Humility and equality are central to genuine friendship. Recently, I heard a good friend of mine refer to me as his "little brother." Though the term was meant to be endearing, I reacted against the idea of somehow being inferior, or on the receiving end of the relationship, as if I was somehow lucky to be his friend. I grew fearful that he might not view as his friend but rather his project or dependent.

We often treat friendships like a job, seeking placement, prestige and power while it should be a place of honesty, love and acceptance. Instead of accepting and trusting our connection with another, we attempt to exert our dominance. We take the mutually supportive nature of friendship and exchange it for a coach/player or pastor/congregant relationship. When we put on the captain's hat, we shut out the possibility for true friendship. When we refuse to humble ourselves and admit our faults and allow our friends to help us carry our burdens, we do not allow ourselves to open up to friendships. There is no room in genuine friendship for "social climbing" or for concerns about reputation or power. When we hide our faults, when we refuse to lower ourselves and be vulnerable, we replace genuine friendship with semi-acquainted proximity.

While we are good at relating with our bosses and professors, we often struggle in relation to our equals. Rather than being content to simply spend time and enjoy someone, tending to others' needs as they arise while allowing ourselves to be cared for during own moments of weakness, we seek to be the dominant figure in the relationship. We get jealous when one particular person receives more attention or kudos from the rest of the group, and perhaps even begin to secretly enjoy their missteps. We love it when others open up to us, but we shrink from the idea of humbling ourselves before another or openly admitting a struggle or fault. While such stalwartness is necessary for those such as teachers, captains and pastors, whose very jobs are to watch over and take care of others rather than to burden their inferiors with their own personal problems, refraining from being open or honest and embracing a state of equality with others is not conducive to genuine friendship.

I am not arguing that we should all gush our feelings to anyone who will listen or that we should take an inordinate number of confidantes, running around begging for sympathy and support. But the deepest longings of the human heart are relational. We long genuine connection, so among friends, we must do our best maintain that sense of which foster mutual love, respect and support. We must cease to pursue any power or prestige among our friends. We must cease to treat our friends as our bosses or as our employees, as our superiors or as our inferiors. As Plato says, "Equality creates friendship."

All friendships will go through stages when one partner supports the other more, but as soon as we begin to track or count that, we have left the equality of friendship and have arrogantly attempted to take the helm. When we do this we take on qualities quite contrary to those which most likely led our friend to open up to us in the first place. Only by taking seriously our own suffering as well as those of our friends, only when we act as the little brother and as the big brother, can we take part in the true intimacy of friendship, commiserating in loss and rejoicing together in triumph.