I was a youth director once upon a lifetime ago.
Most of the young people I worked with are now parents with their own high school and college-aged children.
In hindsight, I was too young, too spiritually immature—just too immature, period—for the work I was doing then, but I was “on fire,” as we used to say, a charge-hell-with-a-squirt-gun kind of novice many evangelical denominations hire to coordinate lots of youth activities to keep the lambs preoccupied with a holy good time so they don’t get distracted by the world and leave the fold.
Whatever I’ve since learned from hindsight and a more developed theology concerning the idea of youth ministry, I loved the young people I served back then and I loved serving them.
One of the key frustrations youth directors have is getting the young people to choose the right kind of friends.
Outside of a few Bible stories about friendship (e.g., David and Jonathan, Amnon and Jonadab, and Job and his “friends”) and a few verses in the Proverbs that I preached from so frequently the kids all knew the sermons and stories by heart, I didn’t have a category of thought or developed set of principles to guide conversations, and ultimately, decisions about friendships.
Mostly, I just came at them from a “don’t hang out with worldly kids” kind of message armed with a handful of Proverbs.
But even that was a nebulous concept. What was implicitly defined as “the right friends” just meant the kids in our denomination that seemed to be doing okay spiritually. I’m a bit embarrassed when I think about how shallow my approach was. But, frankly, that’s how all the youth programs I knew of were handling things.
Recently, I was reading Cicero’s On Friendship and began to muse about how much better I could have served those I was ministering to if I had been classically educated. I would have had something more substantive and rich in my arsenal of wisdom (which was pretty empty at the time) with which to guide conversations about friendships, and numerous other subjects. And not just with young people, with their parents too—especially their parents.
Consider the wisdom Cicero offers in his conclusion of On Friendship.
It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity. When Virtue has reared her head and shewn the light of her countenance, and seen and recognised the same light in another, she gravitates towards it, and in her turn welcomes that which the other has to shew; and from it springs up a flame which you may call love or friendship as you please. Both words are from the same root in Latin; and love is just the cleaving to him whom you love without the prompting of need or any view to advantage—though this latter blossoms spontaneously on friendship, little as you may have looked for it…Make up your minds to this: Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship.
Cicero suggests that virtue is necessary for friendship and without it friendship is impossible. It is virtue “which both creates and preserves friendship,” and “on [virtue] depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity. Next, he points to the etymological foundation of friendship. It’s rooted in love.
I can only imagine where a conversation on this commonplace might have lead.
In addition to Scripture and On Friendship, we could have read and discussed books 9-10 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, or passages in St. Augustine’s City of God, or Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, plus many other classical and Christian texts which expounded on and treated the principles of friendship that Solomon insightfully and poetically recorded for us by way of pithy maxim.
I want to be careful that I don’t give the impression that Scripture is not sufficient; it is indeed; but the virtuous Pagans were not without truth. They had what Tolkien called splintered light so they have something to teach us. The virtuous Pagans strove to answer those perennial human questions about things like friendship by applying their reason to experience.
Naturally, they didn’t get a lot of things right but they did ask essential human questions, create systematic categories of thought for attempting to answer those questions, and they provided much useful context for the human circumstances for which Scripture can be more readily understood and applied. Paul in Athens is a great example of these (Acts 17).
Even St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, famously asserted that Christians should plunder the Pagans intellectually the way the Israelites plundered the Egyptians materially.
It’s in that spirit, then, that I want to encourage Christian leaders to read Classic literature.
And, its in that spirit that I want to invite you to join me this week for a two-evening discussion on Cicero’s On Friendship and Old Age. This is a great way to get introduced to Classical Christian thought and learn to think Christianly about perennial human questions.
Learn more about the two evening micro-course here.
Download Cicero’s On Friendship and Old Age free.
Here are some of my favorite commonplaces from On Friendship.
On Friendship Commonplaces
In all history there are scarcely three or four pairs of friends on record;
But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.
We mean then by the “good” those whose actions and lives leave no question as to their honour, purity, equity, and liberality; who are free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their convictions.
The advantages of friendship are almost more than I can say. To begin with, how can life be worth living…which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself. In a word, other objects of ambition serve for particular ends—riches for use, power for securing homage, office for reputation, pleasure for enjoyment, health for freedom from pain and the full use of the functions of the body. But friendship embraces innumerable advantages. Turn which way you please, you will find it at hand. It is everywhere; and yet never out of place, never unwelcome.
The Latin word for friendship—amicitia—is derived from that for love—amor; and love is certainly the prime mover in contracting mutual affection
Therefore I gather that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather than a wish for help: from an inclination of the heart, combined with a certain instinctive feeling of love, rather than from a deliberate calculation of the material advantage it was likely to confer
Whereas the truth is quite the other way. For when a man’s confidence in himself is greatest, when he is so fortified by virtue and wisdom as to want nothing and to feel absolutely self-dependent, it is then that he is most conspicuous for seeking out and keeping up friendships
For as we are not beneficent and liberal with any view of extorting gratitude, and do not regard an act of kindness as an investment, but follow a natural inclination to liberality; so we look on friendship as worth trying for, not because we are attracted to it by the expectation of ulterior gain, but in the conviction that what it has to give us is from first to last included in the feeling itself.
the most difficult thing in the world was for a friendship to remain unimpaired to the end of life. So many things might intervene: conflicting interests; differences of opinion in politics; frequent changes in character, owing sometimes to misfortunes, sometimes to advancing years
Again, wide breaches and, for the most part, justifiable ones were caused by an immoral request being made of friends, to pander to a man’s unholy desires or to assist him in inflicting a wrong. A refusal, though perfectly right, is attacked by those to whom they refuse compliance as a violation of the laws of friendship. Now the people who have no scruples as to the requests they make to their friends, thereby allow that they are ready to have no scruples as to what they will do for their friends; and it is the recriminations of such people which commonly not only quench friendships, but give rise to lasting enmities. “In fact,” he used to say, “these fatalities overhang friendship in such numbers that it requires not only wisdom but good luck also to escape them all.”
We may then lay down this rule of friendship—neither ask nor consent to do what is wrong. For the plea “for friendship’s sake” is a discreditable one, and not to be admitted for a moment.
Let this, then, be laid down as the first law of friendship, that we should ask from friends, and do for friends, only what is good. But do not let us wait to be asked either: let there be ever an eager readiness, and an absence of hesitation. Let us have the courage to give advice with candour. In friendship, let the influence of friends who give good advice be paramount; and let this influence be used to enforce advice not only in plain-spoken terms, but sometimes, if the case demands it, with sharpness; and when so used, let it be obeyed.
Neither should we give any weight to the doctrine that virtue is something rigid and unyielding as iron. In point of fact it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend’s good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes. We conclude then that mental pain which we must often encounter on a friend’s account is not of sufficient consequence to banish friendship from our life, any more than it is true that the cardinal virtues are to be dispensed with because they involve certain anxieties and distresses.
“the clear indication of virtue, to which a mind of like character is naturally attracted, is the beginning of friendship.”
For what can be more irrational than to take delight in many objects incapable of response, such as office, fame, splendid buildings, and personal decoration, and yet to take little or none in a sentient being endowed with virtue, which has the faculty of loving or, if I may use the expression, loving back? For nothing is really more delightful than a return of affection, and the mutual interchange of kind feeling and good offices. And if we add, as we may fairly do, that nothing so powerfully attracts and draws one thing to itself as likeness does to friendship, it will at once be admitted to be true that the good love the good and attach them to themselves as though they were united by blood and nature.
Who, in heaven’s name, would choose a life of the greatest wealth and abundance on condition of neither loving or being be loved by any creature? That is the sort of life tyrants endure. They, of course, can count on no fidelity, no affection, no security for the good will of any one. For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them their is no possibility of friendship. Who can love one whom he fears, or by whom he knows that he is feared? Yet such men have a show of friendship offered them, but it is only a fair-weather show. If it ever happen that they fall, as it generally does, they will at once understand how friendless they are.
Now, can anything be more foolish than that men who have all the opportunities which prosperity, wealth, and great means can bestow, should secure all else which money can buy—horses, servants, splendid upholstering, and costly plate—but do not secure friends, who are, if I may use the expression, the most valuable and beautiful furniture of life?
The real limit to be observed in friendship is this: the characters of two friends must be stainless. There must be complete harmony of interests, purpose, and aims, without exception. Then if the case arises of a friend’s wish (not strictly right in itself) calling for support in a matter involving his life or reputation, we must make some concession from the straight path—on condition, that is to say, that extreme disgrace is not the consequence. Something must be conceded to friendship. And yet we must not be entirely careless of our reputation, nor regard the good opinion of our fellow-citizens as a weapon which we can afford to despise in conducting the business of our life, however lowering it may be to tout for it by flattery and smooth words. We must by no means abjure virtue, which secures us affection.
Now what is the quality to look out for as a warrant for the stability and permanence of friendship? It is loyalty. Nothing that lacks this can be stable.
And the proverb is a true one, “You must eat many a peck of salt with a man to be thorough friends with him.” Novelty, indeed, has its advantage, which we must not despise. There is always hope of fruit, as there is in healthy blades of corn. But age too must have its proper position; and, in fact, the influence of time and habit is very great. To recur to the illustration of the horse which I have just now used: Every one likes ceteris paribus to use the horse to which he has been accustomed, rather than one that is untried and new.
Another golden rule in friendship: put yourself on a level with your friend.
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