C.S. Lewis on Friendship

I figured I might blog about some of the big ideas I've been wrestling with the past few years in college. It is impossible to record completely the many things I have learned. And the motivation might not be there while I am in D.C. or even back at school again. Who knows if anyone will read this anyways? But perhaps this is something worth doing for its own sake. Tonight, I'll start with what God has taught me regarding friendship.

Learning to take friendship seriously has been one of the most important journeys I have traveled during my time at college. Friendship was always something secondary to me, in that I viewed as necessary because of the benefits it might offer me. It seemed as if everyone had friends, which is why I also needed to have friends. No one wants to be friendless. There's a normalcy to friendship that humans seem to crave. Going to college introduced me to many wonderful friends. Every year I get what I believe is a clearer picture of what true friendship is. I thought I'd share some of my observations with the help of C.S. Lewis, whose chapter on Friendship in the Four Loves, remains one of the most influential writings in my life today.

Lewis distinguishes four primary loves, affection, friendship, eros, and charity. Of all these, he considers friendship the least necessary. After all, no one would exist without eros, nor would be properly cared for without affection. It is for this reason that friendship fails to receive any attention in the modern world, although Aristotle considered it a virtue, and Cicero wrote a book on it.

But as Lewis points out, few people value friendship because few experience it! There are many reasons for this, and Lewis meticulously explains why he believes few understand the true nature of friendship. He blames the suspicion that arouses when the collective sees the growth of individual friendships, an envious "democratic" sentiment that grows jealous when one may not be the friend of someone else, and the accusation that homosexuality may underlie deep friendships among the same gender. Lewis also clarifies the difference between companionship and friendship. For many people, those whom they would consider "friends" are simply "companions." Friendship is more than just sharing something in common. According to Lewis, it is a "shared vision" able to produce "an immense solitude." Friendship must be ABOUT something, friends must seek the same truth for it to be more than affection or companionship.

Lewis also suggests that friendship always desires to grow among others unlike eros, which needs to stay between two people, friendship always longs for new friends. The qualification to join, is the pursuit of a common interest, a transcendent truth that allows friends to look ahead at what they seek. Friends together seek something "more inward, less widely shared, and less easily defined." Continuing, Lewis beautifully writes, "we picture lovers face to face but friends side by side; their eyes look ahead."

Yet what are the rewards of true friendship according to Lewis? Lewis describes true friendship as "that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen.... This alone of all the loves seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels." It is this type of love that is "even as great a love as eros." It is not self-conscious for "eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities." This type of love is meant for its own sake. Writes Lewis

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Lewis also warns against the dangers of friendship, specifically pride and the type of exclusivity that exist so that we may bask "in the moonshine of our collective self-approval." Rather the true purpose of friendship is found within God's sovereign plan so that we might know Him better.

Friendship is not a reward for or discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good friendship, increased by Him through the friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing.

I have been so blessed by not only these insights from Lewis, but the pictures of friendship God has shown me over the past three years. I can only hope that as I strive to be a better friend to those whom God has called me to love and serve, that the love I have for my friends, will be a shadow like that which exists between the angels.