False Friends, and Real Ones

There is an interesting linguistic phenomenon called “false friends.” They are a bane of middle school foreign language learners – and often even those beyond.

A “false friend” is a word that looks or sounds similar to one in a different language but has an entirely different meaning. An oft-cited example is the English word embarrassed and the Spanish word embarazada.  While the English word refers to being shy or ashamed, the Spanish term means pregnant.

Living in a community where the various members have eight different native languages between them (English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Cantonese, and Malay), the shifty entrance of false friends into dialogue is common. For instance, a frequent complaint is that the trains are “retarded,” since the Italian ritardato means “delayed.” Likewise, every so often I remind one of our German parishioners, with my very poor German mixed with English, that he is a gift for our community. A gift in English is something to be happy about, but gift in German is poison. Thanks to linguistic false friends, he’s never entirely sure if it’s a compliment or a criticism!

More Than Linguistics

Yet, the problem of false friends extends far beyond linguistics. Indeed, false friends are a problem of life in general, as we try to figure out who to associate with and who it is better to avoid.

A first, and very helpful, consideration of friends comes to us from Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics, one of the classics of Western thought, the Aristotle notes (Book VIII, 3) that there are three different sorts of friendship.

The first sort is a friendship of utility: we like someone because they are useful to us. Maybe they give us money, or answers to homework questions, but it’s strictly about utility.

The second sort is that of pleasure: we like someone because they are pleasant or pleasing to us. They might make us laugh or know how to have a good time.

The problem with both these sorts, notes Aristotle, is that, of their very nature, they are unstable. What is useful changes: snow tires and umbrellas are useful in the Canadian winter and in the rain, but come spring or the sun, their utility ceases. What is pleasant also changes: we don’t laugh at the same things now, as adults, as when we were six or sixteen years old.

However, if we consider the nature of friendship, we see that if it doesn’t last or endure, then it really isn’t a solid friendship. A friendship should be a stable union between people.

True Friendship

What could possibly give this enduring bond? Perhaps surprisingly, writing around 350 years before Christ, Aristotle claims: “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends.”

So a true friend is one who looks out for the good of the other. But the only way this is possible is if the friend is virtuous. This third sort of friendship is the highest and most perfect: it is the friendship based on virtue.

With the advent of Christianity 350 years later, however, friendship undergoes a transformation.

To begin with, the notion of what is good is elevated. The good which friends desire for their companions is above all spiritual good. A true friend is concerned with helping friends stay in a state of grace and grow in holiness, because these lead to eternal life in heaven. This is the true good to be sought in friendships.

Friendship with God

Likewise, we can also speak of a friendship with God, something that would have been foreign for Aristotle. In fact, friendship with God is so special that Thomas Aquinas says it has a special name: “Charity is the friendship of man for God” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q.23).  Charity is our friendship with God.

If we are truly a friend of God, then we should want what He wants. “. . . God our savior . . . wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth,” as Saint Paul writes to Timothy (1 Tm 2:3-4). In this way, our friendship with God should overflow into our actions with others.

Indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in Deus caritas est (18):

“Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.”

“In God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. . . .  His friend is my friend.” That is an extremely powerful statement. Because I love God and want to live as His friend, I love the things that are important to Him.

The Second Greatest Commandment

As a consequence of my love for God, I love all my brothers and sisters in the world, even the ones who I don’t like, even the ones who hurt me. His friends are my friends because they are His children, not because I personally like them or find them useful or attractive.

In the same way, too, if I don’t make the effort to love others, then how great can my love for God be? As Servant of God Dorothy Day put it: “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

So loving someone means seeking what is truly good for them. As mentioned, the true good of a person is his or her eternal salvation.

Sometimes it’s Not Easy

But none of us are angels, and so we all need material things as well. Nevertheless, it would be wrong (and not friendly) to reduce all of our help and concern to providing material goods.

Being a true friend also means knowing our own limitations and level of holiness.  Sometimes a close friend falls from holiness, perhaps into the depths of vice.  At such times, it may not be possible to accompany them physically without placing ourselves in the near occasion of sin.

For example, suppose a friend starts abusing drugs. We want to be near the person physically to help him or her quit the addiction.  But if being physically close is too great a temptation for us to fall into the same vice, then physical separation is necessary.  We should remain spiritually close through prayer and communication, but physically separated so as to avoid falling ourselves.

Likewise, sometimes we must admonish the sinner, even if society tells us that “everyone has their truth” or that people can live as they chose.  Telling the truth in love and charity is what friends do.

Friends of the King

At the Last Supper, Christ tells His disciples that He doesn’t call them “slaves,” but friends. This would have been surprising to His listeners, since the term δούλους, or slave or servant of God, didn’t have a pejorative meaning in the Biblical times. In fact, great men like Moses (Dt 34:5), Joshua (Jos 24:29), and David (Ps 89:21) were all called slaves of God.

“The greatest men in the past had been proud to be called slaves of God,” but “Christ offers an intimacy with God which not even the greatest men knew before he came into the world,” says William Barclay, the Evangelical theologian noted for his “Daily Study Bible.”

The term friends of God also has a context. For instance, Abraham was a friend of God. But there was also a custom that the Roman emperors and eastern kings would have a very select group of men called “The Friends of the King.”

Barclay says, “At all times they [The Friends of the King] had access to the king: they even had the right to come to his bedchamber at the beginning of the day. He talked to them before he talked to his generals, his rulers, and his statesmen. The friends of the king were those who had the closest and the most intimate connection with him.”

God wants us to be His friends: to love who, what, and how He loves. This intimacy with Him, this closeness, is felt particularly at Christmas, with the birth of Emmanuel, God-with-us. There is no better time to return to friendship with Him.