Many see God as a friend

• God is friendship. Aelred of Rievaulx
• God’s my best friend. Candace Cameron Bure
• If you make God your best friend, you can’t go wrong. Vikrant Parsai
• You’re my Friend and you are my Brother, even though you are a King… Martin Nystrom
• My mother was a personal friend of God’s. They had ongoing conversations. Della Reese
• Love seeks a guerdon; friendship is as God,Who gives and asks no payment. Richard Hovey
• I believe in God, because he is the only thing that kept me going. He’s my best friend. Jessica Hahn
• We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods. Henry David Thoreau
• However, many years life might last, no one could ever wish for a better friend than God. Teresa of Avila
• I took solace in my relationship with God who, along with my dog, was my best friend growing up. Lisa Bonet
• Every friendship with God and every love between Him and a soul is the only one of its kind. Janet Erskine Stuart
• The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher is time; the best book is the world; the best friend is God. The Talmud
• It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship. Teresa of Avila
• The key to friendship with God, he said, is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do. Rick Warren
• We have a friend and protector, from whom, if we do not ourselves depart from Him, nor power nor spirit can separate us. Reginald Heber
• The idea of the divine-human friendship originated with God. Had not God said first ‘Ye are my friends?’ (John 15:14) Aiden Wilson Tozer
• I know what I say; I understand my mission and business. God Almighty is my shield; and what can man do if God is my friend? Joseph Smith, Jr.
• My relationship with God has gotten better and stronger for the simple fact that I understand it a lot better. You know, to me, God’s my best friend. Jake Roberts
• It is better to be alone with God. His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die. Joan of Arc
• My definition of God: God is not only the alpha, the omega, he is friend, he’s a confidant, he is a buddy. He is a lover of my soul. That’s my definition of God. DeVon Franklin
• The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened. Josef Pieper
• It is only when we understand the transcendence of God that we see how amazing his immanence is, and what a huge privilege it is to be able to enjoy God’s intimate friendship. Nicky Gumbel
• I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:15
• It’s the most exciting thing to watch God work when I’ve asked him about something, to listen to him and watch him work. It’s like this friendship, and it just grows and grows and grows and grows. Charles R. Swindoll
• Obey God in the things he shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. God will never reveal more truth about himself until you have obeyed what you know already…this chapter brings out the delight of real friendship with God. Oswald Chambers
• There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth. Rajneesh
• In this vast universe There is but one supreme truth- That God is our friend! By that truth meaning is given To the remote stars, the numberless centuries, The long and heroic struggle of mankind . . . O my Soul, dare to trust this truth! Dare to rest in God’s kindly arms, Dare to look confidently into His face, Then launch thyself into life unafraid! Knowing thou art within my Father’s house, That thou art surrounded by His love, Thou wilt become master of fear, Lord of Life, conqueror even of death! Joshua L. Liebman
• Ah, I have kept Him waiting when I ought not, but He has waited even then. Always waiting – so patient with my foolishness, my weakness, my fear. Our fellowship is with God, and fellowship is friendship, and friendship means that partnership which, on His part, is the accommodating of His strength to my weakness. Campbell Morgan

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To them, God offers friendship over lordship

• God is friendship, not Lordship. Neale Donald Walsch
• God offers friendship, not lordship—and in return asks for friendship, not worship. Neale Donald Walsch
• We have been searching for the God of our heart for a very long time. The God I met in my conversation was not a God to fear, but a God of unconditional and unlimited love. A God of deep compassion and understanding. A God of wonderful humor who takes pure delight in the joyful celebration of life. This is a God offering friendship, not lordship—and asking, in return, for friendship, not wor­ship. Neale Donald Walsch

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God becomes our close companion

• Let me remember I am one with God. Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for God is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. Esther Hicks
• I believe that God is the Great Companion, that we are not left orphans, that we may have comradeship with him. Lyman Abbott
• Shepherd God, companion me on all the journeys of my life. Dance through the darkness with me. Macrina Wiederkehr
• The one thing you can give God that will truly impress God is freindship. God is an eternal companion who is with you all the time – never judges, just is. Frederick Lenz
• Whoever has God truly as a companion, is with him in all places, both on the streets, and among people, as well as in church, or in the desert or in a monastic cell…Why is this so? It is so because such a person possesses God alone, keeping their gaze fixed upon God, and thus all things become God for him or her. Such people be a God in all their deeds and in all the places they go, and it is God alone who is the author of all their deeds. Meister Eckhart
• God is present as companion and guide in the journey of faith. God’s will does not control but empowers. Flora A. Keshgegian

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True worship is friendship with God

• The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible. William Barclay
• True worship is when a person, through their person, attains intimacy and friendship with God. William Temple

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According to this metaphor, God seeks an intimate relationship with each of us…

• Some theologians spoke about God as relational and as wanting and making real connection. What was most true of God had to do with relationship and connection, energy and change. God was affected by what was outside of or other than God. God did want to touch and to be touched. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God created man to share friendship with Him and share in His happiness. Greg Koukl
• The Bible constantly warns against a merely mercenary relationship with God – a friendship of convenience or self-interest. We should not love God simply because doing so will produce many consolations in our life. We must enter a true relationship, were we fall in love not with His benefits, but with Him. Robert Barron
• Though it’s hard to be completely certain about things like this, I have a suspicion that only someone with deep freedom (one who makes decisions for reasons that are his own) and who’s also a moral being (can experience goodness) can have a meaningful friendship with God. If friendship with God and sharing in His happiness are good things (and it seems they are), then making a creature who could enjoy these things is also a good thing, even if it comes with a liability. There’s a risk. Greg Koukl
• To have a friendship with God, all I really have to do is have a friendship with my Self. Neale Donald Walsch
• We do three things, three things, friendship with God, friendship with one another, and open friendship for the sake of the world. Here’s what we mean when we say friendship with God: We believe that all of this relationship with God starts with God, with his choice of us. We believe that salvation happens as soon as we say yes to God. God I receive you, I receive your choice and we respond with our entire lives. Welcome to salvation at that point. John Middendorf
• What surprises me most about God is that the creator of the universe should want a relationship with me. Rick Warren
• Why don’t you conceive of God as an ally who is coming, who has been approaching since time began, the one who will someday arrive, the fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Why not project his birth into the future, and live your life as an excruciating and lyrical moment in the history of a prodigious pregnancy? Rainer Maria Rilke
• Images of relationship that fit this idea of God are drawn from peer rather than parental or hierarchical relationships. For example, God is imaged as friend or lover or companion. Early Christian spirituality and the language of the mystics contained numerous such references. The first Christians were sometimes referred to as friends of God, a term the Quakers took centuries later to refer to themselves as the Society of Friends. Mystical writings are shot through with language about being in love with God and with expressions of erotic, passionate love. How else might the mystics have approximated the intimacy they experienced, the union for which they yearned? Others have turned to the language of companionship to express the constancy and sustaining presence of God. All these images are trying to imagine God with us. The power of this God is shared power. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The will of the relational God is very clear. We know what God wants, what God yearns for: mutual relationship, goodness, justice, love, and fullness of life. Flora A. Keshgegian

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…a relationship based on connection, partnership and mutuality

• Such relationship is characterized by connection, partnership, mutuality, and dynamic energy. It is not simply that God is in relationship with us, whether as individuals, communities or even the world, but that the very nature of the divine is relationality. God is relational. All in the universe is in relationship, including God. The reality of God is as presence and power in and through relationship. We encounter the divine and learn about God in relation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God in relation, the metaphor for God we are exploring in this chapter, does better. It does not privilege the human person and human will so much as it emphasizes relationship. It does not focus on autonomous agency so much as interdependence and relationality. What is key to understanding God is being in relation. What is most true of God and God’s will is relationship. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The energy and power of the relational God is manifest and strengthened through connection. This God is contingent. She is so involved with creation that we can say that God needs us, needs creation. What God does depends on creation. God does not act in isolation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• As indicated above relationships that reflect God’s power are ones of mutuality. Mutuality means the relationship goes both ways. We not only seek God, but God seeks us. We need God, but God needs creation as well. The nature of the need-God’s and ours-does not have to be and is not the same. Which is to say, we are not God, not the same as God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Other images of the relational God are as partner and cocreator. The emphasis is of God with us, God’s power to act and create is shared with us and expressed through us and all of creation. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The relationships that reveal this God are characterized not only by mutuality but also by love and justice. The relational God seeks right relationship. We are in relationship with God, we are participating in God, we are “godding” when we are in right relationship. Right relationships are ones of love and justice. Abusive relationships that practice greed or bigotry or hatred, unequal power arrangements and oppressive systems, and the exploitation of others, including creation, are not of God. God is not to be found in such relations. Indeed, God opposes them and passes judgment on them. The power of God is directed toward equality rather than domination, transformation in the face of exploitation andoppression, and sharing and mutuality instead of greed and prejudice. The goal of right relation is wholeness and abundance of life. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The relational God does not intervene from on high to save us or to condemn us. Nor does God act like the loving parent of little children to protect us or rescue us. As adults, we are responsible for, even as we are participants in, God’s body. Flora A. Keshgegian
• In this world in which we are more and more aware of our interdependence, the metaphor of God as relational seems to make better sense than traditional notions of hierarchy and domination. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Relationship, some argue, is the very essence of God

• Some theologians go further, or in a somewhat different direction, to suggest that relationality is the very nature of God. God in and of herself is relation or, as Carter Heyward puts it, “the power in relation.” In other words, God is not just present in relation but is relation itself or the ground and source of our relating. So as Heyward suggests, when any of us are in relationship with others we are “godding.” Our relationships reveal and express the divine. This approach privileges relationships and relationality as the essence of God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The relationships in which we are truly “godding” are characterized by mutuality and reciprocity. The capacity for mutuality requires freedom: the freedom to fully become and be ourselves and to give ourselves to one another without compulsion or constraint. It also connotes equality. This means that in mutual relationships, there are no gradations of value or status or privilege or dependence that might order relationships in hierarchies. No one or no thing is deemed as better in any defining way. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The metaphor of God as relational pushes God even further into contact, involvement, and contingency. Flora A. Keshgegian
• The logic of the relational God moves in a different direction. It goes even further than ideas about God’s love we have already encountered thus far: that God empties himself to be one with us or that God is moved by what happens in creation. Those ideas bring God more into relationship, but God remains the other who chooses to love to the point of changing and even suffering for creation. The relational God, however, is by nature in relation. The divine is manifest in creation and in the connections that bind us. Without creation, without relation, God is not God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• Not only is God defined as relational, but the divine energy is what makes relationships possible. Flora A. Keshgegian
• What we see in this metaphor is a desire to make God human, fully human, by expanding the personal images of God to embrace both genders and a variety of roles, especially ones that emphasize mutuality and partnership. As noted, advocates for the relational God, also put more emphasis on God’s presence in, with, and through creation. Some see God as the power in relationship more than the person in relationship. In these ways this metaphor for God seems to be straining the limits of personal images of God but not breaking free of them. Flora A. Keshgegian

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God, as friend, helps and supports us we ask for it…

• One of the most powerful concepts, one which is a sure cure for lack of confidence, is the thought that God is with you and helping you. This is one of the simplest teachings in religion, namely, that Almighty God will be your companion, will stand by you, help you, and see you through. No other idea is so powerful in developing self-confidence as this simple belief when practiced. To practice it simply affirm God is with me; God is helping me; God is guiding me. Spend several minutes each day visualizing his presence. Then practice believing that affirmation. Norman Vincent Peale

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…while also giving us opportunity and power to help ourselves

• The relational God does not intervene from on high to save us or to condemn us. Nor does God act like the loving parent of little children to protect us or rescue us. As adults, we are responsible for, even as we are participants in, God’s body. Flora A. Keshgegian
• We are expected to be adults in this world and relate to this God as adults. This, too, is a strength. Even though we human beings are not fully in charge of what happens in the world, we are responsible for our lives. When we behave as children, with the expectation that we will be taken care of or bailed out of whatever mess we find ourselves in, we leave it to others, often our children, to clean up after us. This is not fair.The relational God reminds us of our responsibilities for and to life. This God’s promise is not to take care of us, but to be there with and for us. Such companionship is an adult offer, in a relationship of mutuality. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Prayer is talking to God like a friend

• For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. Teresa of Avila
• To be friends with God means to pray with simplicity, like children talking to their parents. Pope Francis
• God wants us to talk to him as to a friend or father – authentically, reverently, personally, earnestly. Bill Hybels
• Mental prayer is nothing else but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him. Teresa of Avila
• Pray for guidance and protection from the Lord. He will sustain you. He will become a trusted friend, and you will discover that your example will attract many friends who will take courage from your strength of character. Craig Zwick
• Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day. Joyce Meyer
• Sincere friendship towards God, in all who believe him to be properly an intelligent, willing being, does most apparently, directly, and strongly incline to prayer; and it no less disposes the heart strongly to desire to have our infinitely glorious. Jonathan Edwards
• We do not pray for answers but for connection. We do not ask God to intervene, but we call on God’s presence. We evoke God’s companionship. We desire to have our intentions and God’s be in harmony and work in concert. Flora A. Keshgegian

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Friendship is God’s greatest gift

• Friends are the siblings God never gave us. Mencius
• Friends are God’s apology for relations. Hugh Kingsmill
• I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God. Thomas Browne
• Friends are what God gives you to make up for your family. Bruce White
• The friendship of a great man is a favor of the gods. Napoleon Bonaparte
• Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families. Tennessee Williams
• May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies. Voltaire
• My friends have come to me unsought. The great God gave them to me. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The capacity for friendship is God’s way of apologizing for our families. Jay McInerney
• Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. Benjamin Disraeli
• Because unity and friendship is so precious that even God wants to be part of it. Noah Weinberg
• Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others. S. Lewis
• Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. Thomas Hughes
• I have learned that to have a good friend is the purest of all God’s gifts, for it is a love that has no exchange of payment. Frances Farmer
• Friendship is an opportunity to act on God’s behalf in the lives of the people that we’re close to, reminding each other who God is. Shauna Niequist
• Any religious person who says he does not really need human friends because God is his Friend is calling God a liar because He’s the One Who says we also need human friends. Mark Driscoll
• Friendship is the holiest of gifts. God can bestow nothing more sacred upon us! It enhances every joy, mitigates every pain. Everyone can have a friend, Who himself knows how to be a friend. Christoph August Tiedge
• Friendship is a precious gift that can’t be bought or sold. It’s value is greater than mountains made of gold. If you shall ask God for a gift be thankful if he sends not diamonds pearls or riches but the love and trust of friends. It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. Marlene Dietrich
• I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath of His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand, drawing me, leading me, grasping me; because I possess an inner consciousness of a particular providence and of a universal mind that marks out for me the course of my own destiny. Miguel de Unamuno

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What are possible criticisms of this metaphor?

• Those who criticize this metaphor for God do so from different angles and perspectives. Some would suggest that this God is too much like us, that there is not enough distinction between what God is like and who we are. In more theological language they would argue that God is not transcendent enough or that God’s transcendence is diminished by bringing God too close. Flora A. Keshgegian
• It would seem then that such familiarity would also compromise the mystery of God. God’s mystery has most often been a function of God’s transcendence and otherness. We do not feel awe and wonder in relation to what we experience as familiar. The kind of feelings associated with companionship and friendship seem the opposite of those we attach to mystery, even though there is an awe and wonder to be known in and through intimacy. Nonetheless, there is a marked contrast between a church in the round and the vastness and soaring heights of a Gothic cathedral. It is the majestic dimension of God that is found lacking in this metaphor. Flora A. Keshgegian
• God’s will is also lacking in a kind of strength. If God is not directly in charge, if God’s will is not ultimately manifest, then there would seem to be little to comfort us, especially when we are experiencing violation or injustice. Is the relational God’s presence as companion enough in such times of extreme need? Even the most able and responsible adults yearn at times to be taken care of, to find solace in strength beyond their own. Flora A. Keshgegian