Breaking Up with Friendship Breakups: Building Peace Through a Social Imagination for Resilient Interpersonal Friendships

This paper explores the opportunities to develop a social imagination for navigating conflict to build resilience in interpersonal friendships and the implications of this practice for a communal pursuit of peace. Particularly with American Christians in mind, I bring an examination of friendship in the Hebrew Scriptures into conversation with Conflict Transformation theory and Systems thinking to propose that the ways we work through conflict with our closest friends, or neglect to do so, influence our imagination and preparation for overcoming division and seeking wholeness in the broader community.

On the one hand, the Jewish and Christian canons of Scripture offer wisdom for preserving friendship and include many passages that encourage the pursuit of shalom among the people of God. Yet, it is seemingly uncommon to find external resources dedicated to applying these principles specifically for the benefit of friends who are navigating interpersonal challenges. Particularly in modern Christian literature, authors are wont to default to marriage as the “ultimate example of friendship” if and as they approach the topic of addressing conflict in friendship (Fernando, Reclaiming Friendship, 1993). Even those who highlight the importance of committed personal friendships in contemporary American culture acknowledge that there is a lack of guidance for how to work through difficulties in this relational paradigm (Cohen, Other Significant Others, 2024; Friedman and Sow, Big Friendship, 2020). Perhaps ending friendships due to conflict seems commonplace, in part, due to the influence of those who offer that an expectation of permanence is inappropriate to friendship (Meilaender, Friendship, 1981; O’Donovan, Entering Into Rest, 2017).

On the other hand, Conflict Transformation posits that conflict is a normal and continuous dynamic in human relationships and suggests that people can learn to respond in ways that maximize potential for positive change (Lederach, Conflict Transformation, 2014). Theorizing conflict transformation within the Christian tradition, of course, requires leveraging foundational texts of the faith with the purpose of showing how they can transform our imagination around friendship. Thus, I begin by considering the role that the Hebrew Scriptures can play, specifically within the Christian tradition, to bring about a new imagination for friendship that extends into how we pursue peace in the civic realm.

I first examine key passages that speak to a presumption of longevity in covenantal forms of friendship including Psalm 55:12-14; 20-21 and the Jonathan/David arc in 1 Samuel. The psalmist’s lament reveals expectations of loyalty, honesty, kindness, and steadfast fellowship. Jonathan and David exchange promises of political protection, honest communication, and demonstrations of hesed toward descendants. I then connect these covenantal themes to ancient Jewish wisdom texts including Proverbs, Job, and Ben Sira, identifying the ways that they promote endurance in friendship.

Throughout Proverbs, even amidst potential disruptors to lasting friendship, there arises an image of the ideal friend — one who is marked by intimacy, constancy, and loyalty through adversity (e.g. Proverbs 17:17; 18:24: 27:6, 10). Serving as a kind of moral prototype, it is likely linked to a social vision in the scribal community, encouraging practices that would increase societal stability (Stewart, Poetic Ethics in Proverbs, 2016).

The book of Job speaks to an experience of friendship that is at times harmonious and at times in conflict; yet the import of friendship remains. Job and his friends appear to esteem some shared values for friendship even as they approach their conflict with different expectations of how these traits should manifest in their relationships (Vesely, Friendship and Virtue Ethics in Job, 2019). As they debate the way of righteousness in adversity, they display high regard for loyalty and endurance in friendship.

Ben Sira stands in the biblical wisdom tradition of Proverbs and Job, expounding upon the topic of friendship from a second century BCE Hellenistic perspective (Olyan, Friendship in Hebrew Bible, 2017). He focuses more on caution in selecting friends than earlier wisdom texts, citing the real possibility of friendship betrayal (Sirach 6:8-10) and referring to “sorrow like death itself when a dear friend turns into an enemy” (Sirach 37:2). As an antidote to widespread faithlessness in friendship, he encourages fidelity to one’s friends (Corley and Satlow, Ben Sira on Friendship, 2020). Ben Sira most directly offers a vision for reconciliation in damaged friendships (Sirach 22:20-22).

Through this survey of friendship in the Hebrew Bible, I contend that biblical wisdom does not see severing ties as an inevitable response to interpersonal challenges but invites a higher level of resilience and elasticity in the bond of friendship. Working from this understanding, in the subsequent section I turn to readily available conflict transformation resources that may be underutilized in the context of interpersonal friendship. Recognizing that approaches to conflict will vary from culture to culture, I explore how engaging tools such as Ron Kraybill’s Conflict Styles Quadrants and learning from Indigenous practices such as Circle Processes, among others, could strengthen the bond of friendship, promoting resilience through individual well-being and healthy interdependence (Kraybill, Conflict and Transformation, 2000; Thomas-Kilmann, “Conflict Mode Instrument,” 1974; Pranis, Circle Processes, 2005).

Finally, I seek to demonstrate how these foundational texts can fruitfully be integrated with Conflict Transformation theory and Systems thinking to make the case that in order to pursue peace-building successfully at a community level through the lens of civic friendship, it is advantageous to nurture an imagination and build muscles for resilient interpersonal friendships that can persevere through trials (Dugan, "Nested Theory of Conflict,” 1996). Building upon the sections above, I propose new mental models for approaching relational difficulties between friends that challenge frameworks governed by individualism and instead “cultivate habits of engaging conflict well for the purposes of constructive change in the world” (Marshall, Intro to Christian Ethics, 2018; Jennings, After Whiteness, 2020). Furthermore, I examine key systems archetypes to surface the stories we tell ourselves about the possibilities for overcoming conflict in friendship and the effects this may have on our capabilities to address social conflicts more broadly (Stroh, Systems Thinking for Social Change, 2015).