be left alone, to sit quietly night after night in a little room that smells like over-ripe bananas and sadness. He or she probably has a cat because cats don’t want friends either. You probably know someone like that. I know such a person. He only listens to NPR and doesn’t even like bacon, so there you go. But most of us want friendship.

There are, however, some impediments to developing deep friendships. You are busy. All the candidates for friendship are busy, too. At least you have that in common which, though not a requirement, certainly helps. Another problem is that the idea of friendship, like so many other relational concepts (e.g. connection, community, network, circles, chat, link, social, etc.) has been appropriated and redefined by technology. A friend has become little more than someone who reads the stuff you post on the internet, up-thumbs or ignores it and occasionally types out a comment. By its contemporary definition, you could be friends with someone and never see or even talk to them. Ever.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t hate social media. I think the overall impact of technology on relationships has been positive. We are certainly better informed about what’s going on in each other’s lives. Right down to what kind of cereal that guy from 4^th period geometry (whom you haven’t seen since Jr. Hi) had for breakfast. But information is not the same as intimacy. The immediacy afforded by your favorite social platform is not a substitute for depth. And knowing about someone and knowing them is like the difference between being briefed on the dimensions of the Grand Canyon and having your breath taken away by actually standing on the edge of it.

So in these days of redefined relationships and helter-skelter schedules, is deep friendship even possible? Oh, yeah. But it’s expensive. I’ll tell you what it costs, but first, let me show you what it looks like.

This will probably sound odd coming from a preacher and blogger of things biblical, but I think the Apostle Paul was probably a little hard to like. He strikes me as one of the most driven, type-A personalities in the Bible. I think he had to work at not being irritated by people who were not as gung-ho as he was. Just ask John Mark, the kid he once kicked off a mission team (Acts 15:36-41). I bet you had to gear up emotionally to spend time with Paul, then recover from it afterward. Like he could wear you out. But I could be wrong, because he certainly had a lot of close, meaningful relationships – people he called friends, dear friends, fellow workers, brothers, sisters, sons and mothers.

In the last chapter of his magnum opus, Romans, Paul mentions nearly 40 people by name. And it’s not just people he knows about. It is a list of people he knows and who know him. It is a racially diverse group, and it includes both men and women, some of whom are either much older or much younger than he. Paul uses endearing terms to describe his relationships with them. In fact, his love and affection for these people appears as intense as his passion for the mission and message of Jesus.

You know what’s really amazing about this roll call of relationships? It developed without the aid of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, cell phones, or the U.S. Mail. How did someone who may have had a bit of a grating personality manage to make so many friends without the benefit of technology?

Here’s the part where I tell you what it costs. It costs time. But as with money, it has more to do with how you spend it than with how much of it you spend. See, I don’t think Paul set out to invest his time making friends. I think the friendships he developed were the blessing he received for spending his life telling others about Jesus. Immersing yourself in that story of grace, mercy, forgiveness and selfless love, over time, washes away all the things that ruin relationships. When you invest yourself and your time in the things that matter to Jesus, you stop limiting yourself to friendships with people who are a lot like you. Because you have received grace, you give it. Since God showed you mercy, you become merciful. You’ve been released from guilt, so when others commit the kind of relational sins that sink shallow friendships, you forgive. When you are insulted, you bless. You even pray for your enemies. And every now and then, even they become your friends.

That’s exactly what happened between Paul and all the people he mentions in Romans 16. At one point, he was looking to put them and people like them in prison. After Jesus got a hold of him, he was willing to go to prison with them.

So, stop trying to make friends. Start spending your time, your energy, your heart in the things of Jesus. Volunteer at your church. I don’t even know where you go, but I’m certain they are looking for help. Invest your talents in an inner-city mission work. Pour your heart into a Christ-centered recovery ministry. I guarantee you, some of the people you encounter will be as strange to you as you are to them. But in time, you’ll be making a list of friends as long, maybe even longer, than Paul’s.