THE ART OF FRIENDSHIP
thing keeping us from walking through those entryways is a decision to engage.
2. A friend shows emotion on your behalf.
Two of the greatest teachers that ever walked this earth is Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul. Throughout their ministries on this earth, they displayed or taught the care of others, and the role emotion plays in friendship, mainly these three:
Compassion is a deep awareness of the suffering of another living being accompanied by the desire to bring relief. Showing compassion is not just emotion on its own; it requires action as well. When you recognize the hurt, pain, sickness, or sadness of someone else and you do something to alleviate their suffering, you demonstrate compassion. This is a crucial connection point that will develop and deepen the friendship. It shows that we are not self-absorbed only thinking of how our relationship with someone affects us but solidifies in their mind that you care about them. People sometimes just want to know that others notice them and care.
Jesus showed compassion for people many times throughout his ministry, as we see in Matthew 14:14, “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (See also Matt. 9:36; Mark 1:41, 6:34) Notice that in all of these instances, Jesus felt compassion and then acted. He demonstrated the compassion he felt for them in tangible ways.
Anger is a biological response to an internal or external trigger. The kind of anger regarding friendship I am talking about isn’t spewing anger because we did not get our way or because we are upset with something that someone did to us. I’m talking about righteous indignation, the kind that Jesus displayed in Luke 2:13–16 and again in Matthew 21:12–13 when he went into the temple to pray and found the temple’s outer courts filled with people exchanging money for animals to sacrifice. In my opinion, Jesus knew the noise and commotion made it very difficult for the worshippers who had come from long distances to focus in prayer—those who were not allowed into the inner courts because they were not Jewish, so he unleashed on the money changers.
If Jesus is our example of righteous anger, what do we do when someone takes advantage of a friend? How do we respond when a loved one is hurt by someone else? Are we outraged when an injustice or a crime happens against a friend? Friendship mandates that we get angry and we show that emotion on their behalf.
Grief is another emotion that friends display when it is appropriate. Many of us don’t like to show sadness or grief publicly, as if it is a sign of weakness. I say, showing sorrow or grief publicly takes a strong person. If Jesus can be “strong” enough to prove that he cared, so can we. We can cry along with them