As Aristotle tells it, there are three kinds of friendship: the pleasing friendship, the useful friendship, and the friendship pointed toward the good (see also Victor Lee Austin’s Friendship).  So friends that are fun, friends that help us get something that we want, and friends who key us towards a more virtuous life (see also Lewis’s The Four Loves).  In Made for People, Justin Whittle Earley goes deeper with the idea of the virtuous friend.

The crux of Earley’s “argument” in Made for People is what he calls covenant friendship.  Rooted in vulnerability and honesty, covenant friendship is the kind of friendship that makes “an audacious claim on the future.”  From a faith perspective, the future is key: “. . . despite the mess of our present circumstances, Jesus took at action to secure a future.  That future is not here yet, but the promise of it changes everything about the present!”

Earley does a quality job pointing out the differences between acquaintances/companions, convenient friendship, and marriage, particularly in relation to vulnerability, commitment, exclusivity, and sacrifice.  And while covenant friendship isn’t for every friendship, it is something worth always moving towards and working at.  Earley states:

Promising in friendship is a terribly dangerous business . . . Life is an ocean of uncertainty.  Friendship over the long haul is the same . . . So we might fairly wonder, with all this danger, why do it?

Because covenant takes messy things and makes them beautiful.  To promise friendship is to fight for an island of trust and stability in this ocean of uncertainty called life.

The rest of the book, then goes into the arts and habits that cultivate such a friendship.