Who’s your friend?

Number 2 in Timms Times — a blogger’s view from 2014

One of my Facebook ‘friends’ makes ‘Status’ comments aiming entirely at pushing people into his point of view. Today, reading why he ‘hates’ one religion, my mind drifts back half a century, to when I sought help from my mother on friendship issues: ‘A friend is someone you can talk to honestly, and you still like each other afterwards.’

Coming back to Facebook, I remember my ‘friend’ and me having an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. ‘If you were my friend’ he said, ‘you would have a duty to persuade me of the right path.’  I laughed, then realized  he was serious – to him, friendship means duty! His daily outpourings indicate that he believes in a duty to push people into rejecting all belief other than his own idiosyncratic, closed-minded Christianity. But I’m grateful to him for unintentionally strengthening my security and happiness. I shall continue to seek truth my own way, living and loving my own beliefs and respecting other people’s. From him I can learn no truth, only opinion. So now I shall explore how to unfriend someone on Facebook, then polish up a poem I wrote about tolerance of other people’s creeds.
5 January 2014

Calling I look to those who show, not tell, philosophy or faith,