Flourishing Life

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” – Thomas Aquinas

Facebook “friends” aren’t necessarily friends, at least according to a court ruling in Florida. An appeals court in Miami ruled that Judge Beatrice Butchko need not recuse herself from a case because an attorney in the case is her Facebook “friend.” They’re acquaintances and they do see each other through their professional roles. Outside those normal interactions, they’re not in any meaningful way friends. The court determined that due to complex data mining and algorithms of Facebook, we accept friend requests from many people we hardly know. Another case making its way through the Florida courts may force this question to be decided by the Florida Supreme Court (David Ovalle, Miami Herald, Aug. 23, 2017).

We would do well to formulate another label for our social media “friends.” You see, we need friends. We need real friends. We need real people in our lives with whom we share our lives. We need human interaction and unconditional love. We need support and we need to offer others help when they’re struggling. The Bible talks about the value of a friend who “sticks closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24). This is what we find in Christian Community, people who will love us and encourage us to become all that God created us to be. That’s a real friend.