Some of My Best Friends are Inside that Book
- Joshua Budimlic
- Apr 26
- 3 min read
Several years ago, Jordan Peterson appeared on the rather popular Lex Fridman Podcast. In no time at all, a discussion arose between the two men regarding their favorite author—the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Their conversation was narrowing in on this point: which of Dostoevsky’s novels can rightfully claim the title as the greatest book ever written, Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov? In his defense of The Brothers Karamazov, Fridman made this simple but profound statement when pressed by Peterson—“Some of my best friends are inside that book.”
I feel as though I have now reached the stage in my Christian life where I can honestly say of the Bible that “some of my best friends are inside that book.” The more I read the Bible, and the more I am shaped by it, the dearer its words and characters become. Only, they’re not just characters, are they? From Adam to David to Peter, these are real, living, historical individuals we are presently concerned with. Real individuals that all we in Christ shall one day meet in the age to come. Real individuals that, through trillions of ages, we shall get to know, converse among, and grow to be friends with.
After the Lord Jesus Christ, my best and dearest Friend in all the Bible, I think the Apostle Paul is a distant second, but second all the same (not bad considering some of the mountainous, larger-than-life folks he’s squared up against in Scripture). Indeed, over the years I feel as though I’ve come to know Paul as a friend and grown to love him rather dearly. The words of Paul, inspired by the Spirit of Christ, have so permeated my life that I can scarcely think of a man who has more deeply influenced my thinking aside from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The words of Paul, of course, only hold the weight they do because of the Lord’s leading and inspiration, but I am thankful all the same for the man that God used in such a mighty way—both in my own life, and in the life of many billions of others.
I do not suppose to know what Heaven will be like, but I do look forward to seeing my brother Paul face to face. I am eager to shake his hand and draw him in for an embrace; to let him know that, though we were separated by an ocean of time, he was used by the Lord so profoundly in my life. Like ships passing in the night, he and I and many countless others slipped by one another in the fleeting shadows of history, and yet a friendship was sparked—a friendship that though it began here below through the pages of Scripture, shall continue forevermore in the world to come.
Photo by Joshua Newton, Unsplash
Author’s Note: With respect to where I stand on the Dostoevsky question, I would lean towards Crime and Punishment over The Brothers Karamazov. For while The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as Dostoevsky’s magnum opus and arguably the better of the two novels, Crime and Punishment resonated more with me personally. Indeed, I have often heard folks make a similar distinction, with some going so far as to say that Crime and Punishment was the novel that brought them back towards God and Christianity because of Dostoevsky’s deep treatment of such things as guilt, justice, and redemption. Nonetheless, both novels are often found in any “The Greatest Novels Ever Written” list and rightfully so—Dostoevsky was a literary genius with few parallels, a master at weaving together theology, politics, the human condition, philosophy, and psychology into rich stories with characters so real you could very well find lifelong friends among those pages. Dostoevsky was the kind of author that, upon reading him, you would find burning within yourself a great desire to write more and to write better—only to quickly realize how pale an imitation your work was in comparison to his upon starting. For those of you who may be interested, the link to the Fridman and Peterson clip in question will be below. While I by no means can get behind everything Jordan Peterson says,—especially his often muddled perspective on Christ and the Bible—I do find that he has many worthwhile insights, particularly into literature and philosophy.
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