What or Who

"I think you're wrong and you have my full support."

What is our role as Christian friends? If we have a friend that is dealing with a "grey area" and they make a decision, should we respond with arguments supporting our own position? Mock them for a silly choice? Support them even though though we think they're wrong?

Aleah had this post one month ago on her blog, outlining her plan to throw away a large part of her excellent CD collection because their content was either questionable or hurtful for her Christian life. Blog comments and conversations tend to become mini debates by their nature and she had the longest set of responses that she's ever had on her blog. Some comments were encouraging, some discouraging, some mocking, some questioning.

After a few weeks, she posted her conclusions about this topic. Based on her comments, the feedback that she received on her blog paled in comparison to feedback from her friends and acquaintances. She recanted her original position and faced the double-whammy of condemnation for having bad music and condemnation for capitulating to peer pressure.

This was a tough process for Aleah, as the emotions of those blog posts show. Why do I bring it up again? Am I making another stab at convincing her of my position? Nope. I think that this was a great learning experience for Aleah that will prove useful to her in the future. Instead, I want to address the issue of who we are as friends.

You know the saying, "Never discuss religion or politics at the dinner table?" While neither of those topics may have any significance to a lot of people, I dare say that music may be such a topic. Judgements about music content can be explosive, challenging and may seem like a slap in the face to some people. We seem to respond in kind sometimes.

As friends, I suggest that we should care for the person and not just the issue. As friends, we should look at the relationship and not just the topic. As friends, we should support personal and spiritual growth and not self-made clones. As I said in one of my comments, we don't realize how often we dissect a topic without noticing that we're dissecting the person along the way. We can make people feel like a frog in biology class, having others open them up and take them a apart - and all in the name of friendship.

In the end, I think that Aleah has probably learned a lot from this blogging experience. I know that I have been on both the giving and receiving ends of these debates and I hope that I've matured because of them. Likewise, I will probably look back on this month when I come across similar situations in the future and I will challenge myself: Do I care about what it is or who it is?