Why can't we be friends?

In our lives, we have relationships with many people. Some are just passing acquaintances, and some are strong friendships that bond two people on deep levels. We must be careful with our friendships though. They can destroy our lives as well as build them up. St. Francis de Sales teaches us how to identify what kind of relationship we are in, and also help us to find relationships that follow our discipleship in God. He says that relationships need to be a mutual love for each other, and they can’t be based on vain human attributes.

St. Francis of Sales said in his book, Intro to a Devout Life, “…friendship is mutual love, and unless it is mutual, it is not friendship.” We have all had many friendships in our lives, but how many of them were one-sided relationships? The “friend” is a leech, only taking and never contributing. There is no love in this friendship. We must do all that we can to avoid these bad companionships. The worse the relationship, the more likely we are to fall into sin. Jesus calls us to love our enemies as well as our friends, but what happens when we start to hate our friends? So to follow God, we need to be in healthy relationships of mutual love. They will build us up closer to God, not break us down.

“…friendship arising from such sources must be sensual, vain, and frivolous, deserving rather to be called foolery than friendship,” (Sales n.d., 168). Friendships that are based on vain attributes of the human body are destined to fall. Humans have no claim to their abilities and looks. Their qualities are God-given, and not theirs to claim. Loving them for these qualities is not loving the person, but the qualities themselves. The foolishness in this is that the quality will not last forever unless God wills it. A person who is beautiful one second, can be ugly another. Where is the love then? However, people have free will over their personality. Loving a person for his personality is loving the person himself, because he is responsible for his personality. Friendships built on love for vain attributes fail, while true friendships thrive and bring us closer to God.

Our relationships with people can determine our relationship with God. If we allow bad relationships to influence us, we will inevitably have a bad relationship with the Lord. We must learn how to determine and build good relationships with other people, so that we may reach our ultimate goal in life. St. Francis de Sales helps us giving us guidelines to better friendships. If we are to be more like Christ, we need to surround ourselves with friendships that want to strengthen our relationship with God.