Heaven Will Be Full of My Fake Friends

By Scott Yi

BEING COOL & AUTHENTIC

I suppose I’m old enough, as a child of the 90s, to recall all sorts of fashion trends started by different generations of kids. For a few years one thing would be considered cool, but inevitably the next folks in line would have an altogether different take on what they deem to be stylish. In particular, it seems there were vastly differing opinions on how people ought to wear their baseball caps. It was just one of those things that kids argued about in the schoolyard (and probably still do): do you prefer wearing your hat backwards or forwards; tilted up or tilted down; with a straight brim or a curved brim; do you leave the sticker on or off? I remember when the thing with the big shiny stickers started in the late 90s with New Era baseball caps. The New Era brand represented higher quality, top shelf street style, so if you wanted to show everyone you had the genuine product, you would leave the sticker label on the brim of your hat and never take it off. It was a badge of authenticity, informing everyone that this was the real one.

I think about that sticker of authenticity when I recall some of the friendships I’ve had with church folks over the years. I think about people I’ve prayed with, homes I’ve visited, pastors who wanted to meet with me. It would have been nice to know at the outset if that person crossing my path was a real one–or if it was all just part of the weekly programming. That’s one of the sad ironies about the way that church is done today: we are a relationship-based organization that is really bad at relationships. How many people am I still friends with from a previous spiritual community? How many pastors or ministry leaders from a previous experience do I still keep in touch with, even when things ended on good terms? How many small groups and accountability groups and prayer groups was I a part of, how many people was I forced to be friendly with, and out of all those people, how many of them are still in my life today?

Obviously in today’s modern world we have to account for external factors like social mobility and the nuclear lifestyle of young suburban families. But why doesn’t it seem more strange to anybody that we’re supposed to be “sharing life” and “in vesting in” relationships that clearly have a built-in expiration date?

I wish I knew this truth back in my campus fellowship days, when as a student I was assigned a staff person to be discipled by, some arbitrary person to whom I was supposed to divulge my deepest, darkest secrets and most sinful behaviors, only to watch him leave for greener pastures and more profitable endeavors in one to two years (this happened to me three or four times). I’ve had pastors want to reconnect with me and “just hang out and be real,” when what they were actually trying to do was recruit me to their church. This is not friendship. It is the facade of authenticity, but this is the model we trot out in the church today for what healthy relationships ought to look like. In other words, I think Holden Caulfield would call us all a parade of phonies.

FAKE FRIENDS

There actually is a book in the Bible that’s all about fake friends. The Book of Job is traditionally thought of as a highly philosophical Old Testament document on the problem of evil. The story re volves around the righteous man Job, whose faith in God gets tested when all his wealth and children get taken away from him in a blistering series of tragedies. The entire book is a starkly honest exploration on how it is that God would allow bad things to happen to good people. But reading the text itself, you might be surprised to find that the narrative framework of Job only lasts for about two chapters. The majority of the text, nearly thirty entire chapters, is just Job arguing with his friends.

THE BOOK OF JOB

When Job’s hardships strike, three of his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, get together and decide to visit Job in a show of sympathy. However, instead of compassion, Job finds himself embroiled in a lengthy debate as he is forced to defend himself against the accusations of his so-called friends. They tell Job to confess to his crimes, because he must have done something terrible to warrant such harsh punishment from God (8:3-6). They call him arrogant for maintaining his innocence (15:4) and tell him he is evil (22:5). What kinds of friends are these? And yet the legacy of these “miserable comforters” (16:2) lives on today in every insular Christian community where institutional loyalty is valued above the personhood of people that have been hurt or turned aside for one reason or another. The pastor can’t be wrong, so you need to submit to his authority. Hey, I haven’t seen you at small group in a while. Well, the Bible says [fill in the blank] is a sin.

It’s a miserable revelation that many committed Christians have had to endure in these recent years of scandals and schisms–that a lot of our church friends are fair-weather friends, whose love and support depends on if you’re still in good standing. We’ve been told how very important it is to foster these spiritual relationships that are meant to continue into the afterlife forever; and yet these relationships are so shallow and so brittle as to waver and snap at the slightest breeze of inconvenience.

TRUE FRIENDSHIP

So then what is it that makes a true friend? In the final chapter of Job, we see God rebuke the three friends because they had not “spoken the truth” about Him (42:7).

This is a curious turn of phrase because technically what they had been claiming for the past forty chapters was correct: God will indeed punish the wicked and reward the just. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had all spoken beautifully of God’s majesty and their words possessed the same eloquence as any great prophet or pastor. But God was upset at them–because the thing they were wrong about is presuming to speak for the Lord. God doesn’t need anyone to defend Him. He doesn’t need believers prattling on about legalistic statutes or moralistic crusades. He knows this is not what people in their lowest moments need to hear. The truth about the Lord that they had all missed is that God is not just the God of the righteous but of the lonely (Psalm 68:5-6), and that He listens whenever His people cry out to Him in anguish and in pain (Psalm 55:17).

One of the ironies in the story of Job is that his three friends had initially shown him remarkable tenderness and empathy. We see in Job 2:12-13 a picture of friendship that is as lovely as anything else you could find in scripture:

When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. (Job 2:12-13, NIV)

The problem started when they opened their mouths. People who are dealing with the tragedies and traumas of life in the real world don’t need to be lectured at–they just need someone to be there for them. When you think you’re all alone, a genuine friend shows you that you’re not. As I head into my middle age and it becomes slightly more difficult to remember names and faces from bygone eras, I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of people I can instantly recall from my scattered memories: (1) the friends who abandoned me in my greatest times of need, and (2) the friends who actually sought me out and took the time to sit down with me. Nothing in the world ever makes me feel more worthless than when memories of the former outweigh the memories of the latter.

HOW TO BE A REAL FRIEND

To be a real friend is to be there when no one else is willing to. Jesus shows me that. Because He is the God of the lonely. He made time for all the people that no one else would, the ones who were the most isolated and the most alone. Whether it was those considered untouchable due to their medical conditions, or mentally afflicted individuals treated as social pariahs, morally outcast women left fending for themselves, or tax collectors whose fraudulent reputations made them despised by all, these were exactly the people Jesus sought out and wanted to spend time with.

I want to have that kind of compassion in my life. I hope I can be a friend like that. But, let’s be real, usually I’m not and my close friends probably know that about me–that I’m too protective of my time, that I’m too cynical about the ability of people to ever learn from their mistakes, that I’m just too selfish and too picky and too lazy. I guess I’m also as fake as they come. Sometimes I still can’t believe that Jesus would want to save someone who can be as thoughtless about others as I am. I guess I should just be glad that there’s room in heaven for one more phony.