In the late 1990’s, a mostly forgotten sports movie came out called Varsity Blues. Starring the mostly forgotten actor James Van Der Beek, most famous for his role as the eponymous Dawson of the television show Dawson’s Creek, the film also contained a particularly moving song by the band Collective Soul, called “Run.” The second verse of the song reads as follows: Is there a cure among us / From this processed sanity? / I weaken with each voice that sings. / Now in this world of purchase / I’m going to buy back memories / To awaken some old qualities [1].” The song itself was a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and even (unusually for Collective Soul at the time) on the Adult Rock charts, where Collective Soul would become increasingly popular. In many ways the song marked a shift, perhaps unnoticed at the time, in the way the band was being viewed as an adult rock instead of as an alternative or mainstream rock act, but its plaintive call in the chorus, “Have I got a long way to run?” rings out just the same, no matter who is listening on the other side.
This afternoon, one of my close friends in our congregation gave a heartfelt sermonette on what it meant to be a good friend. Given the context of the times, it was obvious that he was writing about the loss of quite a few friends recently to death. At dinner after church, we discussed the fact that one friend in particular [2] had been such a planning-oriented person that his sudden death was a particular shock. This is not least because one of the friends in particular was a great boon companion of my friend, where the two of them spoke often and traveled together to the same car-focused events. The loss of friends that one shares such extensive interests with is a major loss, because often such friends share interests that we have that few other people share. Part of the reason that we feel closer to certain people is the fact that they may share so much of ourselves and so much that few other people understand or appreciate, which encourages us to place a great deal of emotional capital in these relationships as developing friendships with such people is an act of self-defense with regards to our dignity and self-respect. When we lose friends suddenly, it causes us a great deal of distress, not only that we lose friendly and good company, but that we also lose a part of ourselves.
One gets a sense of this, for example, when reading C.S. Lewis’ book “The Four Loves,” when he talks about Phileo, or friendship: “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myselF” now that Charles is away, I have less on Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend (58-59).” Let us note that C.S. Lewis is speaking here of his genuine friends, Charles Williams (who died in 1945), and Ronald, better known to us as J.R.R. Tolkien, and so can be taken as knowing what he is talking about [3]. The point is a worthwhile one, in that friendships benefit from the development of other friendships, in that other people can bring out aspects of our friends that we cannot, while we can bring out aspects of a friend that others cannot. As a result, we should support the development of genuine friendships on as wide a course as possible, since it allows us to see others for who they are in a broader way.
How, then, do we go about this? In looking at my own life, I have never thought that I was destined for a particularly long life. In many ways, I feel like an intelligent mind and a deeply sensitive spirit combined with the heart of a terrified small child encased on a body that is aging far more rapidly and dramatically than it ought to be. Without complaining about my continual health woes yet again, I do not feel like a person who is destined for a lengthy and enjoyable physical existence. At the same time, I am aware of my nodal existence and the fact that wherever I have been and whatever I have done in life, I have always served as a node to connect others together, and have always provided certain niche benefits to any friends as an intelligent person of many diverse and deep interests that have encouraged others to speak out about their own passions as much as I have spoken about my own among other friends. Yet I often fret about how it is that I am to preserve my own well-being as best as possible, how it is that I am to provide for the fulfillment of my own longings, for the preservation of good health, for the lowering of the intolerable burden of ambient stress and anxiety in my own life. It does not take any great insight to look around and see that others are buckling under the burden of their own lives, for just today the usual director of our congregation’s a capella group commented that he had been told of his own heart failure by doctors recently, leading to his own difficulties in sustaining his voice and energy level. It is a terrifying thing to conceive of the absence of ourselves in the world that we live in, but such an unpleasant reality is clearly possible not only for ourselves but for many of the people who are around us. How can we live so that we do not place heavier burdens on ourselves, or add to the burdens that others are facing around us?
[1] http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/collectivesoul/run.html
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/living-the-word/
[3] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/book-review-the-four-loves/
Edge Induced Cohesion 
” How can we live so that we do not place heavier burdens on ourselves, or add to the burdens that others are facing around us?”
God knows we have burdens, the heaviest He gave His Son to bear. Without burdens, how would any believer prove his own love for God and others?
John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ga 6:2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
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Indeed, but in love we bear others’ burdens, not compel others to bear them for us. It is the compulsion, as a result of not thinking of others, that I am writing about here.
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And so we have another definition of sin
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There are at least four different aspects/types of sin: transgressing the boundary markets to behavior that God has set, missing the mark of behavior expected by God, sinning in omission by not acting as God has commanded of us, and sinning against our consciences, that are discussed at various points in the Bible. If I haven’t written about it, it is something worth writing about at some length.
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