Researchers have long known that people choose friends who are much like themselves in a wide array of characteristics: of a similar age, race, religion, socioeconomic status, educational level, political leaning, pulchritude rating, even handgrip strength. The impulse toward homophily, toward bonding with others who are the least other possible, is found among traditional hunter-gatherer groups and advanced capitalist societies alike. New research suggests the roots of frien

It wasn’t until I had moved back to my hometown, post-graduation, and had to start all over in finding a community that I began to realize just how much I liked to receive from my relationships. In other words, I often got the whole you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:4) idea terribly wrong. Fortunately, God has been teaching me a lot about friendship in the last few months. Here’s what I’ve learned: https://relev

And the life-long, intimate, strong, eternal friendship of Frodo and Sam is one of the best ever told. Frodo who is a small hobbit who decided to take on the enormous burden of taking the Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor is accompanied by his gardener Samwise Gamgee. This moment in time is the start of one of the greatest friendships in history. Samwise makes a promise to Gandalf that he will never leave Frodo’s side and is so dedicated to Frodo even Sauron can’t separ

When surveying the life of the apostle Paul, we see his firm belief in the sufficiency of the gospel and his willingness to suffer for it. But there’s another, often overlooked, feature of the Pauline mission: friendship. As Paul planted churches throughout the Roman world, he didn’t do so as a one-man band. Paul was relationally wealthy. He traveled with friends; he stayed with them; he visited them. He worked alongside them; he preached alongside them; he was beaten alongsi

Why is it that men are afraid of physical contact? Most women seem to have little problem touching each other in gentle, platonic ways, and the general public has no problem with it. It’s not abnormal to see two girls linking arms or holding hands in public. But with men, it’s another story. Greene points out that a rise in homophobia in response to the cultural shifts has done as much damage to heterosexual men as to homosexual men. We have become afraid of touch from other

I was facing one of the most difficult seasons of my life. And it didn’t help that I felt so alonein it. So there I was—an American, on the other side of the world (China), pouring out my heart to a friend and fellow missionary (from Australia)—hoping for some wisdom and clarity. She delivered. “Oh Paul, just because you are alone,” she said, “doesn’t mean you have to be lonely.” http://www.singleroots.com/alone-yet-not-lonely/ #Articles #Alone #Friendship

"In fact, however, ancient and medieval friendship was not only an essential public good, it could also be a much deeper and more meaningful personal relationship than it is today, when it is mostly confined to the private sphere. The Jews of King David’s time tolerated polygamy, and the Mosaic law explicitly permitted a man to divorce his wife. David, like the other Jewish patriarchs, had multiple wives, and was not that close to any of them. Vows to friends could be more bi

"Paradoxically, it is friendship that offers us the real route to the pleasures that Romanticism associates with love. That this sounds surprising is only a reflection of how underdeveloped our day to day vision of friendship has become. We associate it with a casual acquaintance we see only once in a while to exchange inconsequential and shallow banter. But real friendship is something altogether more profound and worthy of exultation: it is an arena in which two people can

"We encourage each other to live with conviction, honesty, integrity, and vulnerability. We trust that the others in our circle of friends have also prayed for thousands of hours and cried the particular tears of shame that only queer kids cry. We understand that our queer Christian friends, regardless of what they believe, have known loneliness, rejection, loss, and disappointment, and we want them to know we’re here to support them without qualification or condition. We wan

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