Just Friends?

Last night, after a game of ultimate frisbee at UNT's campus in our sweet southern seventy degree weather, about eight gal friends, three guy friends and I returned to our big red house for some tilapia and table talk.

After chatting for a while about brokenness and dependency, loving the people who we are most naturally inclined to hate, and some up-and-coming afro-american hairdos, the convo took a quick and passionate turn to this infamous question: "Can guys and girls be 'just friends'?"  I mean, really? Successfully? Long term?

This video will give you a good laugh because of what the opinions of each gender tend to be (at least on one college campus).  A little inapprope...but telling? :



But I stood (and stand) confused, and a bit troubled.  I feel like there are plenty of guys with whom I am just friends, no weirdness there, no questions asked.  That's not to say I don't have to be careful in not giving them the wrong idea by sharing my whole life story and all my hopes and dreams and struggles and prayers.  There's a degree of guardedness and distance that has to stay between guys and gals who are not journeying together toward or in marriage.  But still.

As we all sat discussing, with much waving of hands and shaking of heads, Brandon offered up  Genesis 2 as a defense for why a man cannot, for long, see a woman as "just a friend."  He explained that men are "just wired" to seek one fit for them until they can exclaim, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," and so if a friendship he has with a woman is progressing and they enjoy each other's company and spend more than a little time together, it's inevitable that he will begin to have feelings toward her as more than for just a friend.

How hard is that?  It makes me a little sad, and with reason.  I think it's a product of the fall that we, as women, have to be so careful in word and deed toward the opposite sex, lest we become subtly manipulative or slowly give them a reason to hope for something that just isn't there.  Our hearts are deceitful, ever longing for intimacy and affection, and too easily we let them rule us instead of begging wisdom from Him who is greater than our hearts (1 John 3:20).

Thankfully, as in lots issues that I've heard recently talked about with regard to friendship and dating, such as unmarried couples praying together, the length of engagement before marriage, and the "line" when it comes to guarding your heart from early-awakened love, there is no formula for how to maneuver the friendship road safely with members of the opposite sex; instead, we're given a Person: Jesus Himself, who gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell in, comfort, teach and guide the ones who see Him and savor Him and seek to follow Him.  And He gives us His Word, which exposes and counsels and illumines our hearts and never returns to Him void.  

Were there A+B=C black-and-white answers for all the daily-grind-how-does-this-work questions we wrestle with, we would miss the point of our lives: Him.  Total dependence on the Lord to fill us with real love and wisdom and self-control, because in and of ourselves we are totally helpless.


Below are some interesting blogs from a couple of leaders in our church that bear testament to the grey nature of a lot of dating issues.  Both of these guys love Jesus and love their flocks; the first blog is written by Ed Jones, an elder of DBC who was in the secret service for years; the second one is written by Jeff, our thirty-something CollegeLife leader.

http://manlyskills.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/dating-for-christian-men/

http://collegelife.org/2011/12/17/dont-pray-together-and-other-bad-dating-advice-for-christians/