Fall 1987
Friends Are Never Just
Mrs Eve Gualtiere
Miami, Fla.

Friendship today is at best a second class relationship. The word "friendship" is often used of a brief interlude on the way to deeper relationships. A friend is someone to spend an empty evening with, tell your troubles to, or bide some time with, until that perfect someone arrives. So says the world.

How many times have you heard or said, "We are just friends." This word "just" means scarcely. How true this is of many of our relationships, where we are "scarcely" friends.

Every relationship hinges on the reason we are seeking to relate. For from our motivation springs our emotions, actions and expectations. As godly men and women the well-spring of our motivation is our relationship to, and our abandonment in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our search for relationship will be indirect proportion to the relinquishment of our wants, needs, desires and fears.

It is true that not all relationships will develop into enduring, deepening, committed relationships. But we neglect, or stifle our relationship to God when we do not nurture close relationships with some individuals. A true friend will never become an idol nor usurp the place of God, but will, instead, be a result and reward of a well-founded relationship with Him.

A friend can be an intermediary, intercessor, or instrument in the work that God is effecting in our lives. A friend should be a well-watered garden, a place of refreshing for our souls. A friend who is not ready to challenge us, expose our fault and irritate us into change cannot really be a friend. But a friend who is not ready to uphold us when we fail, forgive us when we fall, and reassure us when we are unsteady, is surely an enemy.

Friends come in varying levels. Our problem many times is in expecting too much from individuals not suited to meet these expectations. Our cry for a real friend unmasks the reality of our skeletal relationship with God. "Give and it shall be given unto you" Luke 6:38a. In our unreserved giving to others we find ourselves surrounded by friends.

We are met daily with opportunities to befriend. But we need to be friend the unfriendly and unlovely as well as those we might expect to reciprocate our friendship. My mother always told me to be choosy in my friends. We need to choose friends that God would have us choose, and not allow our preference or personal taste to become a prejudice that excludes us from a rewarding relationship. At the same time, befriending someone out of guilt or sentiment leaves us destitute of anything to share with that person.

A friendship is a treasure. Something to be handled carefully and delicately. Rough handling almost always ruins friendship. A good friend is a good listener. One of my best friends is just that. She accepts me for just who I am. She doesn't condemn me when my Christianity isn't sterling although she expects it to be. I don't feel threatened to have to answer for my every action and word. I'm free to say my mind and free to go back and say I was wrong. It's the lack of self-seeking that I like most in my friend. She doesn't have all the answers to my questions, or I to hers. But it's the ease with which she allows me to be who I am, and yet change.

One of my favorite sayings is, "A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."

Several years ago when I was teaching, I had a little four year old in my class. Leo's insecurity always demanded more and more attention and affection. He would tell longer and longer stories, making them end with "and then" so you would continue listening. One day another child interrupted Leo with his ownstory. In a fit of angry jealousy Leo exploded, "Don't talk in the middle of me!"

Many times we talk in the middle of our friends. Proverbs says, A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards. Are you a fool or a friend?

Instead of talking in the middle, we need to talk in the center. Friendship must address issues close to the heart. You would be less than my friend if you watched me make error after error without showing me the truth. "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend" Prov 27:17.Speaking openly and honestly hurts. Then, we must be ready and on guard to encourage and restore. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend" Prov 27:6a.

"Just" friends are peripheral friends. Just friends are easily lost. Just friends are commercial, cheap, re-usable and disposable. Just friends are never really friends because they neither demand nor supply the true affection that friendship generates.

Fear is what motivates us to seek just friends. Fear of being unmasked. Fear of transparency. Fear of being accountable to and for another. "But perfect love casteth out fear" 1 John 4:18b.

Friendship, deep and wide, is not a relationship ready-made. Friendship starts with interest, continues with time and matures into mutual trust. It takes effort and faithfulness. Friends can never be "just" or they really aren't friends at all.

Another definition of the word "just" is equitable, fair, true, founded on fact, proper, well deserved, upright. Far better qualities to found our friendship on.