{"id":20247,"date":"2026-03-11T09:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T09:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/the-bible-s-most-famous-friendships\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:09:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:09:37","slug":"the-bible-s-most-famous-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/friends\/the-bible-s-most-famous-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible\u2019s Most Famous Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, around February 14, I find myself bombarded with mes\u00adsages about soul mates. It pops up everywhere, from TV commercials to social media. And the takeaway is unavoidable: Soul mates are the main reason to celebrate love.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never really believed in the whole soul mates thing<\/a>\u2014that there\u2019s one person we\u2019re destined to meet, fall madly in love with and obsess over for all eternity. What I have found are soul connections, friends who just seem to get you on an almost mo\u00adlecular level. Like my friend Sarah.<\/p>\n

We met in the seventh grade…and it was dislike at first sight. We were polar opposites. She was open, ear\u00adnest and outgoing. I was guarded, rational and reserved. And yet, somehow, we became the best of friends. Nowadays, she lives in California and I live in New York. But we\u2019re so in tune with each other that I still feel connected to her, even thousands of miles apart. When I\u2019m blue, she\u2019ll just happen to call. When she goes through a hard time, I feel the pain as if it were my own. Our link makes me wonder: Could it be we\u2019re not put on this earth simply to find \u201cthe one,\u201d but rather several people we\u2019re divinely connected to? Not soul mates but soul friends? <\/em><\/p>\n

Curious, I took my questions to Rabbi Deborah Bravo, who\u2019s written about spirituality and friendship<\/a>. Ac\u00adcording to Rabbi Bravo, God doesn\u2019t just want us to have friends. God made us specifically to be in relationships with other human beings.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning, in the creation story, we learn that we are designed to be in partnership,\u201d she says. \u201cThe root of the Hebrew word for friendship is actually chaver, <\/em>which means \u2018to connect.\u2019 And friendship is all about connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a mystical benefit to friendship, Rabbi Bravo says. It aids our spiritual development.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ancient Rabbinic text advises people to \u2018acquire yourself a companion,\u2019\u201d Rabbi Bravo says. \u201cGod created us with the purpose of interacting with others. We need these relationships to lift ourselves to a higher plane spiritually.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are several notable friend\u00adships in the New Testament<\/a>, from Jesus and Lazarus to Paul and Tim\u00adothy. Scripture also says that David and Jonathan were so close, it was as if their souls were knit together. Other religious traditions stress the spiritual importance of friendship. In the Muslim tradition, a good friend is someone \u201cwhose appearance reminds you of God, and whose speech increases you in knowl\u00adedge, and whose actions remind you of the hereafter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friendship isn\u2019t just good for the soul, though. It\u2019s good for your health. Dr. William Chopik, an assis\u00adtant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, recently published a study that showed friends can be more important to physical health and longevity than family. And, in 2005, research from Flinders University found that people with a large network of friends lived 22 percent longer than those with\u00adout such a network.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a correlation between friendship and increased pain toler\u00adance, according to the science journal Nature<\/em>. When faced with a challenging task<\/a>, study participants with a strong group of friends released more endorphins, those chemicals in the brain that make you happy and reduce pain.<\/p>\n

Friend intuition also appears to be very much a thing. In 2013, re\u00adsearchers at the University of Virgin\u00adia found that the bond between friends can be so strong that when one friend is threatened, the other\u2019s brain reacts as if under duress. It\u2019s true. When Sarah went through a particularly rough breakup, I felt my anxiety mounting even though ev\u00aderything else in my life was fine.<\/p>\n

But what about those aspects of friendship that can\u2019t necessarily be quantified? Can friends really be like platonic soul mates?<\/p>\n

Yes, says Stephen Cope, a psy\u00adchotherapist and author of Soul Friends: The Transforming Power of Deep Human Connection. <\/em>Cope be\u00adcame interested in the idea of friend\u00adship on a more spiritual plane eight years ago. He\u2019d just moved to a new city and didn\u2019t know a soul<\/a>. He met a man named Brian in a meditation class. Although they had nothing in common, the two quickly became friends. Their connection is what Cope calls a soul friendship.<\/p>\n

\u201cA soul friend becomes critical to determining who we become as a person,\u201d Cope says. \u201cThey\u2019re people we form deep connections with. Connections that transform us.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Cope, these types of friendships can take a few key forms. Twinship<\/a>, <\/em>for instance, occurs when we recognize an essential likeness in another and bond over shared similarities. Mystical friend\u00adships <\/em>happen when we feel an almost otherworldly connection to someone. Meanwhile, mirrors <\/em>are those people who see us as we truly are and reflect essential truths about our\u00adselves back to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoul friends evoke, sustain, affirm and unify us,\u201d Cope says. \u201cWe rec\u00adognize something in them; they rec\u00adognize something in us. With soul mates, we\u2019d call it chemistry. There\u2019s something similar, in an unromantic sense, going on with soul friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cope\u2019s categories of soul friends confirmed a hunch I\u2019d had for some time. The notion that marriage isn\u2019t the only important intimate relation\u00adship that adults have<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoul friends call us forth,\u201d Cope says. \u201cThey draw out the person in us that we want <\/em>to be. It\u2019s almost as if an invisible bond of energy connects us with these people.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I felt about Sarah. We called forth the best versions of each other. That unique tie called to mind something Rabbi Bravo had told me about\u2014the Judaic concept of bash\u00adert, <\/em>which means \u201cdestiny\u201d or some\u00adthing that comes directly from God. The Yiddish word is most commonly used to describe soul mates<\/a>, but that\u2019s actually an in\u00adcomplete definition, Rabbi Bravo says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept of a person\u2019s bashert <\/em>is really about the people you\u2019re des\u00adtined to be with in relationships, typically a romantic one,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it can also describe what is \u2018meant to be\u2019 in life. People can have many bashert <\/em>encounters, relationships or friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought about the many times I\u2019ve felt inexplicably led or connected to the friends in my life. Like when my friend Bekah and I showed up to an event wearing the same exact outfit. Or the night my roommate and I stayed up talking until 2 a.m., even though we both had early mornings<\/a>. Or the letter from Sarah that arrived at the very moment I was missing home the most. For the first time, I recognized those friendships for what they really were. Bashert. <\/em>Destiny.<\/p>\n

Read More: The Bible\u2019s Most Famous Friendships<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, around February 14, I find myself bombarded with mes\u00adsages about soul mates. It pops up everywhere, from TV commercials to social media. And the takeaway is unavoidable: Soul mates are the main reason to celebrate love. I\u2019ve never really believed in the whole soul mates thing\u2014that there\u2019s one person we\u2019re destined to meet, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[159,46,151],"ppma_author":[467],"class_list":["post-20247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-friends","tag-bible","tag-friends","tag-mysterious-ways"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Bible\u2019s Most Famous Friendships - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bible\u2019s Most Famous Friendships\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every year, around February 14, I find myself bombarded with mes\u00adsages about soul mates. 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