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I am a big fan of the Friends situational comedy series. Possibly the six randomest funniest characters outside of Japanese animation. And in my opinion, it teaches a lot of important lessons, like how a guy with a name like ‘Chandler Muriel Bing’ can still be a success in life if he has the right friends around him. Or how an Italian-American actor with a low amount of commonsense can still be fulfilled in life if he has the right friends around him. Or how a parentally-dependent socialite who has a social stigma as a runaway bride can make it on her own with no work experience or training can create for herself a great career if she has the right friends around her. So really, the most important lesson to be learnt here is that friends account for a great deal of how our life experience turns out.
But on the other hand, through very careful scrutiny of the series, there are a lot of negative aspects that I don’t approve of at all. Littered among the series are examples of schadenfreude, the German term for being happy in someone else’s misfortune, critically nitpicking anybody’s small flaws and imperfections, gossiping and lying to and about one another, and just general counts of mean, angry and embarrassment-causing behaviour. Someone accidentally bleaches their teeth to a blinding whiteness? Make as many jokes about it in thirty seconds as possible. Someone reveals one of your humiliating secrets to your other friends? Retaliate and do the same thing to them.
While it is at heart a television series and the fictional quality of it is there, there’s no denying that society’s definition of friendship includes a little bit of negativity, a little bit of joking around and making fun of each other is apparently the norm. I think that as Christians, we make a big effort to behave in a ‘Christian’ manner to non-believers. We believe that this is part of the evangelistic mission in passively expressing the faith through our observable behaviour.
Something I think is worth considering is whether we use as much attention in acting ‘Christian’ around our actual Christian friends. I can’t comment on the sum of all Christian friendships and how similar or different they are to secular friendships, but I can say that we don’t always go out of our way to avoid the negative aspects and interactions of society’s definition friendship seeping into our Christian friendship networks. The casual insults, undermining confidence, and occasionally groundless arguments for the sake of venting are still in our circles, and whether we realise it or not, they do not constitute a ‘Christian’ friendship, though the relationship between Christian friends should be the birthplace for such a concept, not the relationship between a Christian and non-Christian. Sadly, it’s not always a topic of discussion, and in my opinion, we should be equally conscientious in maintaining positive interactions with our Christian friends as with our non-Christian friends.
I don’t think it’s necessary to make these Christian networks all positive and heartwarming every single second, but we should make ourselves aware that society has a massive influence on our interpersonal interactions, and that what we see on TV and in movies, or read in novels and manga (let’s face it, we are an Asian youth) changes the way we think about how friends can and should interact. It’s more than just making the effort to be a positive influence to our non-Christian friends out there, we also need to make the effort to hold back on those negative influences to our Christian friends, whether we’re at youth, church or just out having fun.
Jacky
P.S. Sorry about the cheesy title for this post, I couldn't really think of a good witty title that wasn't misleading.
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very insightful.