Aristotle gave us a very thorough taxonomy of friendships. First, on a general level, he describes both what he calls “incomplete” friendships based on utility and pleasure and “complete” friendships grounded in shared virtues. The former are based on individuals having something useful to offer each other (such as in a mutually profitable business relationship) or shared interest in some pleasurable activity, be it rock climbing or music. Though complete friendships often begin as incomplete friendships based on utility or pleasure, they ultimately become complete when they shift to being grounded not in utility or pleasure, but in shared virtues: in complete friendships, one recognizes—and loves—the virtuous character of the other.
Beyond that, Aristotle distinguishes between several different, very specific types of friendship: the friendship between brothers, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between teammates, soldiers, citizens, and so on. They are all types of friendship for Aristotle, though they are each unique in certain respects: e.g., what each individual is expected to bring to the table is different in each of these specific types of friendships. Though husbands and wives certainly work together like teammates in various respects, the friendship between them is obviously very different from the friendships had on the wrestling team or the swimming team. Though a family may be very close-knit all around, the friendship between siblings is going to be different than the friendship between each of them and their parents.
But should we really consider these sorts of relations to be friendships at all? After all, do we not distinguish between the title of “friend” and various other relations for reasons? Everyone has heard the common trope, “you aren’t supposed to be friends with your children, you’re supposed to be their parent.” Indeed, at first glance at this essay’s title one might ask: “Are you really supposed to be friends with God? Is one’s relationship with God not an inherently different sort of relationship altogether?”
If, like Aristotle, we think there is an element of friendship in each of these other relationships, then we might also see a sort of friendship that exists—or can exist—in one’s relationship with God. What might this sort of friendship look like? What reasons do we have to think it a friendship or something akin to it?
Both Moses and Job were individuals with whom God was pleased; He chose Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and to deliver His Commandments and He remarked of Job that there was no man on Earth like him, none as faithful or blameless as he. Relevant to the question at hand is the fact that both Moses and Job, though clearly very reverent of God, went to God with expressions of doubt.
When God gave Moses the task of leading His people out of Egypt, Moses repeatedly expressed doubt in God’s choosing him. He told God that he has never been very eloquent, and that he is slow in speech and slow of tongue. God then insisted that Moses do as instructed, that it is He who makes man mute or deaf and that He Himself will be with Moses, and will give him the words to speak. In response, Moses again expressed his doubt to God, pleading with Him to deliver His messages through someone else—and God heard his plea and relented, instructing Moses to take Aaron with him; Moses would relate God’s words to Aaron, and Aaron would speak them to the people.
Later on, during the journey out of Egypt, Moses again pleas with God. God was so displeased with the idolatry surrounding the golden calf that He told Moses He could not be with them on their journey for an instant, or else He might destroy them. Moses, in response, asks God what would distinguish himself and the others from the rest of the peoples of the Earth if God was not present with them on their journey. God hears Moses’ plea and relents, agreeing to accompany Moses and the Israelites as Moses asked of Him. Moses then goes a step further and asks to see God’s face, and this request is denied—God says will allow Moses to see His back but not His face, for no man can see His face and live.
Moses clearly doubted that he alone was equipped to do the job that God asked him to do, and later asked God to accompany himself and the others right after God told him He would do no such thing. In both cases, Moses is given God’s plan and questions it—repeatedly! It is a questioning that is insistent, that pleads with God to consider the position, perspective, and reasoning of Moses and indeed thus reconsider His Own position in light of his pleas—and God ultimately grants Moses much of what he pleaded with Him for.
In the case of Job, his pleading with God was much different. Whereas Moses asked God for things with a mind toward successful completion of the task God had given him, Job was lamenting all of the calamities that had come upon him and was pleading with God for an explanation, to hear him out and either explain what he had done or grant him reprieve. Job, faithful and blameless unlike any other man on Earth, professed his integrity and blamelessness and sought from God an answer as to why he had been so afflicted by loss and suffering.
After many rounds back and forth with his friends—who doubted his integrity and reproached his pleas—God answered Job: He made it clear to Job that he is not His equal, that he was not there during Creation nor is he now even remotely capable of all of the things that God does. He makes it clear to Job that it is not his place to know or understand everything, that it his not his place to question God as he did or give Him instruction.
Job acknowledges what God has said to him and repents. God then turns to Job’s friends who rebuked him, and He in turn reproaches them for not speaking rightly of Him as His servant Job did. He instructs them to offer up sacrifices and His servant Job will pray for them, and they will be forgiven. What is more, everything Job had lost was restored to him two-fold by God, and he was given ten more children and lived to see four generations, dying old and full of days.
What a turn of events! God scolds Job for overstepping his bounds and in his questioning of God, but then remarks to Job’s friends in His reproach of them that they did not “speak rightly of Him as His servant Job did.” What can be inferred from this?
It would seem that while God reproaches Job for getting a bit big for his britches, He still acknowledges that there was something honest in how Job spoke. Indeed Job was, up to that point, blameless; he was right when he spoke of his integrity. But God also said that Job spoke of Him rightly. God recognized that there was at least some truth in what Job had spoke of Him, but He mentions this only after making it clear that Job was also presumptuous and overstepped his bounds, and indeed after Job humbles himself and repents.
Both Moses and Job appealed to God not just as their Creator and Heavenly Father to Whom they were in service, but also seemingly as one would a friend. Of course God is not a friend in the same way their other friends are—just as one’s sibling or spouse is in a real sense a friend, though not in the same way as one’s other friends—but Moses and Job appealed to Him as one would a friend nonetheless. While they were both reverent to God, they were also comfortable enough—though it would seem Job may have gotten a bit too comfortable in this regard—with God and with their service of and relationship with Him to plead with Him not as equals, but as men in service to Him who wish to better understand thus and better serve.
It is the comfort of such a complete friendship—and the recognition and love of each other’s virtuous character that grounds complete friendships—that allows good servants like Moses and Job to plea—indeed, to pray—with both frankness as well as humility. Such frankness and humility are, in turn, rooted in the foundation of one’s sincere commitment to one’s service to God, and the knowledge that God recognizes one’s sincere commitment to serving Him as such. It is only because they were sincere in their commitment to serving God and their knowing that He understood this that Moses and Job could go to Him as they did with their questions, their doubts, and their requests, speaking frankly and yet from a place that was nonetheless reverent.
Its own special type of friendship in which we must always remember its character, our place, and our service to God—as well as the humility that rightfully corresponds to these things—a friendship with God allows us to go to Him in comfort and even confidence with respect to our concerns and even our doubts. A complete friendship, for Aristotle, has love between the friends; the sort of friendship Moses and Job both had with God was of the complete sort and indeed, any genuine friendship with God will be of the complete sort. A friendship with God is built on both His love for us and our love for Him. It is from the sincere embrace of our love for God and our service to Him that we receive the comfort and confidence to go to Him both in servitude and friendship, with love, sincerity, frankness, and humility.