Ten Commandments for being a friend
More than 2,500 years ago, Moses gave us the Ten Commandments. The centuries since – the Enlightenment notwithstanding – haven’t given us a single reason to doubt the validity and importance of any of those precepts. However, as we struggle to live them out, it might be helpful if Moses again descended from that same mountain with two new tablets of stone, spelling out some rules for better befriending each other, God, life, and ourselves. Perhaps this second set of commandments might read like this:
(1) Befriend humanity. To be human is to be fallible, wounded, scarred, sinful, and living in a far from perfect history, body, family, church. Don’t look for anyone to blame, to sue, and to be angry at. This is called the human condition. Make friends with it. Grieve – don’t rage. Think of chaos, not blame. Our parents called this “original sin.” We talk of “dysfunctional families.” It has ever been thus. Don’t live in a sulk.
(2) Befriend what’s best in you. As long as we look out at the world through our wounds we will always fill with self-pity, bitterness, and jealousy. If, however, we look out through the prism of what’s best in us, our jealousy can turn to appreciation and we can again be astonished at others’ goodness. We have two souls: a grand soul, where we carry the image of God and the memory of our blessings, and a petty soul, where we carry the bitterness and jealousies that come from our wounds. We need to attach our eyes, our ears, our speech, and our attitudes to our grand soul. We need to be better friends with what’s best in us.
(3) Befriend those who love you. There are only two potential tragedies in life: To go through life and never love, and to go through life and not express love and affection to those who love us. We need to make better friends with our friends, to express more readily our affection, our gratitude, our appreciation, and our contrition. Thank those who love you for loving you. Never take their love for granted, or as owed. Give out a lot more compliments. Say thank you constantly.
(4) Befriend chastity. So much of our pain and restlessness comes from our lack of chastity, and much of our subsequent rationalization and bitterness comes from not admitting this. We have sophisticated ourselves into unhappiness. For all of our knowing, we aren’t happy. Make friends with chastity. Children and virgins, Scripture assures us, enter the kingdom easily. Be post-sophisticated. Learn to believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny again. Enjoy second naiveté. Ride a merry-go-round. Make a searing, honest confession soon.
(5) Befriend your own body. Don’t be afraid of your own body, of its goodness, its sexuality, its pleasures, its tiredness, and its limits. It’s the only one you’ve got, in any case. Befriend it. Don’t punish it, don’t spoil it, and don’t denigrate it. It’s a church, a temple. Give it enough rest, enough exercise, enough discipline, and enough respect.
(6) Befriend the other gender. The mothers and the fathers, the wives and the husbands, are fighting. Small wonder the children are suffering. Never trivialize the issues of gender. We are being called to a new level of mutual respect and mutual sympathy.
(7) Befriend your father. Father-hunger is one of the deepest hungers in the Western world today. Reconcile with your own father, with other fathers, and with God the Father. Your father’s blessing will deconstruct your heart.
(8) Befriend your mortality. Death comes to us all. Make friends with aging, with wrinkles, with gray hair, with a body that is no longer young. Accept, let go, grieve, and move on. Bless the young. Share your wisdom with them. Give away what’s left of your life. Let the zest, beauty, and color of young people enliven you.
(9) Befriend humor. In our laughter we taste the transcendence. Humor takes us above the tragic. Laughter gives us wings to fly. Thomas More cracked a joke to the man who was about to behead him. That’s a quality of sanctity that we too often neglect.
(10) Befriend your God. The Gospel is not so much good advice as it is “good news;” it tells us how much God loves us, what God has already done for us. God is as proud of us as is any mother of her children. Peace comes to us when we can enjoy that favor. Befriend the God of love and the God of the Resurrection, the God who is completely relaxed, whose face beams like a marvelous symphony, whose power to raise dead bodies from the grave assures us that in the end all will be well and every manner of being will be well. Befriend the God who tells us 365 times in Scripture not to be afraid, only then will you walk in that confidence.
