Friendship: Careful Candor
By: Ross Jelgerhuis
This is part 4 of 5 in the blog series “The 4 C’s of Biblical Friendship.” Each post reiterates the different sections of Ross’ talks on friendship given at the RPC Men’s Retreat earlier this spring. Thus, if at any point the grammar seems clunky, its because this was originally written to be presented orally. The 5 posts will include first an introduction, and then one post for each of the 4 C’s of Biblical Friendship.
Find part 1 ‘Introduction’ here
Careful Candor
Jim Morrison, lead singer of the hit band The Doors, had this to say about friendship: “Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.” How do his thoughts hit you? Do you agree? Disagree? On the surface, Morrison’s definition sounds pretty good at first doesn’t it? That’s because there is some truth in his statement. We should not have to be a shell of ourself be accepted by our friends, our friends should have a strong enough sense of our being created in Gods image as well as God’s grace to accept us flawed and all. However, according to the biblical design, is that all friendships are for? As we will see from scripture, when that is the only goal of friendship, it can lead down tragic paths. Take Jim Morrison as case in point, he was a man widely known for his self-destructive behavior, he died alone in a bathtub at age 27. Think about where his path would have led him had more people (ie - his friends) courageously and lovingly spoken up about the hedonistic lifestyle he lived. Instead of thinking of friendships just as places to be ourselves, it is more biblical to say friendship is a place to become better than myself. We need to be able to say both “come as you are” and “I love you too much to let you stay as you are.”
Proverbs
How does this principle hold up to the teaching of Proverbs? Here is a good sampling:
Proverbs 27:5-6 Better is open rebuke than hidden love. 6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
Proverbs 27:17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man (friend) sharpens another.
Proverbs 28:23 Whoever rebukes a man will afterward find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue.
Proverbs 29:5 A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.
And then from the New Testament, in Colossians 3 it states we are all called to teach and admonish one another, including our friends.
Lets look at a few of these passages more closely. Proverbs 27:5-6 “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. 6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” Notice the deliberate metaphorical parallelism of v5-6. The second clause of v5 speaks to ‘hidden love,’ the person who thinks they are loving by hiding the truth. They are essentially saying ‘I love that person too much to confront them.’ Yet, did you see what ‘hidden love’ is paralleled with in verse 6? An enemy! In other words, its saying that it can be just as bad as Judas to hold back confrontation, like betraying with a kiss. Why would that be? Its because if you wont tell the person the truth you are really saying “I love myself too much to go through that.”
How else does Proverbs elaborate on this? Look at 29:5, “ A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet.” Another deliberate and dramatic picture. Instead of confronting a friend with a hard truth so they get an accurate view of themselves, it says that through flattery you are setting a trap for them.
Not only does Proverbs speak to the necessity of candor, but it also highlights the beauty of candor - it can bring friends closer. Proverbs 27:9 say, “Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.” The phrase “ernest counsel” here is a bit ambiguous, but scholars say it often can mean saying hard things to someone. Such counsel is so rare and valuable that the writer compares it to perfume and incense, some of the most precious in the world. This is something I have had the blessing of experiencing in some of my own friendships. When I’ve had the heart to address something in our relationship that needed to confronted, I have seen time and again how it brings our friendship to a much deeper level of trust and commitment. But I am by no means perfect at this and have much room for growth, many times I have confronted in unhelpful ways or failed to confront at all which has driven wedges in my relationships at times.
Challenges of Candor
This leads to the obvious question of ‘why’? If candor is so necessary and so beautiful, why are so many of us afraid of it or bad at it? The biggest hindrances to healthy confrontation in a relationship I would say are pride and lack of wisdom. Pride affects candor in so many ways. It’s the reason we avoid candor, fearing that confrontation will make the person dislike us (ie Proverbs 29:5 above). Pride also has the opposite effect, it can cause us to be demeaning in our candor, speaking truth to someone in a way that makes them feel less than. Finally, pride is to blame for why our friends can struggle to feel safe confronting us – they know how much it will hurt our own pride. There is also the wisdom problem. Most of us simply haven’t been taught or modeled what healthy, careful, candor can look like. Whether an issue you have with your friend is worth addressing or not, if so how to word it in a way that they know you are for them, or how to express yourself clearly, etc etc. To get good at confrontation takes experience and direction. So what does it look like, then, to grow in our ability to give helpful candor?
Pursuit of Candor
I would say the first step towards building healthy candor in friendships is to get good at the “closeness” and “constancy” skills that we’ve previously discussed. Why do I start here? We need to build a strong enough bridge of trust in our friendships to be able to handle the heavy load of truth that sometimes needs to go between us. How do we build trust? The main way is through pursuing closeness and constancy. Through these qualities, our friends grow in their belief that we are deeply and inherently for them. To be able to give candor in a way that they will hear us, they need to know that we have their best in mind. Another way to build trust in a friendship is to become more of an encourager, something we’re maybe not as good at as we think. Prov 16:24 puts this beautifully, “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” One place to start with encouragement is thinking of what your friend means to you. What would life be like without them? Have you shared that with them lately? If not, why not? You can also encourage them by talking about their wins, their potential, or their gifts. Let them know how you see God at work in their life. One person put it well when they said “encouragement is what the gospel feels like coming from one believer to another.” Interestingly, research is starting to reveal the necessity of encouragement as well. Psychologists are finding that the healthiest relationships have a minimum of a 5 to 1 ratio of encouragements to criticisms in the dialogue between friends/spouses. Not that you should by any means start keeping tally, but a helpful observation nonetheless.
Furthermore, if pride is such a hindrance to healthy candor, that would imply that humility is a dynamic asset for candor. Proverbs 11:2 says “when pride comes, then comes disgrace.” Disgrace is a relational word, it is speaking of the relational results of moving towards someone in a way that puts your interests and reputation before them – including the occasion of confrontation. Proverbs 29:23 gives the flipside, “One’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor.” Honor, again, is inherently relational – this verse is speaking to the benefits of humility in all relational endeavors, including candor. This summer when the representative from Peace Pursuit spoke at our Adult class, he reminded us that over 90% of conflict is resolved before there is ever discussion, in what he called “Stage 1.” One of the major undertakings in stage 1 of pursuing peace is meeting with God personally and analyzing your own heart (Matt 7:1-6) before addressing the issue with the other person, this of course is a practical way to build humility (for more on what this “Stage 1” can look like, click the link just above).
However, there is also a need for wisdom. The 4th “C” of friendship is called “Careful Candor” and here is finally where the ‘careful’ part comes in. Proverbs offers a variety of input on how to embody care in the way we confront. One aspect is the importance of knowing and understanding what kind of language will work best for your friend (again highlighting the importance of closeness and constancy). Prov 26:18-19 reads, “18 Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death19 is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I am only joking!”” This verse is talking about someone who doesn’t know their friend well enough to know what kind of joke hurts them. Furthermore, care is shown when we can empathize with our friend in a moment of candor. Proverbs 25:20 speaks to this, “Whoever sings songs (of joy) to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda.” This verse reminds us and challenges us, if we act happy when our friend is sad, we are not really their friend – and our candor will fall flat. Proverbs 27:14 highlights a final point, “Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.” This verse speaks to the importance of timing. While this verse teaches on the surface that I need awareness of the kind of morning person you are to know how to move towards you in the morning, the bigger principle is timing. Knowing not just what to say, or how to say it, but when as well!
All these verses point to the importance of wisdom in candor. If I were to sum this up, I would offer a few pointers that build on this wisdom from Proverbs. First, pray about the confrontation, ask the giver of wisdom (James 1:5) to give you humility towards your friend and discernment on whether to confront, and if so how/when – and consult godly and wise trusted friends and mentors as well (again, the Peace Pursuit link above is helpful here too).
What exactly are most confrontations in friendship about? In essence, its about confronting sin. Either, ways the person has sinned against you, or ways they are sinning in their life. So it looks a little different depending on the specific situation you are using candor for. If its about a way they’ve sinned against you. Stay humble, admit ways you sinned against them in the same way (Matt 7:1-6), remind them of how much they mean to you and how much the relationship means to you, and then share how whatever they did to you has been hard because you are for the relationship and want to see it flourish. It is also helpful for them to hear how their action impacted you (ie – when you did _______ it made me feel ______), not to ask for a pity, but for them to understand why it has reached the level of needing to be said, because it is going to effect the way you relate to them going forward. When confronting them about sin in their life (ie sexual sin, gossip, love of money, etc) Ed Welch has some helpful things to say that Phil Rendall and I spoke at length about here – I commend them to you. One final suggestion is to use questions liberally. Whenever you can, use questions rather than statements or soapboxes towards the person. Questions help our friend not feel as talked down to, and also can save us from bad assumptions – letting them explain themselves before we jump to conclusions.
One author gave a helpful summarizing image for all this careful candor talk, he said faithful wounds are done with a scalpel not sword. I love that comparison. A scalpel portrays 2 important ideas, care and healing. Like with a doctors scalpel, the wound is done carefully and precisely, and it is also done towards the end of healing.
Friends, this is a major reason why it is so hard to be a friend – it takes care and candor, grace and truth. Our tendency is to either be careful and not say anything, or we can be candid and run them over. Those extremes are easy. But to be a friend of careful candor is much harder.
Inviting and Receiving Candor
We’re not done yet though. I think given the fact that this is difficult, one way you can do your part in a friendship is to invite candor. To give your friend permission, before they even have a chance, to speak truth into your life. This also requires some nuance however. Simply saying to your friend, “I want you to hold me accountable, so feel free to ask any question,” is well intended but actually not very helpful. Why is that? Its because they may not know the exact issues that we deal with. A better way to accomplish this would be to give specific areas of your life that you’re struggling with (ie – your relationship with your family, your relationship with the Lord) and invite them to ask you regularly about that. If you’re not sure what areas you would want feedback on, Vaughn Roberts suggests asking yourself: if you were the devil, where would you direct your attack against yourself?
Now, this is only half of the battle. After inviting candor, we still need to be able to receive it. Its funny, we value correction in virtually every part of life. Parents spend $1000’s on parenting resources, athletes listen to their trainers/coaches, business people listen to executive coaches, patients listen to doctors. So why is it often hard for us to listen to our friends who know us and care for us when they confront us? Vaughn Roberts offers 3 helpful suggestions for us to receive candor well. First, expect it. We are sinful humans, we should be surprised, maybe even discouraged if we receive little to no criticism about our lives. Second, examine it – resist the temptation to immediately defend ourselves and examine what is really true about what they said. Even if its mostly untrue there is almost always at least a kernel of truth. Finally, endure it – even when its unfair, we must resist the temptation to be resentful. Jack Miller, when he was confronted, would often point out that the person didn’t even know a fraction of it, that he is far worse than his confronter could ever imagine. Yet he also would remind himself that he was deeply loved by his savior. What a great way to help receive candor with humility.
So, easy enough right? Being a close, constant, and carefully candor(ous?) friend, pretty simple eh? If you are anything like me, you might have more longing and discouragement right now than hope as you consider what it takes to be a healthy friend. Where are we going to get the power to be the friends we need to be so we can have the friends we need to have? Stay tuned for the last “C” of friendship on the next post!