Richard Beck argues that cultivating friendships, especially across class boundaries, might be “the most important thing the church can to do help lift people out of poverty”:
[W]hat I find lacking in many churches is friendship, a face-to-face, first-name-basis relationality between rich and poor. This is what is missing in many churches. Programs abound but there is too little friendship.
And in many ways this call for friendship is both harder and easier than starting up a poverty program at the church. It’s easier in that you don’t have to save the world. You don’t have to eradicate world poverty. You just have to be a friend.
To be sure, you’ll be faced with issues regarding material want. But the needs of your friends will be expressed within a relational context. And because of the friendship you’ll be able to discern the legitimacy of the requests and, given your knowledge of your friend, how best to respond. And most importantly, the situation will be reciprocal. Your friend will be giving to you as well. Perhaps not materially, but there will be life-giving exchanges flowing back and forth.
So in many ways, being a friend is much easier than trying to save the world. And yet, it’s also much harder. Your life will get messier. You’ll have to struggle with how best to help your friend and those decisions can be heart-breaking at times. Volunteering a few hours at the food pantry or sponsoring a child in Africa is a whole lot easier and cleaner than making friends and opening up your life to the needs, demands and sin of others. To say nothing of how your needs, wants and sins will affect them.
Gracy Olmstead explains one facet of Beck’s argument – the way “weak ties” help us meet the various needs of those struggling:
Beck emphasizes the fact that “weak ties” in friendship are very needed. Why? Because our closest friends are usually insular groups, “bundles of sameness.” Weak ties—distant relatives, acquaintances from our neighborhood or past—are usually more diverse in their background, tastes, and employment. This wider “social web” gives us philanthropic ammunition: when you see someone in need, you don’t just bring your own talents and gifts to the table. You bring everyone you’ve ever met—”Bluntly, you might not be able to help this person in a particular situation but you might know someone else who can. In sacramental friendships you are bringing the gift of your weak ties.” …
Beck’s friendships of “weak ties” provide a hidden and important ingredient in the inequality discussion. Friendship is a diverse and beautiful thing—it’s a proactive, personal, and private solvent to a very large and public problem. It deals with the dilemma on a case-by-case basis. It reaches out via the various spheres and circles open to the people in question. Granted, it’s not a solid, comprehensive, quantifiable solution to inequality. But it is an important, and oft-ignored, piece in the giant solution puzzle.
Recent Dish on friendship here.
The Dish 