Friendship is one of the finer things. Life is bearable when another bears your burdens with you. Life is ennobled in the mundane moments of true friendship. Now, to be clear, I am a man, and I speak of friendship in a male context. I really have very little idea how women get along with each other. That species is a profound mystery to me.
We read in the scriptures that “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Prov. 17:17
I grew up in an evangelical Church. There were many good folks there. I had friends. I had some really good friends as a boy, becoming a man. I hope I was a good friend to them as well. One of the things we didn’t do, was have “accountability”. We hung out. We went fishing together. We attended Bible study together, and we really did search out the scriptures together.
We never sat around, confessing all our sins to each other. That might have happened in more intimate settings where only one confidant was present, but it was not a thing we did. There was a lot of jargon-laden talk buzzing around about “accountability”, but it felt weird.
When I went to Bible school, “accountability” groups were all the rage. And yet again, it felt all wrong. How am I supposed to have a confessor relationship with someone I barely know, and have not built trust with? Despite the best intentions of the school staff, and our more pious students, “accountability” was never more than a Bible study. We hung out a lot, talking about things. We were building the friendships that are the basis for moral accountability.
And yet, friendship is not a utilitarian lever to gain moral accountability. Friendship is the ladder by which we ascend to the position of loving a brother. The evangelical obsession with “accountability” was wrong-headed in the extreme.
Friendship, and the love of a brother, which is its higher expression, exist for the sake of the “other”. Return for a moment to the Proverb quoted above. A friend loves at all times. True friends love in any season. Poverty, wealth, these matter little. A true friend loves his friend. Did a mans wife miscarry? His true friend will be there for him. Did a mans wife birth a healthy baby? A friend will be there to rejoice with him.
Loss, gain, the whole gamut of human experience is made bearable, lighter, and sweeter by means of true friendship.
Male friendship also looks much different that what the professional and effeminate class of psychiatrists would have us believe. Often enough it looks like cigars and whisky around a campfire. The stories told around that fire are equal parts hair-raising and hilarious. The women will definitely struggle to understand.
My friends and I will go hard in the paint with philosophical disputes, historical analysis, economic theory, or any branch of theology. We hold little back, and clearly enjoy the hurly-burly of manhood. We are rough and refined all at once. The simple and the subtle mix in the masculine dance of friendship. There is nothing feigned or fake, for we are all in earnest. True friendship is impossible to cultivate in the soil of ironic detachment. We mean it all. And thus our enthusiasms are tempered through the knowledge gained, towards the wisdom desired.
Manly friendship is the real thing. “Accountability” can never be anything more than emotional manipulation. I am in earnest when I say that I have no patience for manipulation. The accountability that the truly pious want is found in the intimacy of true friendship.
True friendship is much more than talk. It is much more than beer and hot dogs and bbq. It is certainly not less than those things, either. Friendship is the sum of manly love. Love is for the “other”. Be ye that kind of man. Be a friend.
