Unity In Friendships

There is a sense in which we wanted to share experiences with friends. It isn't so much that we want conformity, but unity. Conformity may be something like watching a TV show while you are at your house and he is at his, and then you text about it. You two are conforming to the same habits and same tasks. However, when there is unity, you are sharing a screen, you are sitting next to each other, and perhaps even sharing a meal. Unity is a perfected form of conformity. How strange would it be if I invited you over to watch a program and I told you to watch in the living room while I watched in my bedroom? You would think there was a serious disconnect there, and you would question why I invited you over in the first place. 

So it is with friends in general. Friends do not desire just conformity, but unity. It makes me wonder about the quality of my friendships, or I guess the quality of friend that I am to them. While I do have this general desire to do things with friends, I don't usually take initiative. Our conversations usually happen over text or internet, and rarely face to face, and we rarely set anything to be united in that sense. 

This past Wednesday, I was really glad to see my good friend David at a lecture. I miss my buddy Alfredo. I desire greatly to be reunited with Ariana.  I want to build more friendships and I suppose keeping in mind this unity-conformity distinction is a helpful principle towards that end. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo

Image
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...
Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Birth Control?

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.
Read more

Is Canon 28 Binding?

In my previous post , I discussed Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (you'll find the full text of the canon there). But I should have put an asterisk on the conversation because Canon 28 isn't properly part of the council. You'll remember from an earlier post , that what makes a council ecumenical is ratification from the Roman Pontiff. Canons are part of councils. And naturally, canons also have to be ratified. However, Canon 28 was not ratified by Pope Leo (Roman Pontiff at the time). So Canon 28 isn't part of the council and thus isn't binding.  If you are Orthodox, this may sound too convenient. I've already suggested why Roman Ratification is the correct theory in the previous link. However, I want to add two things. First, even Saints in the East agree with the Roman position, and second, a case can be made for Canon 28 not being problematic for Catholicism.  First, there are the sayings of Pope St. Gelasius (about 490 AD), and Pope St. Gelasius is...
Read more