The Art of Friendship
I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way. Is there anyone else out there who feels most often like you have to literally force yourself on others in order for them to take notice of you and make an effort to get to know you?
Relationships are crucial to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It's easy to understand why God's design for the church is for it to be a community. Yet it seems like that very thing that is so crucial to wholeness is so hard to find, even among Christians...the very setting where it should flourish.
I can't tell you the number of times that Lynn and I have sat in a room full of people and watched everyone around us talking, laughing, sharing conversation and not one person would make the slightest effort to befriend us.
I can't begin to number the e-mails and phone calls to "friends" that go unanswered. The very people who in one moment express their love, concern for, and belief in you yet won't take 10 minutes to anwer an e-mail or return a phone call.
It's amazing to me that in a world filled with 2 billion Christians, one can feel so alone...like you don't fit in anywhere. Perhaps that is what draws people into internet relationships, like the 17 year old Christian girl I just heard about who met a Muslim guy in Israel through MySpace, lied to her parents, flew to Israel, and plans to eventually marry the guy...even if it means abandoning her Christian faith.
After a while it really causes you to examine yourself, feeling like perhaps there is something about you that repels others.
I guess this is kind of a rant emerging out of some personal struggle I'm dealing with. But I seriously doubt that I am the only Christian who feels this way. I believe that you could walk into any church, or Bible study, or small group and among the crowd you will find a number of people who feel as if they don't matter...they don't count...they don't measure up...they aren't worth the time required to get to know them. For those people, life quickly becomes a performance. The simplicity of who they are is not enough to attract friendship, so a persona is adopted and various performances are made with the hopes that they will find one persona or one performance that will succeed in getting someone to take notice and expend the energy required to get to know them.
We Christians do a swell job of teaching our denominational doctrines and inciting our people to raise their fists in the air against things in the culture we disagree with. I suggest that we begin investing equal, if not more time teaching one another the art of friendship. This simple art will do more to change our world than all of our protests, boycotts, and acts of civil disobedience could ever accomplish.
technorati tag: friendship