Do you have a friend that you love to talk about more than your other friends?
These are usually the people that live the most entertaining and perplexing lives of all your friends. They spent some time in Costa Rica living off the land. They built out the back of their 1998 Astrovan and spent time driving around the country playing coffee shops. In one month they went on 3 dates with women named Molly. ***
Hearing about their most recent exploits is a constant source of fascination because it's odd in comparison to how you see other people functioning. There is usually an undercurrent of judgement in these conversations. You might roll your eyes at the absurdity of their decisions because the results of their choices will so obviously be bad. The words of "I tried to tell them...." are always on the tip of your tongue and ready to be deployed when we can all agree they've made a mess of things.
So what is the best way to proceed? Do we have an obligation to correct the errors of their ways? Should we hold our tongues and just be there if things fall apart or celebrate when things go well?
What's our responsibility in relationships with people when our interaction with God's truth leads us to different conclusions?
Jesus was given the impossible task of taking the entirety of the Jewish scriptures and reducing them to its very core. Jesus identified love as our rule and God, self and our neighbors as the direction of that love. While the command is clear, how we walk out that command is complex and challenged by our lack of understanding of ourselves, of God and of others.
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