Who would Jesus friend… or unfriend?
I’ve got a friend. No honestly, I do. Okay, maybe I don’t have any real friends, but I at least have a facebook friend. Like most of my facebook friends, I don’t really know this friend all that well. In fact, just like most of my facebook friends, I probably wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a crowd in real life. Like all of my facebook friends (and anyone else for that matter), she isn’t perfect. In fact, she did a bad, bad thing.
Actually, that is an understatement. Out of respect to her and remembering that I definitely am not perfect, I am not going to get into the details here. I’ll be honest though, if I did tell you all the details (at least as I know them), it would literally sicken you. It either infuriated or sickened everyone that heard about it. Let’s just say that her young child was literally almost tortured to death, and even though she knew about it, she didn’t stop it.
I think most heard the details in a similar way. I know for me it was through facebook. Someone put a post that included a link of the local news. I didn’t think a whole lot about it and until I saw a ton of comments along the lines of “Is that the same ____ we went to school with?” and “how could she ever do such a thing?” I figured, I better watch the link and see what it was all about. My stomach turned as I felt so bad for the little boy that deserved none of it. My mind immediately went to his Mom. There is no way if she was in her right mind she would have let this happen. In fact, nobody in their right mind would let that happen. But, I’d be willing to bet, she wasn’t in her right mind.
I first met her in the 7th grade. She was a sweet, quiet girl, with a cute smile and just a hint of a rebellious side to her. I liked her but we weren’t best friends or anything. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess sometime in her high school years, drugs were added to the mix. Fast forward 20 years, and unfortunately drugs were still in the mix as her parolee boyfriend almost killed her child. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making excuses or rationalizing her actions, I just seriously doubt that she was anywhere near a sober mind at that time in her life.
The reaction on facebook was swift, harsh, and unforgiving. The comments were coming fast and furious. Many angry, most in disbelief, and pretty much nobody could understand how our high school friend could have fallen so far and changed so much from from the one we knew.
I received a message that wasn’t among the many, many general comments (of which I’ll admit to contributing to even though I’m not proud of it). It was from another high school/facebook friend and it got me thinking. He asked, “Did you hear about ______?” When I replied that I had his response was, “Well then why are you still friends with her?”
Wow. I know I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my day. Fortunately for me, none of them have ever made the news. I can only imagine at what would have to be the very lowest point in my life, being on the news, and having a bunch of people I haven’t seen or talked to in 20 years add commentary about how “F’d” up my life was. Think about it, once she was in jail long enough, she would eventually sober up and realize that she would more than likely be losing her little boy… and that her life would never be the same. At that point she could probably use a lot of things: emotional support, counseling, reassurance that eventually things would be okay, and prayer are all things to come to mind. I’m not sure that all of her friends abandoning her (even if it is just on facebook) would be what she needs.
So with situations like these, I tend to think of the Big Guy… Buddha. No, wait, Jesus. Most people think of Christians as judgmental, because most of them are. However, that is their own doing because the Jesus they follow was anything but that. In fact, he was the one to chill with the sick, the sluts, the druggies and the drunks. He didn’t call them a bunch of names or ostracize them. He loved them and showed them compassion. It’s just a guess, but I’m thinking if Jesus was on facebook he would take someone like my high school friend, and send them a friend request when they were feeling at their lowest. He would love her and if she asked, he would forgive her. I’m not Jesus by any means, although looking at my gut makes me think I might actually be Buddha, but I don’t think I’ll be unfriending her.
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Interesting side note to this post: I literally haven’t talked to this woman in over 20 years, but after our high school reunion she sent me a note on facebook. It said something along the lines of, “nice blog!” or something like that. In all honesty, I thought it was kind of her attempt at making fun of this square that turned into a Godboy. I still don’t know if it was sincere or sarcastic. However, those of you that actually read this thing know that I hadn’t written for about 9 months. Last week, I was looking at the changes to the administrative side of the blog and noticed that it now allowed me to see who actually subscribed to this blog. There are only 25 subscribers, but take a guess at who one of them is.
