Episode Transcript  

One

The Mutual Perfection of Relationship

Did you ever see the first Rocky movie, with Sylvester Stallone? Famously, the big, tough and not very bright Rocky falls in love with the shy, quiet, more thoughtful Adrian.

At one point, someone asks Rocky what the attraction is between him and Adrian. Rocky says, “I don’t know. Fills gaps, I guess. She’s got gaps, I got gaps, together, we fill gaps.”

That’s actually a pretty succinct summary of perhaps the most profound of all natural human goods – the good of relationship.

Because it’s a fundamental fact of human existence that God has made us all unique, and all incomplete.

And He made us that way on purpose, so that in every human relationship, both parties might be made more perfect.

Which is why the good of relationship is so delightful – and why nothing is more decimating to happiness than loneliness.

Two

Being Perfected by the Other 

The list of the different ways other people enrich us is as multifaceted as their own personality.

A friend or child or spouse is another person lending us their eyes – their unique perspective – with which to see the entire world, and especially ourselves.

Have you ever before watched a movie you’ve seen many times with a friend who has never seen it. Even though you knew all the scenes and the line – but when you watched it with a friend who hadn’t seen it before you were moved as though it was your first time?

That’s what relationship does. It doesn’t just give us another pair of hands to help us practically – it gives us a new mind and heart to know and love the world with. It makes everything fresh, it’s the entire universe made new through the other person through whom you see it.

And that’s why without friendship, the world gets stale – old, overly familiar. 

The point is, when you have someone you love, you don’t just have one more item, one more resource in your world. You have another world to complete your own.

Three

You Enrich/Complete the Other

And the joy of friendship doesn’t just go one way. You don’t just benefit from the other person’s insights and perspective and personal history and talents.

The other person benefits from yours.

And there’s nothing quite so validating – nothing that makes you celebrate your own existence, like knowing that you have made someone’s life better.

When you make your child smile, you spouse happy, your friend laugh – every time you do these things, your being is validated because you know that, at least for that person, at least right now, it’s good that I’m alive. 

And again, that’s about the greatest natural delight there is. Without the feeling that your life makes other lives better, it’s hard to go on living.

Four

The Level of Mutual Perfection

Every relationship enriches us at some level — but here’s an important principle:

A relationship is only as enriching as the goodness of the things we share.

When we share truth, beauty, and God, the bond deepens; when we share only gossip, sports, or news, it stays shallow. And the longer it stays shallow, the more unfulfilled we become.

Spouses who only talk about the logistics of daily life — what needs to get done, or what happened today — enrich one another only superficially.

Friends who only talk about sports, news, or the lives of entertainers are enriching one another on a fairly shallow level.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

If we truly want to enrich one another, we have to go beneath the surface — to share our inner lives, our hopes, struggles, and the great questions of truth, beauty, and goodness. Even when we don’t always reach the same conclusions, those conversations transform us.

It follows, then, that the most profound and enriching relationships are those in which both persons pursue the greatest Good — God — together. When all the richness of two personalities complement one another in the shared quest for divine things, the delights of natural love are lifted into the supernatural.

Such relationships are, in truth, a foretaste of Heaven.

Five

No Relationship Survives unless God comes First

Just as putting God at the center of the relationship is the only way to get the most out of that relationship

So too will every relationship fail or degenerate if God does not come first.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Great Divorce, in which every relationship spoils – friend to friend, husband and wife, parent and child – when it’s not subordinated to a love for God. 

God has to come first – He is the source and salvation of all human goods, including the good of relationship. 

Without Him, no good thing can survive. 

But in Him, our relationships will be glorified and made eternal in the communion of saints.

So how about a concrete resolution to practice - Today, I will take one relationship deeper by being genuinely interested in the other person.

I will ask thoughtful questions that draw out what matters most to them — their hopes, worries, or what they’ve been thinking about lately.

Then, when the moment naturally opens, I’ll share something that has moved or enlightened me — a truth I’ve discovered, a moment of beauty, or a way I’ve seen God at work.

Instead of staying on the surface with tasks, gossip, or news, I’ll seek to make our conversation a real exchange of souls — a sharing in truth, beauty, and goodness.

In this way, I’ll practice building relationships that not only connect minds and hearts, but lead both of us closer to God.

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