Friends, Love, Deeds, and Country

Tim McGraw's song "Find Out Who Your Friends Are" sends a powerful message about loving one another in friendship. This is the chorus:

"You find out who your friends are

Somebody's gonna drop everything

Run out and crank up their car

Hit the gas, get there fast

Never stop and think 'what's in it for me' or 'it's way too far'

They just show on up with their big ol' heart

You find out who your friends are."

In this song, we find the culture, namely the country music culture, appreciating one of the "biggest picture" kinds of things with Christianity. I heard this song on the radio and immediately thought of this project. "Here is someone who gets it." I thought to myself, "Someone who understands that even in the context of culture without Christianity that we are called to love each other. Sometimes Christians and non-believers fall into the tricky trap of making love an emotion or feeling. While I think that there is an emotional aspect and all that jazz, I think that love without deeds is ungrounded and should probably fall under the category of like or lust. Like in James 2, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:14-17) I think that the same applies to love. Telling someone you love them is great, but showing them is even better. Think again with me about the Tim McGraw song listed above. What are the depictions of friends in this song? Someone who is "going to drop everything/ run out and crank up their car..." The true friends that Mr. McGraw is trying to get at is that true friends are invested in their relationship enough that they value the other person more than themselves. Many times in my personal experience, I have had friends that were both more invested in the friendship than I was and less invested. I can tell you that when the scales are unbalanced, the relationships are strained. I think that the main problems with people in our culture today is the individualistic, dog-eat-dog mindset of "getting on top." Everything is about self-promotion. We don't count on each other to lift us up, but rather, we count on ourselves because everyone else is busy doing the same thing. 

What would the world look like if we cared for each other first? Isn't that what God has been asking all along? I think that is what Tim McGraw is asking in that song. Why aren't we trying to be friends like that instead of just expecting to have friends like that? 

I think that the interaction between culture and Christianity is parallel on this issue. I think we are striving to get to that point but we have given up. What would our world look like if we hadn't given up already?