Friends

Revised 26 September 2011: I do not believe in what the world defines as "friends". Nor do I have any desire to seek for such. And this I say even at the same time that I can say that I love all mankind. How can that be? (this note is from a year later: can I say here that I was going through a time of establishing healthy boundaries for myself and reconciling myself to the reality that I needed to acknowledge others as unique orbits and universes unto themselves to be valued and respected at the same time hold a healthy defense against because they too are subject to the adversaries temptations and could easily place me in harms way knowingly or otherwise. May I say also that I shudder at the harshness that I sometimes sense in this writing, but may I say here that it is a process that we must undergo as mortals. In a safe environment I think we probably learn it as teenagers, maybe preteens. If not undergone then it will need to be done to have a healthy, mature outlook on the world, in my opinion.)

Associates, even brothers or sisters that I can talk to or share similar experiences with, certainly, but friends, not hardly. The closest I can come to finding that is in Jesus Christ. And the reason for this is because he has been ever faithful to God, The Father and to himself.

It has taken me 54 years to say that I believe that I might be able to call myself a friend. If it has taken this long for me to get to know myself and prove myself, why would I think that I could find a "friend" in another when I cannot tell the heart of another person. The closest thing that I have come to is being able to recognize someone who does not abuse (we are not talking friend here, just a non-abuser) and being able to "see" or "be aware of" how that person treats himself. This I believe, is the defining factor on whether or not the person will interact with me with integrity, meaning will he/she honor me as a person of value. If they cannot honor themselves experience has shown me they will not honor me either. The scriptures teach to love others as we love ourselves.

Does the definition of a friend not denote trust? And who is truly trustworthy? I just do not find it among the living. I find it smarter and safer to think of people as brother and sister,  as children of God, each unique, and each traveling in the company of angels and demons thus, in this existence, not capable of real trustworthiness. (I still do believe that this is a reality we must accept thus the Lord's council to not trust in the arm of flesh. I would also extend this to the one person we are to call spouse and eternal partner and even the self. I do not believe that we can claim spiritual maturity that makes us truly trustworthy in this life by virtue of the limitations and blinders that we accepted before we came here to be tested and proven.)

There is the trust that some can have by proving consistent in some duty or responsibility, but here again it takes time does it not. The child or infant trusts the caregiver, but each of us knows of circumstance where that position alone does not qualify one for the trust that is given. I believe that is why the scriptures teach that we must be born again. In being born again we come to understand what we truly are and where we are at in our progression. This encompasses the reality that we are currently very vulnerable and fragile as we each must master the self and bridal the passions of the body as we integrate the spirit and the body together and turn to God as our Father and Christ as our Redeemer. Even accepting him as Redeemer requires the acknowledgement that we have fallen short of being trustworthy not only to others but to God and to our very selves.

For this reason I do not think that it is really within the realm of human kind...to be a friend. I believe that it is truly very foreign. (Book of Mormon Mosiah 3:19 "...natural man is an enemy to God, unless he yields to the enticings of the Spirit...) I believe this is why it is so important for mankind to unite and congregate under the name of Christ. In so doing we avail ourselves and align ourselves with the power of heaven to be of one mind and Christ instructed.

Might we not do well to think of other humans more as family than as friends? You might ask, "What, are not family more than friends?" To which I would need to respond yes, quite right...families historically speaking anyway have a bond of love or the acknowledgement of obligation or loyalty due to having a similar blood line. I believe that love comes from God and that it is love that will draw people together as a unit instead of divided entities. (I also have a very extensive "gang theory" that is too lengthy to go into at the moment.)

We want to look at each other then as brothers and sisters and this will give us the ability to be more patient and more quick to forgive, if we accept the concept of family as God has given it to us. While this has been the "norm" in the nation (US) up to this point it is being threatened on my fronts as well and lobbyist groups have targeted it as a way of destroying American life as we know it. I believe God ordained families as the unit to teach us our dependence and reliance on one another. I believe this is a true principle on every level, spiritual, intellectual, physical, and any other way that encompasses true existence. At the same time, on a very personal level, we know just where we can trust our brother and sister and where we cannot because we "know" them. By that I mean that while we want to look at each other with love we want to deal with each other as if we were, shall we say, enemies....because truly we are. If natural man is an enemy to God then he is also an enemy to the self and to each other. Mosiah 3:19 "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child. Submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." I have spent 54 years becoming aware of my own self and I have scarcely scratched the surface, how can I truly "know" another? And if Mosiah is true then we all are short of who we need to be and this shows us how to turn that around. The temptations so strong and obvious that to not honor the harm that another can do to you by acknowledging its possibility is to not honor the "other", in my opinion.

So then our "relationships" take on the ambiance of duty, responsibility, honor, integrity to the self and the other, which in my estimation is all they can truly be anyway. If we could understand this principle there truly would be no poor among us for we would count everyone and care for everyone honorable as we care for ourselves.

Furthermore, I do not believe that man is capable of love on his own accord. I believe that it is a gift from God that will grow as it is exercised and that it withers and dies as we mistreat others and thus deny our own self honor or self love. Dishonoring the self by doing that which is immoral or against love toward self or others causes it to decrease. This happens in casual relationships and it happens in the most intimate relationship of marriage. It is an age old story often repeated.

Now what about a man and a woman then, well, here too I do not believe in "friends". I have heard of way too many relationships ending after 20 and 30 years. I believe this relationship is more of a commitment to a covenant before God, one that allows the individual person to continue in their journey to establish his heart and mind to the will of God. To simply endure the relationship or association is not what I believe God's intention of this union was or is.

Love grows out of honoring the self. To give begrudgingly or because one is forced to or obligated to is to cut off the source of real love which comes from God. Not that there are not moments one chooses to make a sacrifice to show love and concern for another, such as caring for a child or yielding to sex when one might choose otherwise at the moment (...the body of the wife is not her own but her husbands AND the body of the husband is not his but the wife's...).

Ultimately, I believe that the only one that we can truly call friend and that perhaps not before the end of a lifetime of discovery is the self. Even that may not prove true till the day of judgment.

I choose Christ as my friend and choose to develop a friendship within myself so that I might prove worthy of the Lord's presence at the last day. I also believe that as a friend of Christ I am friend to all mankind. Hmmm, does that not negate everything I have just been saying? I do no think so. Rather it defines that my relationship with mankind, if it is to be on a healthy level, must be centered on and through Jesus Christ. Interesting, because that is the only way that we might have a relationship with God as well. And this because of the fall from the presence of God and the literal and spiritual death that occurred in the Garden of Eden. So could anything else be more true than that all our relationships are only valid through the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Wow, every knee shall bow and we will acknowledge that he is the Son of God and Our KING. Praise God!