Guest Series: The Heart of Man

As hinted at in sunday's taster, my good friend is writing about what it means to say that Friendship is at the heart of being human...

Recently, a good friend from my old uni sent me an honest and insightful e-mail about how unsatisfying he was finding he was finding his constantly changing social scene. He was meeting so many interesting people, learning about so many lives, living so many memories - why, he asked, did these leave ‘some sort of melancholy about not having someone by my side but only "people", tangential moments, experiences’, why was he left with only a sense of ‘depression?...[G]ranted these will surely shape my future to come...but what about now?’ His powerful words made me really think about what friendships are, why we need them, and what sort of friendships we need. What that led me to, which I’ve fitted into 3 posts here, is that they are part of who we are, they’re part of why we’re made, and they’re at the core of the universe. You can judge if I’m overstating my case. So firstly, how friendship is at the heart of who we are...

As individuals, we can win and lose friends, and gain so much through our friendships. But a fallacy can sometimes creep in that sees friendships purely, or primarily, from an individualistic, 'consumer' standpoint. Friendships become these external ‘things’ affecting us. We can view them from a certain distance, for how improve (or otherwise) our experience as individuals. Friends become accessories in our lives: things we add to our external experience. They’re still be very, very important, but they remain things we add to our external experience - ultimately, we’re isolated individuals, entirely separate from these relationships.

But I want to challenge that. Friendships and relationships, I think, aren’t merely things to add in to our lives - they’re a core, inextricable part of what we are. Friends bring things out in us that would stay hidden, or undeveloped, without them. There are parts of my character that particular friends of mine bring out in me, which my others friends don’t, and vise verse. With different friends, I will laugh differently, speak differently, act differently, and (to some extent) think differently. And that’s not because I am being a different person, or am putting on an act. It is because they bring different things out in me. To a very real extent, I think I exist in my relationships with people - just as I am different, again, when I am alone. I am not, I think, just what I make of myself - but I am what I am in my character and in my friendships.

This is why losing a friend, or losing contact with a friend, is such a big thing. In some ways, I may start to lose connection with a part of myself - or, to put it better, I forget the part of myself which they saw or brought out.

Today, we can miss much of this by a heavy emphasis on the individual. There’s a huge focus on 'finding yourself', or on your ‘self-esteem’ and 'self-consciousness', and on your personal life goals. These are all fine and good - but not on their own. It is too self-focussed, and denies our nature as 'relational' beings (ie beings made for relationships/friendships).

As a Christian I believe that we are created - perhaps primarily - as 'relational' things. That is - we are not first and foremost 'rational', or 'creative', 'workers, or 'passionate' - thought ALL of these are very true. I believe that, before all of these (and fulfilling all of these), we are made for relationships. We are made for relationship with God, and with other people. It is little wonder that Jesus summed up all the Scriptures as 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.'

And that ‘relational’ nature means that friendships are not merely good for us; we don’t merely enjoy them - we NEED them. Let me close with an historic example.

In the nineteenth century, there was a movement to reform Britain’s prisons, because they were in a terrible state. Generally built as a single, large dungeon, they would be filled with dozens of criminals - young, old, murderers, minor thieves. They were feral, unmanageable criminal academies. So people started coming up with solutions. The great philosopher Jeremy Bentham came up with a brilliant scheme - The Panopticon. Rather than everyone being in a single cell, every prisoner was alone in their own cell, with everything they needed. A series of wires (working like telephones), connected them to the prison guards' office in the middle, and they could talk to them if necessary. Partly Based on this, the British government built a pioneering prison at Pentonville - which they proudly called 'The Model Prison'. The idea of the prison was that the criminals were a bad influence on each other, and so they needed to be separated, and left to themselves they would consider their actions, and become good citizens. So, the prison cut off any need for them to meet other people. Every prisoner had their own cell, with a bed, window, toilet, sink, and means of contacting the guards if necessary. The guards even wore felt over their shoes, so that the prisoners couldn't hear them passing their doors! The prisoners were given daily exercise, but this was in individual, walled, exercise areas they couldn’t see out of. Similarly, they were taken to chapel regularly, but they were put in individual cubicles, where they could only see the minister taking the chapel service. The prison was widely heralded as utterly brilliant - as the future of prisons.

What happened? Cut off from any other people, any friendships - the prisoners went mad. The whole scheme had to be abandoned within a few short years. Far from proving that people would become good when they were cut off from bad society, it proved that people could not survive without friends, that people go mad without them.

Relationships are at the indispensable heart of what we are, and - as the second post will examine - they’re at the heart of how we were made. Made for relationship with each other - and God.