WHEN FRIENDS GO BAD [M, 3-1-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

WHEN FRIENDS GO BAD   [M, 3-1-21]

In this column for Saturday, February 27, I talked about how friends are routes to Jesus. But what if an old friend goes bad? What if an old friend seems to be mediating the devil instead of Jesus?

In college, Helen and I were part of a Methodist student group, along with a couple I’ll call Millie and Dean. They were a dating couple when we met them, but have been married for over 60 years now. They were two years ahead of us in school, but dating couples tended to hang around together.

There was also a guy in the group I’ll call Marvin. I knew who Marvin was, but that was all. He was close friends with Millie and Dean, though. They maintained their friendship with him for 60 years.

They have maintained their friendship with us for those 60 years, too. We have often lived several states away from one another, as we do now, but we’ve kept in touch, and whenever we’ve been traveling through each other’s territory, we have gotten together. Those sorts of friendships are fun. Except…

The last time we were with Millie and Dean, they showed us a letter they had received from Marvin. It was a long and convoluted screed against gay folks. Marvin is clergy, so feels the need to bolster his stances with biblical references. We are used to anti-gay folks twisting mightily the few verses in the Bible that might be considered anti-gay, but Marvin was more creative. He quoted a lot from the Old Testament, like passages where Yahweh is threatening to kick Israel’s ass unless they kill more Philistines, the way He told them to. Marvin said this was clear. By Philistines, God means gays, and we shall be the ones who feel God’s boot unless we get rid of them. That was the kinder and more rational part of his letter.

“We don’t know what’s happened to him,” Millie said. “He’s been our friend for so long. And we’ve stayed in touch all this time, and enjoyed seeing one another. But now, we don’t want to read hateful stuff. We’re old and want to spend our time with friends who help us remember good times and help us be kind to others instead of cruel to them. But it seems wrong to stop relating to him, we’ve been friends so long…”

Most of us can relate. Either we have a friend personally who’s been out in the sun too long and gone bad, or we know of situations like that. Another friend, in a similar situation, said, “I thought these were supposed to be the golden years, but they’ve turned to lead.”

Yes. We’re old. We don’t have a lot of time left. Shouldn’t we be able to shed friends who turn gold to lead instead of having to stick it out with them just because we have put in a lot of years together?

But doesn’t friendship mean you hang on and support one another even though it’s not comfortable? And right, you’re old, so you really don’t have anything better or more important to do than sit and stand with your friends as they try to work out their own last years, do you?

I don’t know. I’m not smart enough to answer that for anyone else. But be careful what you write to me. I’m a tolerant sort of guy. I may just exercise my tolerance and say you have the right to go to hell in your own way and keep on drinking my coffee and reading my book. Or maybe I’ll come find you and whack you upside the head until it’s back on straight again.

John Robert McFarland