Good news, bad news, and then some more good news:

The good news is that the Bible extols the preciousness of deep, godly friendships, and their importance in the life of the man and woman of God. “There is a friend that loveth closer than a brother.”

And there is a type of friendship and love which runs so deep as to knit the hearts of friends together. Here is one example of a soul-stirring friendship:

”...The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house anymore. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.” I Samuel 18:1-3

How do such friendships emerge?

I am not fully sure. I am not sure because I believe that a soul-stirring friendship is a gift of God. There is a beautiful mystery attached to the origins of a friendship of which it can be said — “He loved him as his own soul.” Such friendships can not be forced or fabricated, but our lives are always the better for them. It seems to me that this type of a friendship requires a certain oneness of mind, a nobility of character, purpose, and vision, as well as shared experiences born out of real opportunities, adventures, and challenges. It also requires both friends to understand the “heart and soul” of the other, and to rejoice in what they see, not because they are blinded to each other’s imperfections, but because they see all things through the eyes of love. It seems to me that this was Jonathan’s response to David, and David’s to Jonathan.

These friendships are uncommon. You may know only a handful of people in your entire life who enjoy a truly soul-stirring friendship. Certainly, our modern world is not friendly to the cultivation of such friendships. Soul-stirring friendships require a nobility of purpose and mission to exist between the friends. Sometimes they are hatched in the incubator of opportunity or crisis, as with David and Jonathan. Other times they ripen over time.

However such friendships emerge, they are a special gift to be cultivated, cherished, and preserved. David and Jonathan were given the gift of this type of friendship as a testimony to men of all ages of the potential of soul-stirring friendships.

The bad news is that most people never experience these type of deep, meaningful, love-rich friendships. The other bad news is that the world does not understand this type of love. Some don’t want to understand it. Some actually hate it. Their mission is to twist that which is good and holy to advance a perverse agenda. Their response to David and Jonathan (and even the Lord Jesus and John the Baptist) is to suggest homosexuality. What a sick reflection on the psychologized and intellectually perverse spirit of the age! (Now we see similarly perverse efforts aimed at twisting the honorable response of fathers to love and win the hearts of their daughters and sons, as did the writer of Proverbs who declared “give me your heart my son.”)

Finally, more good news: It does not matter what the Bible-twisters and apologists for the sodomite community say. What matters is this: What does the Bible say about soul-stirring, manly friendships? And this question is the subject of my recording, Manly Friendships.