We need to be careful what friends we make, because they can influence us in good ways or bad ways. In the Screwtape letters, Wormwood's patient became friends with two very rich, worldly people. Those people introduced the patient to their other friends. Screwtape encouraged Wormwood to keep his patient as a friend to those people if he could. The patient thought he was just as good as the people he hung out with and thought he was on their level. (In his mind pretty high up.)
When the patient would hang out with those friends he would act a certain way while when he was at church he would act in a totally different way, as if he was two different people. The patient would do a lot of laughing when he was with his worldly friends and Wormwood thought that it was all laughter that was bad. Screwtape told him that there were different kinds of laughter, joy, fun, joke proper, and flippancy. The last two are the bad ones, the first one is good, and the second one can be either good or bad.
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