Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

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Spiritual Friendship

26. Therefore you should avoid anyone whom you find to be beset by these vices, and you shouldn’t choose such a one for friendship until he is restored to moral health. Let us therefore renounce insults—God is their avenger. When the holy man David was fleeing before his son Absalom, Shimei attacked him with insults; but later, when David lay dying and he gave to his son his last instructions, he deemed Shimei worthy to be killed, according to the authority of the Holy Spirit ( 1 Kings 2:8–9; 2 Sam 16:3–13 ). No less ought we to avoid reproaching others. The hapless Nabal of Carmel deserved to be struck down by the Lord and die, because he reproached David for servitude and for fleeing from Absalom ( 1 Sam 25:10–38 ). But if by chance it happens that we should neglect the law of friendship with respect to some friend, let us shun pride and seek to win back our friend’s favor by a deed done in humility. 27. When King David offered to Hanun, the son of Nahash king of the Ammonites, the same friendship he had offered to his father, the proud and ungrateful Hanun added insult to his contempt for his father’s friend ( 1 Chron 19:1–20:1; 2 Sam 10:1–4; 12:26–31 ). For this reason, both fire and sword consumed his people and his cities. However, we should think it a sacrilege above all others to betray the confidences of friends, for which reason trust is lost and despair is brought home upon the captive soul. So it is that the impious Ahithophel went along with the would-be parricide Absalom; but when he had betrayed to Absalom his father’s strategy, and then saw that the plan he had himself suggested against David’s was not accepted, he hanged himself—a death he richly deserved as a traitor ( 2 Sam 16:15–17:23 ).