Bible, Improvisation, and New Community

Today is my final day talking about friendship in Plato. Towards the end of the Lysis dialogue, Socrates comes up with his final definition of friendship, "that which is neither good nor bad is friends with the good." He arrives at this definition through logic. It is clear that those who are bad cannot be friends with one another. There is no honor or loyalty among thieves, as we say. Those who are truly good, according to his logic, are already self-sufficient, and have no need of friends or friendship. So the truly good folks don't really need friends. The ones who need friendship are therefore neither bad, nor entirely good. As a teacher, I really like this concept. Those who are forming their identities, forming their sense of self, and their characters, are the ones who seek out mentoring. So in a way, mentoring activity can be described as a kind of friendship. As we move towards advent, who do you think could benefit from your friendship, from your mentoring prese...

For this advent, I will be reflecting a little on Friendship. Typically the first week of advent focuses on the prophets. Since I didn't write about the prophets in my book, I figured I'd share a thought each day from one of the Greco-Roman thinkers I discuss in my book. I'll start with Plato. In his "Lysis" dialogue, Plato portrays Socrates musing with a group of young wrestlers after their practice about the nature of friendship. He runs through numerous definitions. One of the first he considers is that friends are "like to the like." What do you think about that? Do you seek out friends who are like you in your tastes, character, political ideas, ethnicity, gender, etc? What do we gain from solidarity with those who are like us? Our social media algorithms often show us posts from friends with whom we agree. So there must be some value in seeking out people who are similar to us. But do we miss anything, if our friends are only always like us? As...