Ideals of Spiritual Friendship - Honesty

Honesty

Because friends desire each other’s growth and development, love demands honesty. It confronts illusions and dares to risk temporary discomfort by calling us to the truth. Jesus’ love for the disciples meant that he could not ignore some of the things he saw in them. When he predicted Peter’s denial, he wasn’t showing off his prophetic abilities; he was confronting Peter’s pride. When he rebuked the disciples for their lack of trust in his ability to take care of them during a storm at sea, it was to encourage faith. And when he heard them arguing about which of them was the greatest, his confrontation was motivated by desire for their spiritual well-being.

One particularly striking example of speaking the truth in love comes in the encounter between Jesus and Peter after Jesus’ prediction of his own death. Peter protested, and Jesus spoke to him words that must have felt unusually harsh: “Get behind me, Satan! ….. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (Mark 8:33). Did these words reflect a lack of care, or did they rather reflect deep love? Obviously the real lack of care would be to overlook the triumphalistic assumptions that were lurking behind Peter’s protest. It was love that motivated Jesus to confront Peter.

Love cannot ignore things that are self-destructive in the loved one. By daring to be honest with us, friends offer us invaluable opportunities for growth. They can help us penetrate our self-deceptions and cherished illusions. Just as the retina of the human eye contains a blind spot, so too the human soul contains a blind spot. Soul friends help us see things that we can’t see on our own. There are things about ourselves that we would never recognize without them. The true soul friend will not accept our self-deceptions but will gently and firmly confront us with our soul blindness. Soul friends want each other to settle for nothing short of becoming the whole and holy person they are called to be.

When I reflect on how over the years my own friends have challenged me to grow, I recall numerous examples. Most of them relate to the personality thread that is my particular besetting sin. One good friend in high school confronted me on my arrogance. I deflected the confrontation. However, I took more note of it when another friend a few years later framed the same issue on terms of my detachment. Some years later my closest friend – my wife – prodded me to reflect on the anger that often seemed to lurk beneath the surface.

A pattern emerged, built around the dynamics of pride, detachment and feelings of entitlement. These dynamics are right at the center of the blind spot of my soul. They are sins I could not possibly see apart from the gentle confrontation of my friends. While I was usually less open than I should have been to what these good friends offered me at the point of each confrontation, I own them all an enormous debt of gratitude. My struggle in these areas continues. However, I would be at a much worse place than I am were it not for friends who have dared to offer loving nudges to growth. Nudges are never enough to ensure a response. They do, however, provide an opportunity.

When friends confront each other in these ways, they do so in love. This increases enormously the probability that the interaction will produce growth. If I suspect that my friend is merely attacking me, it’s easy to ignore his/her challenge. However, when it’s clear that my friend is pushing simply because he loves me and wants me to grow, the confrontation is much harder to ignore.

The challenge is communicating love through a critical balance of support and confrontation. Confrontation without support will never be experienced as love. But support without confrontation will always remain an insipid form of love. Friends communicate their love by offering emotional and spiritual support. This includes support for their friends’ growth. However, that support will never be contingent on growth – withdrawn if I fail to make sufficiently good use of it.

Finally, honesty is not just something that friends try to practice. It is also something they delight in experiencing. The honesty that characterizes genuine and deep friendships is not just the honesty of words. It is also the honesty of being. Friends feel sufficiently safe with each other that they can relax and be what they are. Since I am already known and loved for who I am, pretensions can be set aside and I can be myself. Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This freedom from a need to manage appearances is a fundamental and basic component of all true friendships.