Friendship in the Body of Christ

My sister sent me a plaque for my birthday one year that said, "God made us sisters; Prozac made us friends." We laugh because we see the truth in this--we can't choose our siblings. C. S. Lewis writes about friendship between believers in a similar way. When you see his point of view, it becomes obvious that in church at least, you don't get to choose your friends. They have been chosen for you by One who put you together for a higher purpose. Here is what Lewis says:

Friendship, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual, and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must, even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. It must not become what people call a ‘mutual admiration society;’ yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all.

For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to his disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare hope, who sometimes does, and always should preside. Let us not reckon without our Host. 

Seeing relationships this way changes everything. No longer can we boast about our good taste in friends. No longer can we avoid the ones we would never choose. We share a DNA that transcends all barriers--we are the body of Christ. . In the church, God makes us brothers and sisters and the Holy Spirit uses our relationships to help us conform to the image of Christ. That is the goal.

My Favorite Quotes From C.S. Lewis

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

"The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose (?) an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home."

Children Taken Hostage

Since its inception, state education has always been about ownership of the child. Who has the right to take possession of a child's mind and determine his worldview? See what the educators have to say:

“We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.”  --Horace Mann, (1796-1859) Father of American Public Education.

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.”  --John Dewey, (1859-1952) Father of Progressive Education, honorary president of the National Education Association, and co-author of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto.

“Only a system of state-controlled schools can be free to teach whatever the welfare of the state may demand.”  Ellwood Cubberley, (1868-1941) dean of Stanford University’s School of Education

“Every child entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.  It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well—by creating the international child of the future.”  Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Harvard psychiatrist.  From his keynote address at the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Boulder, CO.