Phillia

(In response to "The Four Loves" chapter 2: "Philia" Friendship by C.S. Lewis)

C.S. Lewis talks of friendship from several different viewpoints in this chapter. He states that it is the least natural of loves. He goes on to say that friendship is not a necessity to life. One can hardly argue that we need friends in order to live and go about our daily lives, yet at the same time can any of us imagine navigating the troubles of this world alone? Certainly friendships help us through our lives and provide a support system that is not found elsewhere. Oh ya, a support system like the church. God calls us to be in a community of believers, and I think in a sense he calls us to surround ourselves with good friends. Friends are people who can influence us immensely. Due to this fact we must be careful in choosing our friends. I am a friend of God, he knows my name. We must use Christ's example of how to befriend those around us and apply it to our relationships.

I found it interesting when he talked about how friends meet... that they don't set out to meet or become friends but that it just happens. He says that those who set out to make friends have no friends. Because friendship is not something you can create, it is some shared focal point that you have in common. Some goal or direction that you are both seeking that brings you together and allows you to connect on a level that others cannot.

I found it interesting when Lewis said that: "The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends." It means that we as humans are not here for friendships, or relationships that do not last and that we are not here for eros, friendships closely resembling our relationship to God. What we are here for is to love God, and seek AGAPE--the greatest of loves.

Quotes:
"We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts."

"But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart."

"Man, pleas thy Maker, and be merry, / And give not for this world a cherry."
--Dunbar