want friends?
Looking for Friendship
My wife and I love movies. Recently, we’ve started watching Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy because she had never seen them. At first she was reluctant that she would enjoy them, but after a short while she fell in love with the camaraderie of the two “Hobbitses.” In J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterful work, Samwise (“Sam”) Gamgee and Frodo Baggins infamously take-off on the mission of The Fellowship of the Ring to destroy the treacherous Ring of Power.
As we’ve been watching, I’ve been reminded of the beautiful picture of their friendship throughout the three movies, despite the many dangers and toils they may face. Sam and Frodo argue, struggle, suffer, and endure their way all the way to Mount Doom (I’ll stop the spoilers right there), and all the while their friendship outlasts the pains they face. But what Tolkien and Jackson portray here really is what we’re all looking for, isn’t it? We all want a friend who would be willing to stick it out with us—a “brother who is born for adversity,” (Proverbs 17:17), one willing to face the thrills of life with us, come what may. How do we find such a friend?
A Different Goal
As in many situations, Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis offers some help. In his book The Four Loves, Lewis argues that some of the most miserable people on earth are those who want friendship for friendship's sake. He writes, “this is why those pathetic people who simply want friends can’t never make any. The very condition for having friends is that you would want something else besides friends. If someone asks you, ‘do you see the same truth?’ And your honest answer is, ‘I really don’t care about that, I just want you to be my friend.’ Then no friendship can arise. There would be nothing for the friendship to be about! Those who have nothing, can share nothing. Those who are going nowhere, can have no fellow travelers.”
Many of us want deep, face-to-face interactions with friends, even if we wouldn’t articulate it that way. And yet, especially in an individualistic society, it can be very difficult to find this. Lewis, however, argues that friendship must not be our goal. In Sam and Frodo’s instance, their friendship was not built on wanting to be friends with one another. In fact, Frodo was quite against Sam’s attendance on the mission. Even still, their friendship grows deeply throughout the story not because of some face-to-face interaction. Rather, Sam and Frodo shared experiences that placed them in shoulder-to-shoulder situations.
As Lewis argues, the desire for friendship cannot be the goal. This is true in numerous aspects of our life. We don’t get joy by pursuing joy. Instead, we pursue things and those things give us joy. In Georgia, I loved driving down the road while listening to music on a Fall day. Pursuing joy never gave me joy. But that experience gave me joy. In the same way, pursuing friendship will not give you joy. You, me, and others—we must pursue something outside of ourselves and our gratification, and only then friendships will come. As Lewis writes, “the typical expression of opening friendship [should] be something like, “what, you too?” Friendship is best built when you’re looking toward something else—a shared goal or pleasure, your Mount Doom. Naturally, it would then logically follow that those friendships become especially grounded when that “something else” is something valuable, eternal, and glorious. Only friendships engaged in shoulder-to-shoulder looking, seeking, finding, will eventually lead to intentional face-to-face interactions.
Look to the Prize
Like Sam and Frodo, our goal has to be something other than friendship itself. It must be a prize worth staking our lives on, worth pursuing and building friendships on. Our goal, our prize—our Mount Doom—must be the destruction of not a golden ring, but our sin. Therefore, our prize must be Christ, who has climbed the mountain for us to destroy the wicked and establish His Kingdom forever. Look to Christ then, and find the True Friend who “sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24), one who will give you everlasting enjoyment. Seek Him, not as a means to the end of friendship, but as the end. And in seeking Him—in finding Him—you will encounter “Sam’s” along the way who want the same prize as you do.
