CONSIDER THIS: Thoughts on Lasting Friendship, Jesus and ‘Making It’ on the Hill
Work on the Hill for a few years and you are all but guaranteed to develop important friendships. I don’t mean the sort of relationships that are essential to functioning effectively as a Hill aide — colleagues on your particular personal or committee staff and those on other staffs with whom you interact regularly and with whom you can and need to have mutually beneficial dealings.
No, I’m talking about people who become not only respected colleagues on a professional level, but also good friends with whom your relationship can transcend the work environment. You know a good bit about each other’s aspirations, disappointments, interests, strengths and failings. You cheer for each other when things go well and try to be an encouragement when the road gets rough, as it regularly does on the Hill.
J.P. is the taller, younger, better-looking, and smarter guy in this photo, which was taken in the Longworth Cafeteria.(Photo by J.P.).
Having worked on the Hill either as a staffer or as a journalist covering Congress and politics for most of the last five decades, I’ve been blessed with a number of such friends. I was able to spend some time Monday with one such Hill friend, J.P. Freire.
J.P has been on the Hill for a long time. He is presently Communications Director for House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and he did the same for the previous GOP Chairman, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas).
Over the years, J.P. worked as the comms guy for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) for three years, and as Press Secretary for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Ks). He’s also put in long hours on the Joint Economic Committee, working for Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). And he served a stint as Associate Administrator for Public Affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
We first met in 2008 when J.P. was managing editor of The Spectator and I was editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner. It very quickly became evident to me that J.P. was a man who appreciated the beauty, utility and importance of the English language as only a talented wordsmith can, as well as for the genius of the American political system, including all of its deliberative and not so deliberate follies and foibles. The latter distinction was borne out of his time as a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
It was my great honor and privilege in 2009 to hand J.P. the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Journalist of the Year Award, which he richly deserved. A little later, he came onboard at the Examiner and did super work there for several years. When he left to join the Pompeo staff, it was a tough loss for the Examiner, but I kept in touch with him because it was clear he was going places.
So why am I sharing all of this with you here on HillFaith today? We human beings are unique in having friendships that go beyond mere utility or acquaintance. And Jesus Christ has a lot to say about friendship because He is the greatest friend any human being can ever have.
Take, for example, this from the Gospel of John at 15:12-15:
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants,[a] for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
How does Jesus love His followers? He left Heaven to become a man like us in every way except He was sinless. He came to live among us to demonstrate why He is, as He put it at John 14:6, “the Way, the Truth and the Light. No man comes to the Father but through me.” That’s an astounding claim, one that would only be made by somebody who, in the words of C.S. Lewis, must be “Lord, Liar or Lunatic.”
The Bible has a great deal to say about friendship and how it can be a blessing or a burden. Take a few minutes and check out 15 specific Bible verses compiled by the Jesus Film Project that relate to the blessings and difficulties that come with friendship.
Working on the Hill can be a tough road to hoe. If you would like to talk more about why Jesus is the greatest friend you could or will ever have, email me at mark.tapscott@hillfaith.org. I would love to sit down with you for an entirely off-the-record conversation. No judgement, no condemnation, just a couple of folks talking about where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Don’t worry, I’m no preacher, just a guy who spent a lot of years looking for love and happiness in all the wrong places before my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the genuine best friend forever, found me, picked me up, and began transforming me in a way nothing and nobody else ever could. He will do it for you, too.