Spiritual Friendship: Empty Post-Modern Relationships
The authentic and deep love of friendship is the only solution, and answer to the heart, to the growing problem of empty post-modern relationships, manifest in our present rapant sexual confusion.
This is Part II of Spiritual Friendship: Authentic Love. Moving from the essence of friendship, we see its practical application and significance in our times.
What statement about friendship can be more sublime, more true, more valuable than this: it has been proved that friendship must begin in Christ, continue with Christ, and be perfected by Christ. Come, now: propose what in your opinion should be the first question about friendship.
—Spiritual Friendship 1:10
The virtue of spiritual friendship ought to be the model of the highest relationship. And it is not only accessible but necessary for men to cultivate and treasure, especially in our times. In the present day, so many deviant and unsatisfying relationships are not only practiced but promoted. And they are not only promoted but established as the ideal. While some are obviously degenerate, as will be shown, others are not as easily identified as such, and so become common and not sufficiently addressed even within Christian contexts.
And sadly, this affects relationships not only among men but even misunderstands the purpose and nature of marriage. Our present disordered perspectives reveal a broken understanding of the self and of the other in relation to the self. And while these all may seem to be very different problems, they actually from this same brokenness. This spiritual friendship—this call to follow Christ in this intimate and deep relationship—requires the transformation of the mind in a real and prudent vulnerability.
