2. Mutuality in Christian Friendship
God desires friendship not simply because it gratifies his deepest longings. He is himself, by virtue of his Trinitarian existence, the embodiment of friendship par excellence. He therefore needs no friendship beyond that which is already intrinsic to his very nature.

And yet, there is a level at which God seeks to promote goodness for the sake of itself. He is, after all, the embodiment of ultimate good. And since goodness is a moral attribute of God that is to be expressed within the context of relationships, God extends an invitation to friendship towards his creation. He therefore desires for us to engage in a friendship with him and with one another in a way that reflects the very nature of the Trinitarian friendship.

How then shall we relate with one another in Christian friendship? There must be an element of mutuality. Friendship is a mutual exchange, not a monologue. It is something that must take place between or among two or more people, not something that is to be offered by one without being accepted by another.

Friendship is mutual in that we seek to learn the life stories of our friends inasmuch as we seek to impart our life stories to them. Mutuality in friendship recognises that each person has a story to tell, and that we are all mutually obligated to listen to one another's stories. These stories, when told, come together to form a larger story, which eventually finds its place within the scheme of God's Big Story. Hence, the element of exchange is crucial in Christian friendships.

Even Jesus, the man who was very God, himself chose to come as a learner who would embrace the human experience. It is not that he did not already know all there was to know about the human condition, but that he chose to embrace the posture of a learner despite having already known it all. He was modelling the dance of friendship for us in his engagement with his friends. He embraced mutuality even when he did not have to.

Mutuality requires a certain measure of vulnerability. In telling our life stories, we are sometimes inviting despise. It hence requires one to consciously embrace the path of vulnerability even if one's life stories will be scorned at by one's listeners. It is about choosing to place a large measure of trust upon our listeners, even if they eventually choose to trample on the dignity of our stories. Trust is not about others; it is about us. We do not trust others because they are trustworthy; we trust others because we choose to maintain a posture of vulnerability. Such trust is always liable to be broken; but it is, in the final analysis, a choice one has to make between walking the safe path of isolation and treading the perilous path of friendship. For it is only in a spirit of deliberate trust that there can be true mutuality in friendship.

Mutuality also requires vulnerability in the sense that listening to the stories of other people may (and often does) require our own positions about life and faith to be shifted. When we engage a friend in conversation without rendering ourselves vulnerable enough for our positions to be shifted if necessary, there is no mutuality. The reality of our life stories is that they possess the power to shift one another's positions and perceptions of life. When the sharing of our life stories has found its expression in such (sometimes drastic) effects on our own lives and in the lives of our friends, then we know mutuality has taken place in our friendship.