Don't Be That Friend

I’m discovering friends fall into one of three categories: listeners, commiserators, and one-uppers.

Listeners are the friends who hear our heart’s concerns and absorb them, protect them, handle them with tender and trustworthy care. These are the people we feel safest confiding in. We count them on one hand.

Commiserators are the friends whose lives run parallel to ours; we walk through similar challenges, face similar joys and burdens. Our shared circumstances, values, or beliefs are relatable on a personal level, therefore we can shore one another up. 

One-uppers, however, are commiserators gone wild. They hop from our concerns directly to their own, hijacking our confidence as an invitation to air their own grievances—making our pain about themselves. All the while assuming they’re empathizing.

They’re not.

They’re just capitalizing on another chance to vent.

And those are the least helpful friends of the bunch. Not because they’re untrustworthy, necessarily, but because their actions aren’t loving. What could be a chance to connect to another human heart becomes instead a competition over who has it worse. Which leaves us feeling empty, unheard, or alone. 

Don’t be that friend.

There’s a story in the Bible that illustrates this concept to a disturbingly effective degree. It’s the book of Job—one of the most depressing books in the Bible, really, about a guy who loses everything while God watches, allowing it to happen. Many of us would prefer Job weren’t included in the Bible at all. The book does have a point though, to show us how faith in God trumps all worldly comfort, and it’s rewarded in the end. But meanwhile? Poor Job has to walk through a whole lot of suffering. And his friends come along for the ride.

Why? Why are Job’s friends major characters in this narrative? Clearly, relationships in times of suffering are something God wants us to consider. And what do we find?

The one-uppers.

Oh, at first they’re the listeners. When Job hits hard times, his three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar arrive on the scene and sit with him for seven days in complete silence, not saying anything, just absorbing his pain (Job 2:13). 

But when Job finally speaks, allowing his grief to spew off his tongue, each of his friends pivots—using Job’s pain as a launch point for their own opinions.

Eliphaz claims Job must have done something to deserve his plight.

Bildad takes it a step further and tells Job to clean up his act in order to get right with God.

And Zophar? He finishes the boxing match with a big left hook, telling Job he deserved worse than what he got, and God’s punishment was merciful.

All three dismissed a hurting man and called it wisdom. And the worst part is they thought they were helping. They weren’t. They were merely advancing their own agenda, at their friend’s expense.

Thankfully God cleared the air. In the end, He rebuked the men, telling Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has” (John 42:7). Bottom line—God is not pleased when we make someone else’s pain about ourselves.

Can I ask? What kind of friend are you? We might show up with good intentions, as Job’s friends did at first. But we have to be careful not to confuse listening with speaking, or commiseration with pontification. 

Sitting with, talking with a friend is admirable. Talking at them is not.

I’m going to be more aware of this in my own relationships moving forward. Having been the recipient of “one-upper” conversations one too many times, God is opening my eyes to the danger of becoming that kind of friend myself. And I really don’t want to be. I want to be a listener, a commiserator. A safe place.

Let’s leave the one-upping to the pages of Job, where we can learn from God’s cautionary tale, and be the kind of friend our friends actually need. Amen?