Let me begin by saying I have heard of their friendship but have not read anything in particular about it. That said, I think there is an important clarification needed–one which begins with the recognition that there is a word-usage issue here. I will not correct their description of their relationship. This week’s SHORT VIDEO: especially for PARENTS… Join us in person in the Shenandoah Valley. October 7 LifeCraft Day at the Barn now open for REGISTRATION. Indeed, our life can and should be a sort of symphony of different kinds of relationships.Īnd to recognize the truth of the great demands of friendship will not only enable these deepest of relationships it will enrich all our other ones too. None of this changes the nature and unique requirements of deeper friendship. Also, we will have diverse, particular persons with whom our lives intersect in wonderfully meaningful and challenging ways. To offer Christian charity to all is a further and profound calling. But the quarrelling to which Socrates refers here is something deeper, something that stands in the way of real meeting of hearts and minds.Įspecially today, we must always respect others and strive to ‘get along’ the best we can. Are these not the subjects of difference about which, when we are unable to come to a satisfactory decision, you and I and other men quarrel whenever we do? … the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, the honorable and the dishonorable. For this reason Socrates said to Euthyphro: Now convictions about basic truths are not peripheral in human life they are foundations that give form to all aspects of it. If friendship is, as the wise tell us, a way of living one life together, then its quality and characteristics are determined by what it is to live a human life at all. The assertion that we can have deep friendship despite fundamentally diverse worldviews stems from a misunderstanding not so much of friendship as of human life itself. The sure foundation of any relationship is to stand in the truth. The wise remind us: never act as though you have more in common than you do. To recognize and observe due limits here is not to hamstring these relationships rather it alone enables their true realization. These are very meaningful even while limited.
In recognition of this the medieval theologian Aelred of Rievaulx wrote, “Charity toward all, friendship with a few.” Beyond the respect due to all, and indeed also Christian charity which is much more than just respect, there can also be particular, authentic relationships between people of different worldviews. Now for starters, with everyone we have a basis of shared humanity. The principle is in a sense obvious: where less is shared, less can be shared. I must emphasize: the point here is not that a person eschews or avoids people with different worldviews. Here we must make an all-important distinction between a level of interaction possible even amidst great diversity, and another level where deep friendship happens. This is natural and good, to the extent that it is possible. It is not simply characteristic of our ‘liberal’ age to seek relationships across lines of deeply held differences often enough we all want to love, live with, and relate to people very different from ourselves. The longer I live the more I discover just how true this principle is, even if also at times heartbreaking.
What had I asserted in my lecture? Aristotle’s principle: deep friendship requires unity of worldview.
Once after giving a lecture on friendship I was told I was undermining the hearers ability to have relationships with diverse people.
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