Friendship

One asks, why discuss, why relate, why have friendships? Two answers come to mind. As iron sharpens iron, it helps us to interact, we growth through interaction. But then the question comes, if we dwelt in perfection, we would have no need thereof, as a device for our sanctification. Yet, we would still desire friendship.

"And God created man" and prescribed that he spend some of his time working so as to eat and some of his time sleeping. When not engaged with these, God prescribed that man "be fruitful and multiply." But, when not working, eating, sleeping, making love, or caring for children, God prescribed that man enjoy creating music, reading books, playing tennis, and having conversations.

Perhaps it is one of greatest secrets of "love thy neighbor" that it is good not only as a command, not only as a means to one's perfection and the happiness that comes from virtue, but also for its own sake. The best and happiest activity of man is to love his neighbor, it is the primary diversion (in the Arisotelian sense) which God has prescribed for our boredom.

The path

Eric Liddell compared faith to running in a race. It is an apt comparison. The act of running brings pain and anguish, but it also brings health and joy. At the end of a race, one has not done anything to add to or take away, but only strengthened the inner man, as it were, in the process of travelling along the road laid out by God. In the film Shadowlands, C.S Lewis says of prayer, that "it doesn't change God, it changes me." Faith perhaps, is the same. We run our race, doing the best we can with our feeble legs, and then, we find, as we journey, that we are transformed. We are given hart's feet and set upon the high places. The latter verb is the operative term. Were we to clamber by our unaided legs to the highest peak, still we would be unable to leap and bound upon the snowy crags.