The Harris Poll did a survey in an Article entitled "Teens Set New Rules of Engagement in the Age of Social Media" The article focuses on the use of the Internet and expanding the social circle. However, one paragraph caught my attention:
"Friendships play an increasingly important role in young people’s lives as they grow up. While more tweens (ages 8 to 12) prefer spending time with their parents than with their friends (58% vs. 31%), by the teen years (ages 13 to 17), this preference has dramatically reversed. More than twice as many teens say they prefer spending time with their friends than with their parents (56% vs. 22%)."
I would venture to guess that the influence a friend would have, compared to that of a parent for a teenager, probably favors the friend. I know a majority of time in high school, especially when I got my car, was spent with friends and their influence on things did strengthen, warp, distort, activate, my thoughts on life. The concept of friendship is neat. You meet someone and you believe that you two, three, four, five could get along, and you do. You have similar interests that draw you together, friends normally have something in common with one another, that how most friendships begin.
Writing about friendship from a Christian perspective is difficult, especially using the Bible as a reference, because you only really get a couple of good stories out of the Bible on friendship. The only real good story is the story of Jonathan and David from the Book of Samuel (1 Sam. 18). Even if we were to use the Gospels as a guide, the friends Jesus make, are not the greatest of friends. The Bible as a reference or a guide to a perfect friend relationship can be very misleading. There is not a real perfect friendship in the Bible. You get imperfect relationships because the Bible is about imperfect people.
The best way to deal with friendship bonds as they relate to the Bible (just shy of reading the entire Bible), is looking at the way Christ deals with friendship. Dr. Scott Spencer, who is the New Testament professor at Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote a book entitled what What Did Jesus Do? a nice little take on the once popular "What Would Jesus Do" quote.
In chapter 3, Spencer explores three possible friendship ties: (1) John the Baptist, (2) the inner circle (James, Peter, John, and the mysterious beloved disciple in the fourth gospel), (3) the sisters Mary and Martha. We will explore all three individually, but for now let us stick with setting up what Christ thought about friendship.
There is no doubt that Christ valued friendship, in a majority of the parables in Luke, he recognizes the social significance of friendship (Spencer, pg 52). One story in particular highlights the duty of friends to share their goods and provide hospitality at inconvenient times (11. 5-13). Jesus is never against friend circles, but he is opposed to the narrow application to an exclusive clique. Ah...that clique word.
Here is where all the Jesus focus gets dangerous. Jesus is so radical and independent in his thinking that what he believes to be friendship differs from our understanding of friendship. I remember my youth pastor, pastor, and teachers always making sure I chose the right kind of friends. This choice, when I was entering the years of Jr. High, was to be based on reputation, "Who were the good kids and who were the bad kids," in other words, who were Christian and who were not. My parents eventually changed the position and reputation became irrelevant, what matter was who cared about me as much as I cared about them.
This exclusivity that Jesus refers to is something we will explore further, but for now just know that all we know about friendship changes when we encounter Christ.
2 comments:
Jesus speaking to the disciples refers to one and only one man as "our friend" - surely a distinction worthy of note in any Biblical discussion on the topic of friendship.
FYI - you have also failed to heed the Biblical admonition to "prove all things" in your comments here. Surely one shouldn't be presenting an idea as if it were Biblical if they cannot cite even a single verse that would justify teaching that idea. Yet when you say “John, the beloved disciple in the fourth gospel” you do just that.
The truth is there is not a single verse in scripture that would justify teaching the idea that John was the one whom "Jesus loved" and yet you assume that this man-made tradition cannot be wrong and then interpret scripture to fit this idea. But if one will heed Ps. 118:8 then the NON-BIBLE sources on which this man-made tradition is based will give way to the facts stated in scripture which prove that John was not this anonymous author.
www.TheDiscipleWhomJesusLoved.com has a free Bible-only based study that compares what the Bible says about John with what it says about "the disciple whom Jesus loved" - and the Biblical evidence proves that whoever this person was he was not John because the Bible cannot contradict itself. But one need not read this study because all it takes is reading the fourth gospel from the beginning with the honest question, "Who would I conclude the author was based on just the facts stated in his own gospel?" Those who do so will never come to the conclusion that this "other disciple" was John because NONE of the evidence points toward John.
I think you misread my statement and that is understandable because I did not really proof read before I posted. It's a bad habit of mine.
My statement about Jesus and the inner circle referred to James, Peter and John in the Synoptic Gospels (those being Matthew, Mark, and Luke), then there was a comma "and" was supposed be there so that it read, "and the mysterious beloved disciple of the fourth Gospel." In no way was I attempting to imply that said disciple was John considering that the book of John itself was written 2 generations after the cruxifiction of Christ.
I appreciate the comment and the website.
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