Bringing Out the Best

When I was growing up in the church, I was told to have someone in my life who would be able to check in on me daily and “keep me accountable” to God’s Word. Sweet idea. But in my high school years and even my early college years, it became a little difficult to have a good relationship with someone whose partial purpose was to make sure you were lined up with the rules correctly.

The role of many of my “accountability partners” became a tired checklist of specific sins. Are you doing this? Are you thinking this? Did you say anything like this? And if I did, it was time to pray it all away.

But I didn’t fully realize the weakness of this system until I met John. He had always been a friend of mine, but it wasn’t until we moved into a tiny apartment in Northwest Portland that I really began to admire the guy. He was honorable without trying to be honorable, he was godly without talking much about it, and he was naturally and effortlessly generous even though he had very little money.

What I came to find out over those years was that Biblical community is more about aspiring to be like Jesus together rather than aspiring to not be like yourself. Do you see the difference?

John was the best guy to live with not only because he was a better dude than me, but because he actually brought out great things in me that I didn’t know existed: abilities, talents, and character traits that were buried in my difficult heart would begin to surface and bear fruit.

I started to recognize that I had the same type of relationship with my girlfriend. She brought the best out in me. After realizing that, I married her as soon as I could because along with being such a good woman, she was also super hot, a trait John never really had in my eyes.

So often, people want to be in small groups and community groups and even romantic relationships to check up and make sure they’re doing everything right and squashing everything that's wrong. But is that the gospel? Why are we focused on looking at one another through the lens of doing the right thing?

We surround ourselves with people who suppress the worst things in us when instead we should surround ourselves with people who actually bring out the best in us, namely the Christ that is within us. Because once the greatness of God begins to be brought out in us, the worst of us will disappear.

This is what prompted C.S. Lewis to write his famous passage on true friendship:

“We possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious ‘nearness by resemblance’ to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”
         -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves