What Does Love in Friendship Mean?
How do we love our friends in practice?
A few days ago, I had the pleasure of joining the MereFidelity podcast (the episode isn’t out yet), the podcast hosted by Mere Orthodoxy. And James Wood asked me an excellent question which I didn’t answer adequately, and I want to take the time to elaborate on here. He asked me about the Love chapter in To Live Well, specifically the section on “Friendship,” and about how we can practically develop and nurture deep friendships. I want to take that a step further and ask the question, what does love mean in a friendship? How ought we love our friends in practice if we intend to develop deep friendships that will carry us through life?
My theory is that many contemporary people have never been taught these practices of love in friendship, or they have allowed these practices to atrophy so that their friendships have atrophied as well. Certainly the statistics on friends suggest that something has changed. And my fear is that with the rise of AI companion bots, some percentage of Americans will continue to neglect these practices by turning to a simulacrum of a companion who sycophantically never requires love.
So what does love in friendships entail? How do we love our friends well? What does that look like in the day-to-day trenches of modern life? And how does our love of friends fit with our love of God?
