Who Should I Invite to My Birthday Party?
By Bethany Smith, photography by Kym van der Plas
Who should I invite to my birthday party? A decades-old question that is harder to answer than it is to decide on the right outfit for the occasion. Harder than pulling off the trickiest cake recipe, and harder to work out than what to do to celebrate! I’d like it to be small. I’d prefer it if people knew each other. I don’t want to offend anyone by not inviting them. It’s just too complicated and I’d really, genuinely, prefer not to do anything anyway.
As a Christian, I know God wants me to love others. And I want to do that widely and openly, without favouritism or exclusivity. But I also crave deep friendship. And I feel real tension about doing both of those things well. A tension that is brought home to me every year when I briefly contemplate the idea of getting a few people together to ‘celebrate’ my gradual aging.
On the one hand, I know there are lots of people I could invite! The world tells me to love those who are near and dear, but the gospel pushes me further, to love whoever it is that’s in front of me, i.e. my neighbour! (Mark 12:31). I seek to love others in the way 1 Corinthians 13 encourages me to, with patience, kindness, selflessness... And I do this because I want to love others as I have been loved by God (1 John 4:19) for I know that they too bear his image and are of intrinsic value.
In theory I love people wherever I am: after church, at the shops, at the library, at my kids’ school... I do a terrible job. I am selfish, forgetful and ignorant. Nevertheless, God has blessed me with a large network of people to show love to, many of whom I could extend a birthday invitation to. At times this is great! Other times it is overwhelming. Most of the time I don’t think about it. But I do often also crave that deep, genuine, caring friendship.
Friendship, at its most basic, involves two things: attraction, getting along and having things in common; and reciprocation, give and take.[1] If I were to do a birthday dinner it’s these people I’d want around the table. As a teenager I’d have hoped for a group like in the TV show Friends. As an adult I have more realistic ideas of friendship. But I want it, nonetheless.
There are times that I feel like it’s a little selfish to invest in my own friends. It feels a little self-serving to prioritise my own desire for closeness and support. But within the Scriptures there are examples of friendship that show it has a legitimate place like David and Jonathan, Paul and Timothy, Jesus himself with Lazurus and his sisters, and the disciples especially Peter, James and John. Friendships can be other-person-centred, and they do provide something that other relationships don’t. Which is why in the book of Proverbs, friendship is upheld as something good to pursue.
Proverbs suggests that it is wise to invest in good friendships, and wise to avoid bad ones! (Prov 13:20). It speaks positively of friendship that is faithful and supportive in difficult times: “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity" (Prov 17:17). It speaks about friendship as a place where people learn and grow together: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Prov 27:27). And it praises friendships for being a place where words of rebuke and advice can be exchanged: "Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses […] Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice" (Prov 27:5-6, 9).
I have a friend whom I’ve known for years. We’ve never really lived close by or had many mutual friends but ever since we first met at church, we’ve never really stopped talking. We’ve journeyed through the highs and lows of life now for 17 years. In that time, we’ve learned from each other, grown together, revealed each other’s sinfulness but stuck around to see the Spirit at work. It’s been a true joy.
I haven’t always experienced friendship this way though. I’ve often felt lonely, forgotten, awkward or just too darn busy. I have struggled to love others well even while knowing I can’t possibly love everyone (or anyone!) perfectly. And I’ve felt uncertain about how to pursue closeness with some alongside the desire to be open and inclusive (hence the birthday anxiety). And so, as I have contemplated this tension within friendship, I’ve stumbled upon a few helpful considerations.
The first is clarifying the idea of friends versus siblings.[2] In the Bible we frequently read about the relationship we have with others in the Christian community as similar to that of siblings, so family not friends. Jesus expands our understanding of what family is in Matthew 12:50 declaring that “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” And we see this language of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ adopted by many of the New Testament writers.
While the gospel turns our love for others outward that doesn’t mean everyone is therefore a friend. We can still call anyone a friend, sure! But I’ve found this distinction useful in considering what my relationship to a person is. Maybe she is a sibling in the Lord, or maybe she is just a friend, or maybe she is both! This might help me know how to love a certain person or even to be clearer in my own mind about what I might expect of them as we relate to each other.
Another idea I’ve found helpful is to properly commit to real friendship. To pursue it. This isn’t always easy. In fact, friendship is hard—any 15-year-old girl could attest to that. And it won’t solve all my problems. But I do believe that good friendships are of mutual benefit. And so, I want to commit to pursuing real friendships with the hope that they might be mutually beneficial for a whole host of reasons, not least the faithfulness and sharpening we read of in the Proverbs.
I have also been learning to care about people while not over functioning for them. At times I am overly conscious about exclusivity or the idea of other people feeling left out because of something I said or did. Sometimes, out of fear of upsetting someone, I might almost try to hide the fact I’ve spent time with someone else or plan to do so. In doing this, however, I am being disingenuous. It’s good to be aware and considerate of others but when I look at Jesus I see that he too had close friends, his disciples, and he didn’t hide his friendship with them. Nor did he seem to hide the fact that he was closer with some of them than others. I want to keep practicing thoughtfulness, but honesty and openness too. And I want to trust that others are managing their own feelings and that God is capable and willing to care for them as he does for me in similar situations.
Finally, I’m learning to calibrate my expectations about friendship. Really, it is never going to be clear-cut as relationships aren’t static. They evolve, they change and sometimes they end. That probably means there is always going to be some tension involved with trying to love widely while also investing in some more closely. If I learn to expect this then maybe I won’t find it as frustrating or fatiguing. Hopefully I’ll be more inclined to talk to God about it knowing that he desires to be my first love, and that of others. And I guess it means that the birthday party question will always have some uncertainty about it. I guess that’s okay as not much rides on who is and isn’t at a hypothetical event... At least I won’t ever need to do a wedding reception list again!
[1] Andrew J. B. Cameron, Joined-up Life: A Christian Account of How Ethics Works (Nottingham: IVP Academic, 2011), 254.
[2] Andrew Cameron, 255.
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Bethany Smith—Regular Contributor
Bethany grew up on the South Coast of NSW, moved to Sydney for university, and met her husband, Matt, while studying at Moore Theological College. They moved to Perth in 2020 to share the gospel with university students at UWA. They’ve since had four children who she spends her days with, caring for and discipling in the Lord Jesus. Bethany enjoys reading, exercising, baking and attempting to keep her plants alive.