Wrong Basis for Friendships

We all have various relationships that serve different needs in our lives, and we must.  But larger than the need the friendship serves is the basis upon which it is built.  I have lived long enough to see and be involved in too many relationships that are built on ideological sameness.  It is the ideological equivalent to same-sex marriage.  Relationships that are not built on people, but ideology, is doomed to fail.  Ideologically driven friendships will abandon you when you no longer serve the agenda or they no longer like you.  People who are ideologically driven in their relationships will only be loyal to you as long as you are loyal to the ideology, and the moment that you cease to be loyal to the ideology they will cease to be loyal to you.  No relationship is sacred to the person who is ideologically driven no matter how long it has been in place.

Never seek to retain and maintain relationships with people with whom ideology means more to them than people do.  Be wary of anyone who views ideology as indispensable, but people as dispensable.  If you have a friend that you have watched abandon someone over political expedience, then it is just a matter of time until you become a political liability and you will also be abandoned.  If the only reason I am in your life is to forward your agenda then let me go now and quit wasting my time.

I am sure that I have used relationships in this way, but I pray to God that He grants me grace to never do it again. I have learned over the last 5-10 years to take friendships seriously.  I am loyal and pray that I always will be.  I do not forget loyalty when it is shown me.  I am friends with people that are social assets, and I am friends with people that are social liabilities.  And I am as equally loyal to the one group as I am the other.  I have about 8 friends that I am sold out to.  Lots of others that I am glad to have in my life.  I pray that God places more friends in my life as I go along life's journey.  

Sometimes life is going to make you friends with people that does not make sense to the onlooker.  One of the most foolish things one can do as an outsider is to try to make judgments about why two people are friends.  Never think that because someone is publicly loyal to a person that they have not privately disagreed or even rebuked that person.  All public loyalty means is that the person means more than the issue does.