Thursday, August 14, 2003
TRANSPARENCY, OPENNESS
so, how many friends do I have? Still trying to decide!
As I read Scripture, it seems that transparency or an openness between people is another important but difficult-to-achieve ingredient of true, Biblical friendship.
Jesus said (John 15:15), “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
When I honestly ask myself, “Why don’t I have more friends, I know part of the answer. (Ouch! This hurts. But my sense of honesty demands I go ahead and express it here.)
They say every person is either anger-prone or fear-prone. I, of course, am fear-prone. This has led to multiple problems for me over the years. I suppose I could say that in some ways I have improved. I am not nearly as fearful of heights as I was in my younger years. But my fear-prone nature still causes me a lot of misery and grief, and probably a lot of misery for others, too. But it explains one of the reasons why many people, myself included, don’t have more true, Biblical friendships.
It is because of my innate fear of rejection. I don’t want to be open with you because I fear that if you really knew what I was like, you’d never want to be my friend. And my fear-prone nature says I can’t afford that risk. That fear keeps a lot of people from coming to Christ. They just don’t believe that God could love and accept them if He knew what they were really like. And they fool themselves into thinking God doesn’t really know what they are like! I spent a lot of years thinking I could fool God like this.
That same fear is one reason why a husband doesn’t have a closer relationship with his wife. Why does it take us so long to become open and transparent in a marriage or a friendship? Sooner or later, given enough time and opportunity, reality breaks through. We drop the “whole ball of wax”. When that happens, that friend or that lovely lady looks us straight in the face and says, “That’s o.k.. I love you.” When that happens the façade we present disappears.
John’s comment about Jesus is fascinating when I think about my fear of transparency before my friends or before God. He said, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the last.” (John 13:1-Alternate reading)
Why did He love them? It was not because he had no basis for repudiating them. They had dropped the ball on many occasions. In fact, in the most critical hours they were “out to lunch” – no where to be found. They let Him down so many times.
But He loved them because His friendship with them didn’t depend on them or any good thing they may have done. It depended on Himself. That’s where Biblical friendships begin – when we (with God’s help) concern ourselves more with being a friend and not worry so much about having a friend.
A fairly new friend whom I am growing to love so much wrote me regarding this subject recently. He understands me thoroughly as far as my fears of rejection and that sort of thing because he put me at ease and I have come to trust him with knowledge about myself that I’ve told no one else. He really had words of wisdom for me. This is what he wrote:
“….you also need to give your friends room to love you!
It seems as if you pour and pour and pour and you don’t let
people return their love with similar ease. …You’ve got
to give people room to love you!”
Words of wisdom, indeed. But how do I do that? I just don’t know. But I know I must try.
So how many friends do I have? I don’t know. I’m not sure that I will ever know!
I guess I’ll leave this entry at that. I’ve got some more thoughts on this complicated matter of friendship that I’ll save for my next Blog. My computer has had the virus and the worm that has affected so many computers around the world this week, so I haven’t been able to post as often as I would like. Hopefully it is restored now.
Jim
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