Friends: Choose Carefully

The Bible book of Proverbs has some organizational concerns, but subject matter is not one of them. Proverbs on subjects such as laziness, temper, raising children, the tongue and so forth are randomly scattered across Proverbs’ 31 chapters.

Knowing this scattershot approach in Proverbs, I was surprised to make a discovery recently during a search through Proverbs on the subject of friends. I was interested in anything Proverbs had to say about friends-being loyal as a friend, handling disagreements between friends, the art of being friendly, the sweetness of friendship. Whatever. I identified twenty-six passages in Proverbs that dealt specifically with friendship. These twenty-six were scattered across Proverbs’ thirty-one chapters.

What, then, are the odds that the first three sayings addressing friendship in Proverbs would not only all give the same advice concerning friends, but that the advice would be the first principle one should consider in the real life subject of friendship? I would say they were high. But there it was: Out of twenty-six passages on friendship in Proverbs, the first three that one runs across when beginning at the front of the book and moving toward the end are on the subject of choosing friends wisely.

People are often so needy that they will accept as a friend whomever will accept them. Others are so greedy that they will develop as friends only those who can benefit them the most in some worldly desire. Friendships are based on popularity and status, rather than mutual good will.

We will be like the people we surround ourselves with. So, choose your friends wisely and well. What does Proverbs have to say about that? The first three proverbs in Proverbs on friendship are:

12:26 “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.”

13:20 “One who walks with the wise will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.”

14:7 “Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips.”

  —Cecil May III