Made for Friendship

It’s not often that a book’s title and subtitle combine strikingly to reflect a life purpose that would be good for all of us. 

     Yet it happens with Drew Hunter’s new book, Made For Friendship: The Relationship That Halves our Sorrows and Doubles Our Joys (Crossway, 2018).

     That bold definition of friendship impels us to get out there and make a difference in others’ lives—and our own.

     Hunter clearly has an enthusiastic support team as is explained upfront in his acknowledgments—a place that can provide helpful insights to readers and reviewers, and which I often read first.

     First, he thanks his wife, Christina, for her covenantal constancy and for happily freeing him up to write (see Song of Solomon 5:16). Then he turns to their boys Moses, Isaiah, Chase, and Luke, who, he says, “make life a blast.” He writes, “I love being your father, and … look forward to growing as friends.”

     Those few lines capture the character and spirit of this teaching pastor at Zionsville Fellowship in Zionsville, Indiana, and the tone of his book.

     A fellow pastor, Ray Ortland Jr. (of Immanuel Church, Nashville, Tennessee) suggests in his foreword that readers will be left in no doubt that friendship is the “ultimate end of our existence.”

     Ortland confirms that the book is biblical and pastoral, showing readers “God’s way into deeper friendships that can last.” He says he can’t think of a more urgent need among us today than that we should be friends together through thick and thin, to the glory of God. And he closes: “Let’s stop living on a starvation diet of friendship. Let the feast begin!”

     Author Hunter’s menu is under three main headings:

The necessity of friendship

The gift of friendship, and, 

The redemption of friendship (including its biblical

affirmation).

     But he wastes no time in getting to practical matters such as ways to build friendships. Often, he says this can be done through sheer encouragement. As we listen and light up to others’ ideas, we stir their souls into action. “We lift their hearts and spur them on. Much of what is truly good in the world is the fruit of friendship.” 

     Hunter asks: What is the essence of friendship? And how do we define it? His answer: “Friendship is an affectionate bond forged between two people as they journey through life with openness and trust—which gives us hope for an “eternal tomorrow.” 

     That reminds me of one of my favorite lines from A.A.Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, in which Piglet asks, “Are we going to be friends forever?” And Pooh answers, “Even longer.”

     But the 17th century theologian and preacher Thomas Goodwin didn't leave it there. He called for ongoing action: “You [have] entered into a covenant of friendship with God, make something of it. In other words, as you look to the journey ahead, enjoy the privilege of walking every step, every day, onward into the eternal world of friendship to come.”

     And Goodwin is just one of the writers and voices from several centuries that Hunter draws upon. He includes C.S. Lewis, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, and John Calvin, along with 28 pages of helpful notes and indexes. And it’s English bishop J.C. Ryle who gets an honorable mention for his observation in the subtitle that friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys. 

     But who could write about friendship without Shakespeare’s compelling cry: “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,/Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Or without Hunter’s insistence that friendship is not something we make up; it’s something we were made for. It’s a gift from above. So, let's enjoy it together.