Christian Friendship – Who Knew It Could Make You Smarter?

There are many benefits of friendship that make conscious, deliberate cultivation of good Christian friendship worthwhile. Friendship leads us to the enlightenment of intimacy. It also gives us much needed social support.

Good Judgment

Another wonderful benefit of friendship is the help that other people give us in making judgments about our lives. This help in judgment can greatly improve our lives. Most of us lack confidence in the decisions we make. We naturally seek validation and affirmation from other people. But this lack of confidence is actually a healthy thing. In our quest for truth, its good to want to check our own theories and ideas against others.

Friends give us the ability to compare our opinions with other opinions, to amend our points of view in comparison with the point of view of our friends. In fact, sometimes when we ask a friend for advice we are really just looking to test our opinions or to use our friend as a sounding board. It doesn’t even really matter if our friend is especially wise or knowledgeable. Just having a sympathetic ear who is willing to listen to us talk out our ideas can do a lot to sharpen our thoughts and help us come up with new insights. This is a great benefit for the development of our intellect.

Of course, it does help if our friends do exercise wisdom or have life experience that can help us. Christian friendship gives us the opportunity to exercise the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in service of each other. This is a valuable opportunity!

Learning Together

My good friend Father James and I love to pass ideas by each other. We’ve plotted out a number of projects together. Most of them have been dead ends. But there was fun and camaraderie and learning just in the planning. We once undertook a project to build a telescope together. The ideas and the creativity that went into that project were just fun. It hardly mattered that in the end, we couldn’t get it to work. OK, it was sort of a let-down. But we both felt we got a lot out of doing that project together.

Christian Friendship Promotes True Humility

Another intellectual benefit that our friends offer us is the gift of perspective. A true friend will offer us a valuable outside perspective on our lives. A true friend won’t flatter us or soft-pedal reality for us. True friends tell it like it is.

Now, this doesn’t mean that a good friend doesn’t use tact. To abuse someone with the truth in the name of “honesty” is not authentic love. But to tell us the truth for our own good, even if that truth may hurt our self-esteem a little, is the kind of tough love that true friendship allows for.

Within a good Christian friendship, the gold standard of self-knowledge is the virtue of humility. Humility means an accurate knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses, a willingness to grow as a person, and (probably most of all) selfless regard for others that makes you think about yourself less. When friends are “willing the good of the other” (CCC 1766), they use truth and honesty to help each other become better people.

Healthy Friendship, Healthy Intellectual Life

Now, these intellectual benefits may seem unimportant when you compare them to the benefits of the heart. But don’t sell them short! While developing the intellect is undervalued in today’s culture, having a healthy intellectual life is a part of living a fully human life. The quest for truth is part of life’s adventure. And friends make that adventure even more exciting. Consider the difference between a lecture by a dry professional and a lively debate among friends at a coffee shop. Lively, engaging intellectual dialogue is a great joy of friendship.

What To Do Next

The key to changing any behavior – including strengthening your relationships – is to systematize your behavior into habit formation. The best habit you can build in order to cultivate a healthy intellectual life with your friends is the habit of true conversation. In place of small talk and gossip, encourage your friends to talk with you about deeper issues and personal problems. Exchange ideas and wisdom with each other. Make your time together deep and enriching.

The mission of From the Abbey is to help you cultivate the habits that make up a great life of faith. If you’d like to strengthen the habit of learning your faith, check out the growing library of online classes. If you’d like to cultivate specific spiritual virtues, the online spirituality programs are for you. I invite you to explore the opportunity below to become more involved.

Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.